Palimpsest means a manuscript or document that has been erased or scraped clean for re-use, memory that has been erased and rewritten, something bearing not quite obliterated traces of an earlier form. Erasure was part of the totalitarian project, and the Soviet Union was quick to obliterate. Surprisingly few films have attempted to bring back into view the world that disappeared, or hid away, in high society Moscow. We know it from literature, and from Dr. Zhivago, but Palimpsest takes us on a tour of what’s still there, while conjuring the ghosts of the past. By turns poetic, diaristic, abstract, musical, fragmented, this fragile film emulates the style(s) of that fateful era, combining Vertov and Proust, Soviet film clips from 1924 to 1938 and the patinas of old glass and worn wood.

Gustav Spet was an important philosopher whose entire oeuvre was deleted by Stalin’s regime of terror. Books like Phenomena and Sense (1914) and Aesthetic Fragments (1922) may have had a home in Germany or France, but not the people’s USSR. Using the help of Marina, Spet’s 92-year-old-daughter, János Domokos’ film – part reminiscence, part city symphony – accompanies this still spry and graceful woman around Moscow. It is a heartbreakingly lovely evocation of her city of intellectuals, artists and great music: Rachmaninov (another relative), Stravinsky and Mussorgsky. “Only one thing can save the country: culture, culture, culture.”

Words of  Alan Franey (Festival director & CEO of Vancouver International Film Festival)