A Border Musical - trailer from chto delat on Vimeo.

a film by Chto delat - BORDER MUSICAL
Premiere of the new BORDER MUSICAL newly created by the collective Chto Delat for Barents Spektakel, 2013

Run time: 48:30 min. 

Ola from Finnmark meets Tanja from Kola. They fall in love, Tanja abandons her past and moves with her son to her new husband. Through joys and challenges of their mixed marriage we get a glimpse into today’s Russia-Norwegian borderland across cultural and social norms and values. How our behaviour and worldview are influenced by culturally laden relations between individual, family and society? To what degree we are responsible for our actions and to what degree we leave it to the state? Who defines areas of responsibility? The Norwegian state and Ola’s best friend help the couple to build up a family based on thesound Norwegian values.

BORDER MUSICAL is not a description of the reality; it is a reality served in a spicy manner: through polished language and sharp definitions, exaggerated images and multifaceted characters, bizarre movements and eccentric scenes. Why cheer a mutual understanding when we learn from our differences?

Director: Tsaplya Olga Egoraova

Idea, Screenplay, Set and Edit: Tsaplya Olga Egoraova and Dmitry Vilensky in cooperation with Jesper Alvær.

Composer: Mikhail Krutik.

Director of Photography: Artyom Ignatov.

Cast: Anna Bulavina, Haldor Lægreid, Ketil Høegh, Maryon Eilertsen, Kristine Henriksen, Camilla Wiig Revholt, Ann Christin Elverum, Egor Semenkov, Nikolay Kurbatov, Mikhail Baranov, Andrey Molodchinin.

Choreographer: Nina Gasteva.

Producer: Pikene på Broen in cooperation with KORO, Bergen Assembly, FilmCamp, Filmgården and many others.

Chto Delat (What is to be done?) was founded in early 2003 in Petersburg by a workgroup of artists, critics, philosophers, and writers from Petersburg, Moscow, and Nizhny Novgorod with the goal of merging political theory, art, and activism.

The group was founded in May 2003 in Petersburg in an action called “The Refoundation of Petersburg." Shortly afterwards, the original, as yet nameless core group began publishing an international newspaper called Chto Delat. The name of the group derives from a novel by the Russian 19th author Nikolai Chernyshevsky, and immediately brings reminiscences of the first socialist worker’s self-organizations in Russia, which Lenin actualized in his “What is to be done?” (1902). Chto delat sees itself as a self-organizing platform for cultural workers intent on politicizing their “knowledge production” through reflections and redefinitions of an engaged autonomy for cultural practice today.

The platform Chto delat is coordinated by a workgroup including following members:
Tsaplya Olga Egorova (artist, Petersburg), Artiom Magun (philosopher, Petersburg), Nikolai Oleinikov (artist, Moscow), Natalia Pershina/Glucklya (artist, Petersburg), Alexei Penzin (philosopher, Moscow), David Riff (art critic, Moscow), Alexander Skidan (poet, critic, Petersburg), Oxana Timofeeva (philosopher, Moscow), and Dmitry Vilensky (artist, Petersburg). In 2012 the choreographer Nina Gasteva has joined a collective after few years of intense collaboration. Since then many Russian and international artist and researchers has participated in different projects realised under the collective name Chto Delat (see descriptions of each projects on this web site)

Chto Delat collective in Kronstadt in 2005
Standing: from the right: Oleynikov, Gluklya, Timofeeva, Shuvalov, Tsaplya, Riff, Penzin
Sitting: Magun and Vilensky)

Music for the film "Partisan Songspiel" by Mikhail Krutik by chto_delat

texts of the songs by Tsaplya, Dmitry Vilensky written in collaboration with Vladan Jeremic and Rena Raedle