Anatoly Belkin. High Water

Portrait of the Artist Anatoly Belkin — a legend of the Soviet underground, still finely attuned to the spirit of the times.

Anatoly Belkin is a painter and graphic artist, founder of the magazines Sobaka.ru and Veshch.doc, deeply embedded in the cultural memory of St. Petersburg. The city on the Neva is unimaginable without him, just as the history of unofficial Soviet art of the 1970s is incomplete without his presence. Since the late 1980s, his solo exhibitions have been held in galleries in New York, Paris, London, and Berlin. In 2004, his large-scale exhibition "Gold of the Swamps" at the Hermitage, dedicated to the fictional “swamp civilization,” shook the Russian contemporary art scene. Today, Belkin’s works are held in the Russian Museum, Amsterdam’s Stedelijk Museum, and other prestigious collections worldwide.

The documentary drama "High Water" captures Belkin during preparations for his Hermitage exhibition. Constantly in motion, he observes and reflects, noticing the changes in his beloved city. Remembering the past, he looks toward a future that is ambiguous and unpredictable. The artist continues to believe in art as a dam against the worst floods. But will it be enough to avert catastrophes today, as water levels rise across the globe?