The old man dances along a magnificent corridor of the St. Petersburg Hermitage. The camera moves closer and becomes the witness of his worship of Catherine the Great, who once founded the building complex and its collection. He talks about the divine in art and about his friends, from Tarkovski to Akhmatova, who all lived in the nearby Stalin artist colony.
The Ukrainian composer and pianist Oleg Nikolaevich Karavaychuk earned his reputation with his works for film (for example Paradjanov and Muratova) and theatre. Whenever he is not busy talking you into the ground, the hands of this strange old person who in Russia is admired not only for his music, but also for his eccentric personality, will improvise on the piano and still upstage everybody. Andrés Duque, born in Venezuela in 1972 and trained as a journalist, is now a filmmaker working in Spain. He has accompanied Karavaychuk – who is never seen in public without a redheaded woman’s wig and a cheekily misplaced cap – on his meandering ways (of thinking) and, along these ways, he has captured the exhilarating random moments in which Oleg’s wildly poetic music seemingly grows out of nothing and makes everything else seem unimportant. (as)
