★★★★”Lek does not need comparisons, or classification: it can stand on its own as a unique achievement.” Filmuforia
★★★★ “Andrew Kötting is cinema’s great vatic mystifyer… You will be dazzled by the blitzkrieg of sound and imagery.” Financial Times
“Lek and the Dogs is sort of like contemporary art, but its also, crucially, a film, with a narrative that even a dunce like you can follow, and enjoy!” Shortlist
“It’s a remarkable audio-visual experience.” Little White Lies
“A complex and intriguing collage of imagery and myth… Kötting will keep worming his way back into your imagination.” The Guardian
“Full of moments of startling lyricism and originality.” The Independent
Experimental artist and auteur Andrew Kötting creates a ground-breaking crossover between narrative film and contemporary art piece, based on the award-winning play by Hattie Naylor. The film is inspired by the true story of Ivan Mishukov, who walked out of his apartment at the age of four and spent two years living on the city streets where he was adopted by a pack of wild dogs. In a recession-ravaged city, the child’s world was dominated by deprivation and violence; his only hope was to turn to feral dogs for company, protection and warmth.
Kötting’s spellbinding and utterly original story of survival draws on a range of innovative techniques, including home movies and archive to produce a montage essay on the state of the world. Lek, played by the French performance artist and actor Xavier Tchili and who starred in Köttings two earlier feature films, This Filthy Earth and IVUL returns with a mesmerising performance of a man close to the edge, buried under the weight of his own existential terrors. With trace elements of Tarkovsky’s Stalker and Samuel Beckett’s Krapp’s Last Tape the film sends the protagonist, Lek into a zone deep underground only to see him surface in the deserts of northern chile.
Ultimately the film inhabits a foggy no-man’s land between documentary and fiction, essay and narrative whilst at the same time probing for answers to the universal questions of Where now? Who now? When now?
A film by Andrew Kötting. On general release from Fri 8 Jun. Lek And The Dogs is a HOME Artist Film. Click here to download the quad poster.
Confirmed Venues:
02.06.18 – Q&A at Whitstable Biennale
07.06.18 – Q&A at ICA, London (7 day run)
08.06.18 – Q&A at HOME, Manchester (7 day run)
08.06.18 – Q&A at Tyneside, Newcastle (6 day run with Q&A on 09.06.18)
10.06.18 – Q&A at Filmhouse, Edinburgh
11.06.18 – Q&A at Glasgow Film Theatre, Glasgow
12.06.18 – Q&A at Broadway, Nottingham
13.06.18 – BFI Southbank, London
15.06.18 – Losing the Plot (a Star and Shadow Film Retreat)
16.06.18 & 17.06.18 – Watershed, Bristol
24.06.18 – Q&A at QFT, Belfast
26.06.18 – Q&A at IFI, Dublin
24.06-18 & 27.06.18– Q&A at Triskel Arts Centre, Cork (Q&A on 27th June)
25.06.18 – Star and Shadow Cinema, Newcastle
29.06.18 – Electric Cinema, Hastings
06.07.18 – Q&A at Showroom, Sheffield
10.07.18 – Q&A at Phoenix, Exeter
15.07.18 – First Site Gallery, Colchester
16.07.18 – Q&A with Hattie Naylor at Quad, Derby
12.08.18 – Curzon Goldsmiths, London
29.08.18 – Phoenix, Leicester (2 day run)
26.09.18 – The Ultimate Picture Palace, Oxford
For bookings and enquiries, please contact the HOME Artist Film team at artistfilm@homemcr.org
Excited for Lek And The Dogs? Hear our review in the June film podcast. Chat starts at the 6.10 in…