Beat Weekend, Oct. 3-7, is a local documentary festival of contemporary culture and music that features six films from the Beat Film Festival held earlier this year. It will take place in 15 major Russian cities from Moscow to Vladivostok this week.
The program features artists from singer M.I.A. to electronic band Depeche Mode and independent hip-hop stars from Nas to Pusha T along with a series of talks with invited experts and parties thematically related to the films.
Here are our beat week picks.
“Skate Kitchen”
“Everybody should see this movie,” Eve MacSweeny, the director of “Vogue,” wrote. The “Guardian’s” Peter Bradshaw wrote that it was “an intensely likable and sympathetic movie, with its seductively laid-back documentary realist style.” Crystal Moselle´s film reclaims the skater genre from movies Larry Clark’s “The Smell of Us” and Gus Van Sant’s “Paranoid Park,” which fetishized the skaters, their perceived alienation and lack of affect – and, of course, their maleness. This is about a women’s skater group called Skate Kitchen who share their stunts and general freewheeling and life-affirming attitude on Instagram.
"Social Animals"
From the first minutes of the film, the characters reflect on the role of Instagram in their lives. "Sometimes I think: can I delete Instagram? But then the next thought appears: what will I do with all the time in my life?" says one of the protagonists. This film by Jonathan Green is about people who can’t imagine life without social media. Instagram is used by more than 700 million people, and this is a story about three of them.
“Matangi / Maya / M.I.A.”
Stephen Loveridge gives an intimate portrait of the Sri Lankan artist who went from being an immigrant living in a ghetto to being the English artist known as M.I.A. — wordplay on her name as well as a reference to the abbreviation Missing in Action. Her compositions combine elements of alternative and electronic music, dance, and hip hop. A turbulent story of one of the most eccentric artists of the 2000s.
“Depeche Mode: 101”
Depeche Mode is an electronic band founded in Basildon, Essex, in 1980. Since then, the band has sold more than 100 million records worldwide. This film is about the 101st Depeche Mode concert during their 1988 world tour. It is a about the celebration of their triumph in the 1980s when all teenagers from Sydney to Los Angeles knew the lyrics of their songs by heart.
All films are screened in English with Russian subtitles. For more details about the schedule and ticket sales please visit the festival website.
Karo Oktyabr Theater. 24 Novy Arbat. Metro Arbatskaya. karofilm.ru/theatres?id=10
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