The night shift / Ночная смена

In 2021, the Art Prospect Festival invited our team to work in another monument of Constructivist architecture: the GAZA House of Culture building.

The I. I. Gaza Palace of Culture was a cultural center for the workers of the Krasny Putilovets factory, built between 1930 and 1935 by the architects A. I. Gegello and D. L. Krichevsky, who had also designed the country’s first Palace of Culture, named after Gorky, in the Constructivist style. It was finally completed in the 1960s by the architect E. M. Poltoratsky and the engineer L. N. Bubarina. It is a regional-level cultural heritage site of Russia. The building was named in memory of the party activist and Putilov factory worker I. I. Gaza.

Our first step was to go to the library. There we found a particularly curious volume, compiled for one of the building’s many anniversaries, recounting the various clubs, activities, and social circles that had taken place in the Gaza House of Culture during the Soviet period. It was from this album that the idea for the film emerged.

Imagine the following: a new security guard begins his night shift and, after closing the door behind the last employee, naturally hopes to get some sleep. Yet suspicious noises in the building make this impossible. Everything changes when he encounters a cleaner in the corridor, who begins telling him the history of the building. She herself, however, seems somewhat suspicious. The guard hears how the House of Culture lives a different life at night - circles are working behind closed doors in empty classrooms, and the voices of children are heard in the corridors.

Watch the full "The night schift" on Youtube.

Working group

The film was shot during a single night shift — twelve hours straight, without sleep or rest — together with my devoted team.

Director: Anastasia Vepreva // Cinematography: Andrey Nesteruk, Oksana Zamoyskaya // Sound director: Anton Komandirov // Cast: Lyubov Ivanitskaya, Yuri Stebakov, Alexander Kudryavtsev, AlexeI Accio, Georgy Sokolov, Katya Isaeva, Lena Volk, obey_ne_robey

Short film, MP4,

26:19, 2021