The LAst Hippy of the USSR
Director Kirill Makarenkov
Countries Russian Federation
Duration 99 min
Synopsis
“The Last Hippy of the USSR” shows an everyday life of a small provincial city that absorbed different epochs and blended those into diverse mosaic where ex-soviet dissidents and post-soviet communists live happily and peacefully together. The documentary submerges into surreal realism, reasoned absurdism, and many more paradoxes that go together like sputnik and space. The main character, Ilya Solovyev, lives in Rybinsk, an old city on the Volga River. It is a relatively small city with rich history: once a “capital of barge haulers”, then a “closed” city with secret soviet industries, and now a quiet and picturesque old town overlooked by tourists due to its restricted public access in the past. Ilya, 44, is a typical “loser”: no family, no full time job, and no car. Sometimes he writes articles, now and then, they invite him to be a radio host, or a gig host for local and visiting rock bands. It is the celebrations, whether communist gatherings, music events, or city festivals, which play a leading part in the documentary creating the environment that reveals all the psychedelia of Russian provincial existence: Intricate and bizarre yet harmonious and down-to-earth. In these settings, Lennon quite naturally turns into Lenin and vice versa. Who is Ilya? Is he an old-fashioned hippy stuck in the last century, a small town rebel, a social misfit, a holy fool, a weirdo,… or no ordinary man surviving the turbulence of an ever-changing world and trying to stay true to his inner self against all odds.
“The Last Hippy of the USSR” shows an everyday life of a small provincial city that absorbed different epochs and blended those into diverse mosaic where ex-soviet dissidents and post-soviet communists live happily and peacefully together. The documentary submerges into surreal realism, reasoned absurdism, and many more paradoxes that go together like sputnik and space. The main character, Ilya Solovyev, lives in Rybinsk, an old city on the Volga River. It is a relatively small city with rich history: once a “capital of barge haulers”, then a “closed” city with secret soviet industries, and now a quiet and picturesque old town overlooked by tourists due to its restricted public access in the past. Ilya, 44, is a typical “loser”: no family, no full time job, and no car. Sometimes he writes articles, now and then, they invite him to be a radio host, or a gig host for local and visiting rock bands. It is the celebrations, whether communist gatherings, music events, or city festivals, which play a leading part in the documentary creating the environment that reveals all the psychedelia of Russian provincial existence: Intricate and bizarre yet harmonious and down-to-earth. In these settings, Lennon quite naturally turns into Lenin and vice versa. Who is Ilya? Is he an old-fashioned hippy stuck in the last century, a small town rebel, a social misfit, a holy fool, a weirdo,… or no ordinary man surviving the turbulence of an ever-changing world and trying to stay true to his inner self against all odds.