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Russia's film business is a big mess. But it's getting better now. If five years ago you could watch only two or three films a year, now you can see up to ten. For people like me, who are involved in cinema business, it means more work but not necessarily more money.
You may not know, but apart from writing for The eXile I am very seriously connected in the cinema business through a friend of mine. Like many of Putin-age young entrepreneurs I got to have few jobs at the same time to pay my endless bills.
This month I am helping my friend to produce a film shoot so I arranged for my uncle's GAZel truck to carry lighting equipment for their crew. It will be another Russian boyevik, but still I feel proud and feel like I am part of the industry. There was a real boom recently with loads of new cinema halls and even film magazines appearing in Russia. Now, we get even bigger--there was an opening of a cinema DJ bar called MDM KINO & DJ BAR, which I found out about during my last visit to Mayak cafe.
As any other proper Muscovite who is "in the know," I got to establish proper connections and get all the latest news (you don't read such things in Afisha or Time Out) by going to certain cafes and meeting my likeminded people, AKA bohemians.
I know this practice existed in Paris where artists, poets and philosophers were getting drunk in brasseries and then they called it la vie de boheme.
Simply because bohemia doesn't have a lot of money they gathered in a very underground and cheap place. In Moscow, OGI was the first of its kind. But now you can find strangely dressed film assistants, hard-drinking writers and poets in Jean-Jacque, FAQ Cafe or in Coffee Mania. Even though Mayak tops the list in terms of being Bohemian-only.
I think the number of cafes of this kind grows because Moscow youth gets smarter. Maybe it is because talented people from different countries come here to live. Like my girlfriend, Katya, who came from Moldavia three years ago and now already is making her way up working as sales manager at Yevroset' selling half legal cell-phones.
I could only imagine how Parisian cafes look, but Mayak certainly stands out from other Moscow places. First of all it is located in Mayakovsky Theater. I don't know many cafes that are located in such intellectual places. It also has very sophisticated paintings on the walls featuring different food. I guess art critics call this nature-mort, which means food portrait in French.
Mayak is so packed with people so when you occupy a seat next to the bar desk you can pick up girls you like by offering them a free seat. I had this good Soviet school of occupying and protecting my seats by making them zanyato! just by putting my cloths or belongings around me. Mayak has so many low-income arty-girls dressed in Mexx or second-hand outfits so you have a great selection to whom offer your seats and your dick later on.
Expats don't have any knowledge of occupying places that they don't use, so most of them had very awkward attempts to hook up with dyevs. Classic scenario with just sitting next to them and smiling never works here, believe me! You need to think strategy and act like an army general to get to her panties.
After I had a conversation with one of the regular customers (who is film editor at top magazine) of the cafe he told me that a new film DJ bar has recently opened at MDM cinema hall. I thought it is an evolutional step for film industry so my reviewer sense brought me to the address.
The club is located exactly in the MDM cinema hall and their film tickets serve as passes for the club.
Imagine my surprise when I saw few tables and four screens next to the bar. Actually it was a lobby of the cinema hall with a small stage featuring some DJ. Well, it was a lovely bar-chill-out area, but how did my friend dared to call it club?
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