Artur Klinau was an art director of the film “Hard Reboot” (dir. Andrey Kudzinienka 2014).

“The film was made 10 days on the western of Belarus, without a budget, expensive equipments, and its charactes were musicians of Russian group Noize MC. They were the main actors (by the way, and producers) and the story of the film is them own story. But the film is more than a promotion film for the famous group. It’s a psychedelic thriller, an author experiment of Andrey Kudzinienka, a space with the crossroads of many dimensions of sence.

The film begins with an image of a train, which moves back to front (as quoted to the Lumiere brothers train), and ends with documentary footage of the shooting “HARD REBOOT”. Thus, Kudzinienka makes a diagnos to state of modern cinema, and says that we should return to basics. The film is a classical mystical thriller. Musicions of Noize MC fall in mysterious places of western Belarus, meet a girl who is a witch, how we know later. And each of the characters brings to the “swamp”.

Despite of the simple plot, the film is not perceived as a conventional thriller. First, obviously unprofessional acting, which sometimes creates some discomfort for the audience. Secondly, Kudzinienka uses different formats and forms: newsreels, documentary archiveof Noize MC, an amateur camera. He also violates the classical tempo rhythm (tightened pause), the event scheme also does not fit the format, especiallyfor a mystical thrillers (difficult to catch and understand the culmination of the story), a lot of quotes on horror etc. That’s why the film gets a totally different dimension, that Andrey Rasinski called “aesthetic of trans-mistical realism where all reality is questioned”.

Tania Arcimovic. Hard Reboot: between life and death / partisanmag.by