Russian filmmaker Alexei Dmitriev described the inspiration for this short film in cogent language: “I was always uncomfortable when people mocked abstract art. So I came up with the film to somehow defend it and even show that there is an implicit connection between representational and abstract art.”
And, indeed, Dmitriev succeeded brilliantly. His film begins with what appears to be a typical work of abstract art: a thick, unsymmetrical blue horizontal line gashed across a canvas. But the camera slowly pulls back and the line takes on a very different appearance. By the time the camera has finished it’s backwards journey, the seemingly abstract line is revealed to be part of a highly recognizable artistic landscape.
Dmitriev’s film runs a scant three-and-a-half minutes, yet it achieves a more imaginatively satisfying emotional jolt than productions running three-and-a-half hours.
