The Green Elephant (1999)

Interesting facts

The Green Elephant is a 1999 Russian exploitation arthouse horror film directed by Svetlana Baskova. The movie received a limited theatrical release in Russia, as the film's violent imagery and graphic language made it unfit for being distributed through the mainstream film circuit. The film was shown at the 2005 International Film Festival Rotterdam, and the program commented that the movie was "even more urgent because of the escalation of the war in Chechnya and growing criminality in the Russian army".

Production

The movie was filmed during the summer of 1999 at several different locations. One of them was the basement in the house that belonged to the photographer Sergei Rodkevich, located near the Kurskaya metro station. Another site was the basement of an abandoned factory building in Moscow's Faleevsky Lane, which was called the "Factory of Cardinal Art" (the building at Sofiyskaya Embankment, 26/1, which currently is the headquarters of Rosneft).

The film was shot on an amateur (S-VHS, DV-cam) video camera. According to one version, the name of the film is taken from the song of the same name by Pakhomov, written specifically for the film, however, Mavromati claims that the title of the film came from another film, Pink Flamingos, under the influence of which The Green Elephant was partly filmed.

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