Dancing with Putin and Bush

In the 80’s, Frankie Goes to Hollywood’s video clip Two Tribes featured lookalikes of Cold War leaders Reagan and Chernenko giving each other a good thrashing.

Now, times has changed, the ice has been broken and the video Putin on the Ritz shows Wladimir Putin and George W. Bush wiggling in a musical comedy. The clip is inspired by the 1930’s movie Puttin’on the Ritz and utilizes the Star Imitations Systems Technology, a technique that allows amazing digital effects.

The entertaining Putin on the Ritz has been realized by Mini Movie Channel, a multi-platform new media company launched during the 2008 Festival De Cannes. The founder Dmitry Lesnevsky is a Russian tycoon who knows his stuff. As a matter of fact, he produced Andrey Zvyaginstev’s films The Return (Golden Lion/Venice 2003) and The Banishment (Best Actor/Cannes 2007). The site sets out to feature only high-quality works and to discover the best short film comedies from around the world. It will extend its brand with launches in Russia, France and Germany this summer. In my opinion, it’s a very interesting website and I advise you to see also the other hilarious videos.

La Fura dels Baus Stages the Dubrovka Tragedy

Boris Godunov is crowned Tsar, but the remorse for Prince Dimitri’s murder plagues him. Lost in bad omens, he doesn’t notice the spectres in ski-mask that come brandishing menacing weapons. In a few minutes, they fill the place with explosive and..

Welcome to the new show of La Fura dels Baus, one of the world’s most important performance companies. On 6 March, the Catalan theatrical group previewed “Boris Godunov”, a piece based on Alexandr Pushkin’s play. Pushkin’s plot fuses with reality, taking inspiration from the terrorist attack happened in the Moscow’s Dubrovka Theatre in October 2002. The Chechen terrorists took the audience hostage threatening to blast the building and exacting the withdrawal of Russian troops from Chechnya. After three days of negotiations, Putin chose the hard-line: the special forces raid ended with the death of 129 hostages and 33 terrorists. Now, La Fura dels Baus retrieves that terrible event in this sort of docu-drama, where the audience is involved in a whirl of sensations, including  fear too. The company chose a little theatre in the small town of Molina De Segura, giving an even more claustrophobic touch to the show. Spectators and critics were very fascinated by this tragic parable about the quandary between means and purposes.