In Melbourne meeting sales agents and distributers. We had a good screening of Russian Snark and are hoping for a pick up of our film. Interest from several parties however in Stephen’s next film project so will keep you posted about that over the next few months.

RUSSIAN SNARK – Excerpted from reviews below:

**** “A beautiful, touchingly drawn Kiwi film about Russian immigrants in Auckland. Russian Snark is a strange but delightful beast., well worth hunting out.” Sunday Star Times.

**** “A wee gem. (It) made me do something no New Zealand-made feature has since Boy: the next day, I went and saw it again.” The Dominion Post.

**** “Great entertainment … Sinclair is a winner. A fascinating exploration of cinema art.” The Waikato Times.

“Wonderful … charming … a beautiful, beautiful  film.” Kiwi FM.

“Humour, whimsy and visual beauty turn Russian Snark from a typical migrant tale into something near-poetic.” NZ Listener.

“A little gem … deserves to be a hit. Ideal festival fare – independent, arty, challenging and ultimately very rewarding.” The G.B. Weekly.

We are heading to Melbourne! We have been confirmed for the 37 Degree South Break Thru Screenings and are very excited about the possibility of getting an international sales agent and potentially an Australian distributer for our film.  The market is geared to assist Australian and NZ producers in making contact with the wider world, and so attracts buyers looking for antipodean projects both in the script stage and the finished stage like Russian Snark. As one of only 7 films screening in the Break Thru screenings we hope this wil indeed be a break through for us!  Will keep you posted as things progress on that front!

We have a had a great theatrical run at over 28 cinemas around NZ and garnered lots of critical acclaim in the process…looking forward to the next step!

http://www.filmarchive.org.nz/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=360

James Croot Reviews Russian Snark -

Tired of being unappreciated and misunderstood, veteran Russian filmmaker Misha (Stephen Papps) casts himself adrift from his homeland and set sail for pastures new.

Accompanied by his partner and muse Nadia (Elena Stejko), he washes up in Auckland and is instantly enamoured with the rugged locales and friendly locals. However, recruiting Kiwis and finances for his “art films” proves difficult and even Nadia is beginning to tire of Misha’s methods and beliefs that “narrative is for children” and “to make art one must endure a little discomfort”. “You’re not the one who has to lie on sharp rocks,” she snaps.

Part of the collective febrile mind behind early Peter Jackson pics Brain Dead and Meet the Feebles, Stephen Sinclair makes his feature film directorial debut with this eccentric, eclectic but ultimately actually quite engaging Kiwi black comedy. Although filled with familiar settings (especially to those who saw An Insatiable Moon last year) and faces (which include former Shortland Streeters Rene Naufahu, Stephanie Tauveihi and Greg Johnson, Russian Snark is far removed from recent cuddly Kiwi comedies like Love Birds or Second Hand Wedding.

With its minimalist, atmospheric soundtrack and arty black and white imagery and lashings of “artistic” nudity (which even includes the striking Stejko performing a striptease in national costume) it has more in common with the works of Florian Habicht than this country’s more mainstream, multiplex-friendly fare.

However, strip back Misha’s visual and visceral excesses and Snark is a Python-esque comedy that isn’t afraid to take the mickey out of both Kiwi and Russian serious art. The Piano is beautifully skewered in an over-the-top beach shoot, while that much-celebrated glasnostic-insomnia cure Russian Ark is parodied not only in the title but also in the sheer pretentiousness of Misha’s work.

As he himself says. “Art should not always be serious. It should be like life. Life is God’s joke.”

http://publicaddress.net/system/topic/3112/

Damian Christie and Michele A’Court catch up with Stephen Sinclair to talk about the process of writing and directing his first feature film ‘Russian Snark’.

(M)

Written and directed by Stephen Sinclair

Star rating             ****

Reviewed by Sam Edwards.

In a recent interview, director Stephen Sinclair described his film as “ …- an art movie that is accessible to the general public.  ”, and he is right. There is great entertainment to be had from the arrival of an unlikely Russian couple in New Zealand in a dumpy red lifeboat … “ Bloody Hell! “ cries a dinkum Kiwi fisherman on the wharf when it pulls in… and their consequent attempts to live a normal life – if that is, in fact, what artists ever live.

There is also interesting discussion arising from Sinclair’s intelligent laying out of the issues about the nature of art – and hence, for cinema addicts, about art cinema and entertainment. Those issues are initiated in part from social questions about the needs of people who uproot and try to pick up life in a different culture, and in part from the role of the lead character, himself an artist film maker, who exposes the attitudes and experiences which drive him as an artist.

But don’t make the mistake of thinking that RUSSIAN SNARK is stuffy elitist fare. The issues are real, but the medium through which they are presented – a film about film making – is funny, entertainingly and sometimes movingly human, and a great Kiwi insight into the pretensions of wannabe artists and the facts of art itself. Here Sinclair is a winner. His film contains wonderfully evocative images, imitations of art works – the links between the monochrome floating nude shots and the 1934 classic ECSTASY, for example, are clear. Original images ranging from the arrival of the hilarious lifeboat, through emotionally loaded close ups of the couple as their marriage disintegrates, to Misha’s ongoing commentary which includes lines like “ Art is a way of seeing… what lies beneath is memory, fragments of forgotten life. “ are perceptive gems. The dialogue, of course, is Sinclair’s, and the idea of memory and past experience mediating new perceptions is fundamental to understanding the nature of art.

The male lead is Misha, wonderfully brought to eccentric and passionately driven life by Kiwi actor Stephen Papps. He plays an art film maker who has come to New Zealand because Russia does not see the cinema with the same eyes as he does.  When he arrives with starring wife Nadia, and they celebrate the luxury of a real bed in a very ordinary motel room, it is a clear suggestion that New Zealand and Russia may not be so far apart in their lack of appreciation of Misha’s art.

As Misha finds his new country as difficult as the old one his confidence goes and along with it, his relationship with Nadia and any progress on his film. Here Sinclair includes a series of suicidal images in which blood is seen running down Misha’s hand and dripping in the water of the same pond as the shots of his beloved Nadia.  It seems unfair to call these studied, but if there are flaws in this film, and there are, it is that occasionally a viewer may feel some of the shots are somewhat self conscious, just as occasionally the dialogue seems stiff and artificially typical rather than the flowing kiwi speak which is so hard to write successfully. A delightful exception to this is the flawlessly natural performance by Stephanie Tauevihi as a neighbour who helps the self destructing Misha back to a kind of normality.

Here, then, is cinema where one can laugh at oddities even if they may be serious, be moved by situations and events which also seem more funny than sad, and enjoy a fascinating exploration of cinema art and people where your own eccentricities are allowed full reign.

Photo Recall: Last minute reprieve for bedraggled sailors

By Jane Phare

EXPAND

Renata Pavlenko, then 24, and Boris Bainov, then 47 are now married and live the quiet life with their two sons. Photo / Sav Shulman

Twelve years ago, a Russian couple sailed over the Manukau bar into Huia after six months in a leaky boat. Immigration was not impressed. A New Zealand film, Russian Snark, now in cinemas, is inspired by their story.

The strain of a night in the police cells and imminent deportation back to Russia shows on the faces of Boris Bainov and Renata Pavlenko, then aged 47 and 24, as a police officer hustles them into Auckland International Airport.

It was November 1999, a tense moment caught by photographer Sav Schulman, then freelancing for the New Zealand Herald.

Just as Schulman began taking photos, the Herald reporter’s cellphone rang and he handed it to Bainov. Russian-speaking lawyer Colin Amery had left a High Court drugs trial to stop the couple’s deportation, after a Whangaparaoa businesswoman heard of their plight and offered to be Bainov’s immigration sponsor. Bainov and Pavlenko never did get on that flight.

The Herald on Sunday tracked down the couple this week at their 1960s Stillwater bach.

Here they live a quiet life with their two sons, Leo, 7, and Nicholas, 5.

Under a palm tree nearby is the hulk of the tiny yacht which carried Bainov, during three journeys over three years, from Vladivostok. Bainov said reports of their epic voyage became garbled in the translation once they reached New Zealand. When he and girlfriend Pavlenko, now his wife, sailed into Manukau Harbour, reporters thought they had both been at sea for three years.

Instead, Bainov had made two miserable attempts to sail the boat on his own, the first time to South Korea, the second time to Guam, in the Marianas Islands. There he left the boat and returned to Russia.

For his third and final voyage, he was joined by Pavlenko. The pair flew to Guam and from there sailed to Vanuatu. Keen to watch the America’s Cup in Auckland, they set sail again in May 1999, taking 21 days to drift the 2000km across the Pacific.

They took their chances and headed for the Manukau Harbour. “I had no idea how bad the Manukau bar was,” says Bainov.

His first impression of Huia was that he had arrived in “paradise”.

Locals gave the couple a hot shower and food, but someone called Immigration. Within hours, the couple were in custody. Bainov, now 59, recently resigned from an Albany plastics factory where he has worked for more than 10 years. Pavlenko plans to become a radiologist.

By Jane Phare | Email Jane

http://www.nzherald.co.nz/nz/news/article.cfm?c_id=1&objectid=10734501

‎”…The only NZ film since Boy I went to see twice”- Graeme Tuckett – great review on Radio NZ … http://podcast.radionz.co.nz/ntn/ntn-20110623-1151-film_reviews_with_graeme_tuckett-048.mp3

“…a wee gem…Defiantly eccentric, Russian Snark is good enough to see twice…

Sinclair has turned in a film that made me do something no New Zealand-made feature film has since Boy: The next day, I went and saw it again.

Go and have a look.

” – Graeme Tuckett

Russian Snark (M) (78 min)

Directed by Stephen Sinclair.

Starring Stephen Papps, Elena Stejko.

Russian film-maker Misha and his beautiful wife, Nadia, arrive in Auckland in a lifeboat they have converted into a yacht.

With no money, and not much in the way of job offers, they move into a boarding house run by the kindly Stephanie Tauevihi.

Dissatisfied with her husband’s pig-headed refusal to change his ways, or even find a job, Nadia leaves, and enters a seedy world of stripping and “hostessing”.

It sounds a bit grim, but writer/ director Stephen Sinclair’s first spin behind the camera is anything but. Brief, good natured, defiantly idiosyncratic and eccentric, Russian Snark is a wee gem.

With bugger-all money, but a pack of great actors, a committed and vastly experienced crew, and that lovely, bleakly-comic script in hand, Sinclair has turned in a film that made me do something no New Zealand-made feature film has since Boy: The next day, I went and saw it again.

Go and have a look.

- The Dominion Post

http://www.stuff.co.nz/dominion-post/culture/film-reviews/5161891/Russian-Snark-a-wee-gem