Dimitri Venkov
Born in 1980 in Novosibirsk. Received a master’s in the history of film from the University of Oregon and graduated from the department of new media at the Rodchenko Moscow School of Photography and Multimedia. Since 2007 he has produced films and video works. A participant at numerous exhibitions and festivals.
“Mad Mimes”
Is an anthropological study of a fictional community near the Moscow Ring Road that survives by collecting roadside trash. As a result of their social isolation and material dependency on the road a cargo cult developed within the society. The tribe’s lifestyle and rituals are based on those of Melanesian cargo cults and other new religious movements, and the expert opinions are inspired by classic works of cultural anthropology. The film appropriates the stylistics of a popular science movie and takes the form of scientific research in reverse, in which the starting point is the idea rather than fieldwork. In this way the film reveals the constructed nature of scientific facts and problematizes the tools of visual anthropology.