Letters to Max

DIRECTOR: Eric Baudelaire   COUNTRY: France   YEAR: 2014   LANGUAGE(S): English, Russian, Abkhazian  SUBTITLES: English   LÄNGE: 103 min  

SECTION: International Forum 2015

SYNOPSIS

The French artist and filmmaker Eric Baudelaire shows the paradoxical history of a country that doesn’t really exist: Abkhazia. He uses 74 letters that he wrote to the former Foreign Minister of Abkhazia Maxim Gvinjia and the answers that came largely in the form of audio files as the basis of his film. The result is an impressive, poetic film essay about identity, the creation of states and bizarre everyday life in a non-country.

Twenty years ago, Abkhazia – which once was beautiful – declared independence from Georgia after a bloody civil war. It has all the usual organs and apparatus of a state and its own flag, but it is only partially recognized as a legal state. So the declining country, where the traces of war are omnipresent, exists in a kind of vacuum. In LETTERS TO MAX, Abkhazia’s existence as a (non-)state becomes a touchstone for our parameters of statehood. Pictures of Abkhazia, the letters and Maxim Gvinjia’s responses are juxtaposed to examine unanswered questions together.

ERIC BAUDELAIRE
Eric Baudelaire, born in 1973, is a French filmmaker and artist. His first feature film THE ANABASIS OF MAY AND FUSAKO SHIGENOBU, MASAO ADACHI AND 27 YEARS WITHOUT IMAGES (2011) premiered at FIDMarseille and won the Special Jury Prize at DocLisboa. THE UGLY ONE (2013), which premiered at Locarno, was his first narrative feature – also made in collaboration with underground filmmaker and former Red Army militant Masao Adachi. Baudelaire’s research-based practice also includes photography, printmaking and publications which have been shown in installations alongside his films in solo exhibitions at Bétonsalon in Paris, the Bergen Kunsthall, the Beirut Art Center, Gasworks in London, the Taipei Biennial 2012, and Berlin Documentary Forum 2.

FILMOGRAPHY

The Anabasis of May and Fusako Shigenobu, Maso Adachi and 27 Years Without Images (2011), The Ugly One (2013), Letters to Max (2014)

PRODUCER: Eric Baudelaire   CAMERA: Eric Baudelaire   EDITORS: Eric Baudelaire, Laure Vermeersch 

PRODUCTION: Poulet-Malassis   WORLD SALES: Poulet-Malassis  GERMAN DISTRIBUTOR: Matt Carter