Point of view: director Whit Stillman’s exclusive Moscow diary

In a trip to Moscow this September, Academy Award-winning US filmmaker Whit Stillman took on the unusual role of paparazzi at a party hosted by Strelka, one of the capital’s most fashionable bars. The party, inspired by Stilman’s Eighties film The Last Days of Disco, was held in honour of the director whose work had featured in a retrospective at a film festival that week. In contrast to Stillman’s last trip to Moscow in 1983, when he says it was near impossible to find any fun nightspots, the photos fizz with life. Shot on a disposable camera given to him by The Calvert Journal, Stillman succeed’s in capturing the city’s dynamism with a few familiar faces along the way. Watch out for British film director Mike Figgis and Oleg Koronny, host of Russian satirical show Oh No Anything But That! “New York, Paris, Berlin, Moscow — the city’s return to its pre-revolutionary vibrancy and status as a world capital was apparent everywhere.”