Revisiting a cult classic of Russian-American science fiction, four decades later
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When Slava Tsukerman and Nina Kerova left the Soviet Union and arrived in New York City in the late 1970s after a brief stint in Israel, they struck up an unlikely friendship with model Anne Carlisle. The androgynous it-girl, who featured in commercials all over town at the time, was over ten years younger and became the immigrant filmmaker couple in the downtown punk and New Wave scenes.
Carlisle then co-wrote and starred in the cult film Tsukerman, in the 1982s. Liquid sky, which Kerova also co-wrote and produced. The neon-lit surreal thriller swims with Reagan-era anxieties about sex, drugs, homosexuality, youth rebellion and aliens, and has been considered one of the most success stories of the time, although it is now relatively obscure.
While not explicitly dealing with Russian-American relations, the film facilitated some interesting cultural intersections, only in New York City. Producer and costume designer Marina Levikova imagined the edgy, colorful outfits for the characters on a budget of $ 500, with DIY skills she learned growing up in exile with her family in a prison camp. near the Arctic Circle. His teachers there were some of the leading artists of the former Soviet Union, who were also imprisoned during Stalin’s brutal regime.
At the time of Liquid skythe release of, music videos were a new form of folk art, and Levikova’s costume work in Liquid sky has earned him production and costume concerts for David Bowie and Nile Rodgers, and illustration work for Dior and Yves St. Laurent. (Levikova almost convinced Keith Haring to create a backdrop for the film, but she said in the interviews that the artist was not interested in making a work that he would have to destroy the next day.)
Meanwhile, her husband and Liquid sky cinematographer Yuri Neyman was responsible for some of the film’s analog special effects (Carlisle played female and male characters, Margaret and Jimmy, who appeared together via a very old split-screen technique). Neyman then taught at SUNY and UCLA and co-founded the Global Cinematography Institute.
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