Moi, Gagarine

Director Olga Darfy is living a good life. She has a fine job, beautiful home and a loving family. But a nostalgic longing won’t leave her alone and she decides to search for her youth and the people from her youth. People, who brought the rave culture to Moscow.  The first Gagarin Parties were held in 1991 at the Space Pavilion of Moscow, right next to the Sputnik satellite. People were intoxicated with youth, freedom, dance music, and of course with various chemical substances. The parties had certain key people that Olga now looks for. She manages to find some of them, but one is gone. Vanya Salmaksov, the heart and soul of the Russian rave culture, has disappeared. Maybe he is dead? To Olga the young DJ from her past is more alive than ever. Just like cosmonaut Yuri Gagarin is still alive in the heart of the nation, still representing the bright future.

The Moscow rave culture was a symptom of a larger phenomenon. Now the visual culture of the time and the clothes made by the freedom hungry youngsters can be seen as part of the comprehensive art movement. The artists were taking influences from the American pop-art as well as the surrealists of 1920’s, not to mention Kandinsky. Their life was full of wild rave parties, which spun out artists such as the Oleg Kulik, the Dog Man, and Sergei Bugaev, internationally known as Afrika.
Johanna Siik (Translation: Tuomo Karvonen) (DocPoint)