Ksenia Galiaeva will present a preview of her newest film Unreal Estate the Movie, one of the conclusive projects of her years-long artistic practice under Unreal Estate. The film will be preview at Filmhuis Cavia, Amsterdam, on November 2 at 8pm. The length of the film is 60 minutes.
In the seemingly paradisiacal surroundings of their Russian summerhouse, the artist turns her parents into willing actors in their own stories. For over 25 years she has attempted to influence their memory and family history through the power of image and wishful thinking, to create a family myth that could be healing. The summerhouse has become a collection of methaphors where time passes at a stretchable speed - like mythical time where the story continues but is repeating itself at the same time.
In Unreal Estate, fragility and temporality are negated with vividness and humour; objects and actions take on meaning, grow out of proportion and become metaphors for the urge to secure things that are impossible to preserve. In this process, the role of the artist's parents has changed from willing characters to active co-authors. The film and book project, an extension of her photographic oeuvre, concludes the long period of working with her parents and is an ode to their characters and their history, which have shaped her as a person and an artist, the only child of two Holocaust and labor camp survivors, and an ethnic mix of five nationalities (Jewish, Polish and German, Tatar and Russian) and four religions.
