Soviets plus electricity - 175 min - 16 mm - 2001 - Nicolas Rey

artists biography: Nicolas Rey

Soviets plus electricity is a cinematic journey through Russia to Magadan, a city famous in Soviet times for being synonymous with deportation. It was shot on out-of-date soviet super-8 reversal stock in 1999. The original material, with its ancient Agfa look, was optically printed on hand processed color neg at L'Abominable, near Paris, France. Due to these factors, it was an extremely thin neg to color time. After driving crazy one of Paris' last lab that prints 16mm, N.R. came to Toronto to work with Sebastjan on the beautiful final prints of the 3 hour piece.

Nicolas Rey wasn¹t named after the famous American director (he¹s the one that had a pseudonym) and he¹s not even the son of the French experimental filmmaker Georges Rey. He¹s been making films since 1993, productions hovering somewhere between photography, documentaries and experimental films. He spends most of his time at "L'Abominable", a cooperative film lab he helped founding in 1995.