THE BUS STOP HUNTER
Released: 2023 (Denmark and Worldwide)
Genre: Documentary feature
Directed by: Kristoffer Hegnsvad
Production Company: Magic Hour Films and Vilda Bomben Film
Production Country: Denmark and Sweden
Architecture, like anything else in The Soviet Union, was under strict centralized supervision. Anything but bus stops, that is.
While art and grand monuments had to tell the stories of communism as paradise on earth, everybody forgot about the bus stops, and this minor often overlooked architectural form became a secret vehicle for alternative voices of dissidence.
Nobody kept a record or championed these unique pieces of art. However, in 2002 the Canadian photographer Christopher Herwig found the first of these subversive pieces of architecture and pioneered what has now become a bus stop hunting trend from Kiev to Vladivostok and a unique documentation. His book ’Soviet Bus Stops’ became an international bestseller and was critically praised as a gem on architecture and cold war history, uncovering new territory. A second book is now on the way. The documentary film follows Herwig through 15 years of his passionate bus stop treasure hunt in what he himself calls an ode to creativity that cannot be subdued.
The interactive experience will be based on a treasure hunt, not unlike Herwig’s own experience. Just as Herwig has hunted through Google Maps and endless journeys around the former Soviet Union, the viewer will travel an interactive map and find bus stops for themselves - from the Black Sea to Vladivostok, through Chernobyl, Kazan and Siberia. With 15 years of video material, thousands of still photos of bus stops and many interviews with the old legendary bus stop designers, there is richness in the material that will blossom in an interactive experience. The idea is to arrange various types of material that the viewer enters through the individual bus stops.
Some places we will see a filmed scene at a bus stop and an interview with the artist, other places an expert on mosaics will explain the Soviet tradition, and in other places again, we will get historical background information through archive material. It will be a journey with Christopher Herwig that will uncover a truly unique story about the Cold War and man’s need to create.