Vitaly Bashmolkin

Aleksandr Molodkin and Vitaly Bashmolkin have worked together for several years. In 1991 they organized "Path," a creative workshop in Moscow, in which they jointly made several 8-mm films. They started to work with video in 1994.

In their video experiments, Molodkin and Bashmolkin go beyond a simple juxtaposition of brief shots linked by narration. Their technique can be compared to Stan Brakhage's way of creating his films (scratching and hand-painting images, step- or double- frame printing). Their use of music, especially Japanese folk music and sounds of ceremonies conducted by Buddhist monks, gives their work an unusual rhythmic and spatial depth, which brings their films closer to a kind of meditation than is usually encounted in films.

Until recently they made no use of computer graphics or special effects in their films. In their last two films, Prolapsus Temporis and Trip to Nowhere, they relied on one simple mechanical effect to experiment with video.