Summer Screening: Pipeline

This screening is part of our Summer Season exploring walls, barriers and borders today, 25 years after the fall of the Berlin Wall. Prior to the screening, from 5.30 – 7.30pm, the club will be open and serving a Happy Hour menu of sharing platters and summer cocktails.

The 4,500-kilometer (2,800-mile) Urengoy–Pomary–Uzhgorod gas pipeline connects the second-largest gas field in the world in Urengoy, West Siberia with the Western European market. It has become one of the most vital arteries of the Russian economy, with Vladimir Putin claiming that its gas and oil revenues account for half of Russia’s disposable capital.

For 104 days renowned director Vitaly Mansky followed the course of this Trans-Siberian gas pipeline through seven different countries. He explores what it’s like for ordinary people to live in its vicinity, along a route connecting two extremities of the European continent.

The film is made up of unique miniatures eloquently illustrating the often absurd banality of contemporary Russia: a wedding celebration on the border between Asia and Europe; a group of men pulling out a load of stinking dead fish from an ice-hole in freezing Siberia; the desperate attempts to dig a grave in the frozen ground; and a traveling clergyman trying to get converts with a train for a church. This visually refined road movie offers an unsettling portrait of the legendary Trans-Siberian gas pipeline, on which much of Europe is still reliant.

Directed by Vitaly Mansky
Duration: 117′
Year: 2013

This screening is kindly supported by Deckert Distribution