82 mins
Shot as a series of stunning vignettes across three countries, Polish-Australian artist Kuba Dorabialski’s extraordinary film conjures the mystique and mysticism of the former Soviet Union. A champion ski jumper collides with ball lightning. Witches conduct wartime sabotage. Ecstatic dance resurrects a revolutionary leader. While party apparatchiks promoted socialism as a technologically advanced, ‘scientific’ project, Dorabialski uncovers a world in thrall to everyday magic and miracles. Narrated in a fictional pan-Slavic language with absurdist flair, Connections of the Sticks transports us to the Eastern Bloc as it lives on in retro-futurist fantasies, diasporic nostalgia and half-remembered family legends.