Cosmosapiens

Am Speziellen Astrophysikalischen Observatorium, abgelegen in einem Dorf in den Bergen des Kaukasus, spüren Astrophysiker:innen Pulsaren und Schwarzen Löchern nach und suchen nach Signalen von außerirdischem Leben. Doch Cuzuioc versucht in COSMOSAPIENS nicht, die Arbeit im Observatorium zu vermitteln, sondern lässt die Forscher:innen über das irdische Leben philosophieren. Wie sonst will man sich die Außerirdischen vorstellen? Es geht um die Globalisierung und unser Verhältnis zur Natur, objektive und subjektive Wahrnehmung. Zwischendurch müssen die Ziegen gefüttert werden. Und das Teleskop knarzt sich in eine neue Position. (Lars Penning)

In Anwesenheit von Pavel Cuzuioc. 

It’s a strange, strange world. If you have any doubts about that, Pavel Cuzuioc’s kaleidoscopic and empathetic sci-fi documentary about a group of people living and working around an isolated special astrophysical observatory in the Caucasus Mountains will convince you. It all begins with a rotating wooden house which serves as a kind of marker for what is to follow, for nothing is stable in this film. The director observes his arguing, philosophising protagonists performing and discussing Shakespeare, riding their mountain bikes and cohabiting with goats, while they talk of their aspirations to find black holes and extra-terrestrial signals. He lets them speak, the camera just there to witness and to be amazed. Taken together with the protagonists, these seemingly disparate elements come to form a sort of cosmology that alludes to both a romantic quest for imagination as well as a dangerous, momentous tendency for “made in Russia” megalomania. Tellingly, a whif of Soviet nostalgia is to be discovered in almost every frame. It’s a thin line between apotheosis and romantic dreams, ignorance and care, and Cuzuioc documents precisely this ambivalence on what feels like the eve of global political collapse. (John Divney)

In the presence of Pavel Cuzuioc.

Pavel Cuzuioc: DIGGING FOR LIFE (2011), RAISA (2015, K), SECONDO ME (2016), PLEASE HOLD THE LINE (2020)