RACE OR KITCHEN TALKS THREE HOURS BEFORE ARREST

Directed by Elena Gremina and Mikhail Ugarov

Written by Segei Sokolov

Cast: Anna Kotova-Deryabina, Artem Grigoryev, Maxim Kurochkin

Music by Ivan Bushuev and Dmitry Vlasik


Duration 1 h. 20 min.

Age restriction: 18+

“This is a fantastic, gloomy business, a modern case, an incident of to-day when the heart of man is troubled, when the phrase is quoted that blood ‘renews,’ when comfort is preached as the aim of life. Here we have bookish dreams a heart unhinged by theories”…. (c) Porfiry Petrovitch, “Crime and Punishment”

So many years have passed, yet Dostoyevsky’s characters still live among us. But this is not the 19th century St. Petersburg, this is Moscow today. Young idealists conspire to murder feeling sorry neither for lives of others nor for those of their own… The production is based on documentary materials – conversations tapped in the apartment of Tikhonov and Khasis who were prosecuted for the murder of Markelov and Baburina. Declarations of love, nice lovers’ quarrels are intertwined with stories about past and future ideological murders committed on the grounds of nationality.

Elena Gremina

Race is a documentary production. It first appeared as Teatr.doc’s reaction to the events that took place four years ago: in broad daylight in the centre of Moscow a masked man shot Stanislav Markelov, a lawyer, and his companion, Anastasia Baburova, a young journalist from the Novaya Gazeta newspaper. Markelov was well-known for his political activity, for the bold defense of anti-fascists and his innuendoes against nationalists. Baburova who happened to become the other victim, had arrived in Moscow only a year before, she was beginning her way in political journalism. Nikita Tikhonov and Evgeniya Khasis, two young national-extremists, were arrested and prosecuted based on the tapped conversations they had in the apartment, where they were hiding from the prosecution. Those involved lengthy discussions of future attacks alternated with tender details of their personal affairs. The recordings make it clear that the engage Bonnie and Clyde killed Markelov because of his innuendos against nationalists. He got a life sentence, she was sentenced to a long time in jail which she has started serving in the same prison Nadezhda Tolokonnikova from Pussy Riot left a short while ago.

The text here is a combination of transcripts edited by Sergey Sokolov, late Baburova’s superior at the Novaya Gazeta, the transcripts he got from the police as well as his own speculations on how an attempt to blame somebody may come into collision with one’s own bias.

Kristina Matvienko