Lénine en pensant

In 2005, Sophie Nys travelled to Ulan-Ude, the capital of the mountainous Buryat Republic in eastern Siberia, to film the largest existing statue of Lenin, the founding father and first General Secretary and Premier of the Soviet Union. Only the statue’s monumental head was completed, and we see it from all angles, close up and further away, in Nys’ grainy super 8-film. Beyond the subject’s surly, infinite gaze, life in the town’s main square takes its daily course — one that no longer corresponds with the utopian vision of Vladimir Ilyich Ulyanov.