Mad Mimes

Dimitri Venkov in conversation with Alexandra MacGilp for Cannibal Manifest exhibition catalogue

AM: What inspired The Mad Mimes and how did it develop while you were making it?

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DV: One of the lasting impressions of my formative years was a discovery of Jean Rouch’s ethno-fictions. There I saw a narrative mode that was neither documentary nor fiction, rather it went back and forth between them creating  uncertainty in regards with the nature of the material and the film itself. Half-consciously I ended up reproducing this model in my film where I tried to present a credible situation at first and then push the limits of plausibility without completely destroying it, without slipping into mockumentary mode where everything becomes a parody.

I had the idea for the film as I was walking with some friends through a park next on the outskirts of Moscow and saw an “island” delineated by a highway on the one side and a creek on the other. I imagined a tribe living there in isolation and wondered what their culture would be like. To make the film I followed an ethnographic procedure. I first developed a script and shot the scenes with the tribe including the ritual. After that, I did a more theory-oriented research on mimesis to create the experts’ commentary on the lifestyle and practices of the tribe. The film took about a year and a half to complete.

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AM: Which anthropologists do you quote from in The Mad Mimes? How do you feel their work is relevant in the context of contemporary Moscow?

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DV: I quote classical works by Levy-Strauss, Malinowski and others. Michael Taussig’s discussion of mimesis and liminal phenomena was particularly instrumental in understanding and interpreting the tribe’s activities. I think theory is what made the image of a tribe living on the outskirts of a city and a group of experts commenting on it seem convincing to many people. I wanted to draw attention to the power of expertise that can make us accept the mo...