The Great Fruit — New East 100

The Moscow-based production company The Great Fruit might only have been going for six years — but it’s almost single-handedly responsible for the rise of a new wave of retro aesthetics in Russia. Run by a collective of friends — Valdis Bielykh, Ed Blagievsky and Roman Ruktansky — The Great Fruit is well-known for their atmospheric music videos: a joyride with a 90s mob for Detroit techno producer MGUN; a melancholic journey to the Russian countryside for an underground rock band Utro, and even a fictional late Soviet-style band for a tender and seductive track by Lapti and Nocow. The references are pulled from childhood memories and meticulous research into the material culture of the late Soviet and post-Soviet years, with the result so authentic that at times it looks like found footage. The reason for that authenticity is not only careful production work but The Great Fruit’s passion for what they do — and the fact that their work is in fact as much about today as it is about the era long gone; their interest in discovering their own roots is more optimistic than nostalgic.

Text: Anastasiia Fedorova