Opera Glasses

The opera house in Kyiv. The first guests stand impatiently in front of the door, in anticipation of the magic of music enveloping them and the beginning of an unforgettable evening. In the opera house itself, the evening has long since begun. And it is less magic than everyday life. The staff at the checkroom are getting ready to accept coats and hand out dress tokens and, if desired, opera glasses. And then it's time to wait. Waiting until the orchestra has played the last note (sometimes on time, sometimes late), waiting until the doors of the venerable hall open again and everyone wants to be served at the same time. In her short documentary OPERA GLASSES, director Mila Zhluktenko, who studies at the University of Television and Film in Munich, chooses an unusual perspective by presenting the world of opera from the point of view of the people who work there. The feeling that Zhluktenko and her cinematographer Rebecca Hoeft create in the process shifts fluidly from a lgleichiform laconicness to unintentional comedy when the discrepancy between the event character of an evening at the opera and everyday working life becomes clear. Without any commentary and with a very precise eye for the small moments of life, OPERA GLASSES succeeds in being a cinematically clever milieu study of a very special place.

-FBW