Alina Rudnitskaya

Born in 1976 in Murmansk (north of the Arctic Circle), Alina Rudnitskaya began her education in St. Petersburg with an engineering degree in space design, which initially consisted mainly of higher mathematics. She then went on to study screenwriting at the University of Culture and Arts in St. Petersburg.

Successful student films gave her her first commissions: she made two short films, Driving Mad and Communal Residence, for the TV documentary series ‘Petersburg 300’. She now works for the venerable St. Petersburg Documentary Film Studio, where legends of Soviet documentary film such as Alexander Sokurov and Pavel Kogan worked.

On the one hand, her short, mostly 20 to 30-minute documentaries are in the tradition of classic Soviet documentary film (her generation is called the ‘ninth’ in Russia, counted since Eisenstein, Vertov & Co). But Alina Rudnitskaya expands the traditional format with an intimacy hitherto unknown in Russian documentary film. Her camera seems to be glued to the protagonists, it seems to become such an accepted part of the life around it that many viewers have difficulty believing in the authenticity of what is being filmed.

Nevertheless, the quality of her work was initially overlooked. Her first film shot on 35mm, Amazons (2003), a portrait of young girls who earn money in the centre of St. Petersburg by caring for and renting out horses and riding unabashedly through the heavy traffic of the wide streets, was rejected at all festivals, even in St. Petersburg itself, and only premiered at the Werkleitz Biennale Common Property in 2004. In 2005, Alina Rudnitskaya received the EMARE scholarship from the Werkleitz Gesellschaft and was continuously supported by it since then as part of the Supported Artist Programme until 2007. She made her breakthrough with Civil Status, which won 14 festival awards.

Filmography:

• Driving Mad – Navazholenie, 2002, DV, col, sound, 13 min
• Communal Residence – Sovmestnoe pozhivanie, 2002, DV, col, sound, 13 min *
• Amazons – Naezdniki, 2003, 35mm, col, sound, 20 min *
• Rural Lessons – Sjelskie uroki, 2004, 35mm, col, sound, 26 min
• Civil Status – Grazhdanskoe sostojanie, 2005, 35mm, bw, sound, 29 min *
• The Sound of Malines – Malinovyj zvon, 2006, DV, col, sound, 30 min
• Besame Mucho, 2007, 35mm, col&bw, sound, 28 min
• Bitch Academy – Kak stat' stervoj, 2008, 35mm, col, sound, 30 min
• I Will Forget This Day – Ja zabudu etot den', RU 2011, 25 min

• In der Distribution von Werkleitz (für nicht kommerzielle Screenings. Distributionsformat: Video).