LThe twenty-minute documentary Coal Dust (Ugol'naya Pyl') was shot by a young VGIK team in the Chelyabinsk area (located in the east of Ural Mountains) in 2005. After the shooting was completed in 2006, the director Maria Miro (Miroshnichenko) was honored at the “Window to Europe” festival in Vyborg in 2007 for the best debut. In the same year her film also won the Moscow student film festival “St. Anna” (“Svyataya Anna”) in the non fiction film category. In addition, the director of photography Nikolay Karpov won the prize for “Best Photography” at the XVII documentary festival in Yekaterinburg. Outside of Russia, the movie was shown and praised by the jury at the 50 th Leipzig DOK Festival. In my opinion these honors prove the acceptance of formal methods employed by the film. By manipulating the highly segmented and remixed footage, by over-highlighting and by using music clips, the film Coal Dust reduces the documentary to a “mockumentary.”

read more @ artmargins.com:

http://artmargins.com/content/cineview/fertig.htm