Away from All Suns

The back streets of Moscow are home to forgotten treasures: Constructivist buildings from the 1920s, at a time of high hopes for a future utopia. Today, those hopes are shattered. The Moscow of the present is no different from the utterly anti-utopian global trend where design is mostly a function of marketability. The film follows three Muscovites who wrestle with the legacy of these buildings. One citizen fights to preserve her apartment building, as well as a print shop next door, which is the only surviving building by the avantgarde artist El Lissitzky. Donatas is looking for a place where he an his friends can create an artists' commune. Vsevolod wants to preserve an architectural monument, yet he has to rebuild it. "Everyone who has ever been in this house is enthralled," Vsevolod says. The buildings hold a message that will disappear when the last of them has given way to land speculators or decay. AWAY FROM ALL SUNS is a dialogue between the past and the present. Leading constructivist thinkers such as Rodchenko, Lissitzky and Vesnin, and footage of early Soviet film, including Dziga Vertov, evoke a vision of modernity that still resonates today.