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OSCAR

ОСКАР

By Evgeny TSYMBAL, Alexander SMOLJANSKI

Biography - Completed 2018

This is the story of the most famous living Russian artist, Oscar Rabin, who challenged the Soviet communist system and managed to prevail.
He showed how powerful a weapon nonviolent resistance can be. Now he lives in Paris.
It is a refugee success story: a story of love, art and human dignity.

- Year of production
- 2018
- Genres
- Biography, Documentary, Art - Culture
- Countries
- RUSSIA, GERMANY, FRANCE
- Languages
- RUSSIAN, ENGLISH
- Duration
- 90 mn
- Director(s)
- Evgeny TSYMBAL, Alexander SMOLJANSKI
- Writer(s)
- Alexander SMOLJANSKI
- Cast
- Oscar RABIN, Evgeny KISSIN, Vladimir SOROKIN, Ludmila ULITSKAYA, Adam MICHNIK
- Producer(s)
- Alexander SMOLJANSKI
- Synopsis
- This crowdfunded project is the story of one of the most famous living Russian artist, Oscar Rabin, who challenged the Soviet communist system and managed to prevail.
  In 1974, he organizes a prohibited open-air art exhibition, which the KGB smashes using bulldozers. This is considered the most effective action of the civil disobedience in the USSR after Stalin’s death alongside with 1968 demonstration on the Red Square against Soviet invasion to Czechoslovakia. The following day, the event was publicized worldwide.
  The Soviets were alarmed by Oscar’s event and within two weeks nevertheless allowed the unofficial artists to hold an exhibition. It was attended by thousands of Muscovites and referred to as the “Soviet Woodstock”. Shortly thereafter, he was exiled from the USSR and stripped off his citizenship.
  Having settled in France, he managed to gain international fame with his paintings, which are exhibited in the Centre Pompidou and many other major collections. In 2006, the Soviet ambassador to France visits him at his Paris studio and personally returns his passport.
  This is a story of a self-made man who never betrayed his artistic principles and always fought to show how powerful a weapon nonviolent resistance can be.
  It is a refugee success story: a story of love, art and human dignity.
  Oscar lives in Paris and will turn ninety in 2018.
  The film shows the life of a person who lived his life in accordance with the principle adopted by GULAG prisoners: don’t trust, don’t be afraid, don’t ask. Who merely wanted to paint, but became the leader of an entire generation.
  The film shows a lot of archival footage for the first time.