Svetlana Baskova's "Little Green Elephant" (1999)

Svetlana Baskova’s (1965-) Zelyonyi slonik (The Little Green Elephant, 1999) pushes the boundaries of cinematic expression, testing the limits of what film can and cannot do or show. The movie follows two veterans of the First Chechen War (1994-1996), played by Vladimir Epifantsev (1971-) and Sergey Pakhomov (1966-), two actors who systematically blurred the boundaries between mainstream and independent art, as they are detained first in a claustrophobic cell, then a ditch where they are arbitrarily punished and abused. The plot of the film, reduced to a bare minimum, unfolds through absurd dialogues and surreal yet normalized acts of violence—coprophagy, rape, and cannibalism—resulting in a brutal portrayal of a male-dominated world governed by hazing and abuse.

Shot with a low-cost, amateur VHS camera, Zelyonyi slonik was initially met with a tepid response, but gradually transformed into a cult media object that inspired numerous popular memes in the Russian-language blogosphere. In 2022, following Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine, the film was banned from circulation in Russia as it was deemed potentially harmful to the psychological health of minors (see Afisha-Daily, 6 May 2022). Some, including Svetlana Baskova herself, have described the film as a reflection on the brutality of the Chechen Wars and of Russian military service more generally—both of which reflected the violence and lawlessness (bespredel) of the 1990s.

For Pakhomov, in contrast, the film expressed the “wonderful state of mind” and exhilarating creative freedom produced by the cultural, linguistic, and spiritual void of the 1990s (see Afisha-Daily’s list of 100 Most Important Russian Movies). The film was also inflected with the values of Moscow Actionism, an art movement characterized by highly politicized, shocking, and at times violent public performances that often resulted in legal persecution—from Alexander Brener’s (1957-) spray-painted dollar sign on Malevich’s “White Square” in Amsterdam’s Stedelijk Museum, to Oleg Kulik’s (1961-) performances as an aggressive “Man Dog” and his political campaign as the leader of the “Party of Animals.” Oleg Mavromati (1965-), one of the movement’s most radical representatives, served as the film’s producer, providing animal blood and organs and convincing the performers to smear them on themselves and to simulate sexual acts on one another, overcoming fears of infection or public shaming. Anatoly Osmolovsky (1969-), the leader of Moscow Actionism and Baskova’s husband, played the role of the sadistic captain who rapes the weak poekhavshii (“loony”—Pakhomov), only to be murdered by the stronger bratishka (“little brother”—Epifantsev) in retaliation.

The sequence included here features grotesque allusions to Christian iconography as the “loony” cries over the dead body of his “crucified” cellmate, who has committed suicide after coming to his senses and realizing that he just slaughtered a man with his bare hands. In a rare moment of surreal compassion, the traumatized, abused soldier cleans the body of his former comrade, who himself participated in the abuse, with the slaughtered captain’s trachea, crying and identifying his friend with his own mother. The scene captures a delirious glimpse of human connection and belonging, which are only attained after the subject reaches a nadir of moral and physical decadence.