VLADIMIR RAEVSKIY
Media producer, television and radio presenter, and content creator with substantial skills in history and culture documentary film production, scriptwriting, and interviewing.
His media projects mostly focus on history and culture, where Vladimir manages to combine historical correctness with journalistic storytelling and entertaining, sometimes funny, delivery.
In most of the projects, Vladimir was the showrunner, the writer, the presenter, and many times the creative producer.
His range of projects vasts from feature documentaries and TV docuseries to commercial products and multimedia for cultural institutions.
WORKS
I have been working in television documentary production for years and have had a chance to work in a variety of fields:
- producing
- pitching
- writing
- shooting
- presenting
- editing
I am best at uncovering amazing stories about history and culture and turning them into exciting projects in different media genres, from short videos to documentary features.
AN AMAZING STORY
OF FREEDOM, PASSION AND ART
Once I read this story, I knew right away that it had to be a movie.
Joseph Stalin dies on March 5th, 1953. Three years after that, seven young men and women, driven by an innate yearning for freedom, found the first Soviet theater raised from the grassroots.
But is their young theater strong enough to survive in this still unfree country? Are these folks cunning and sharp enough to outwit the state censors? And are they true friends to hold together and keep their theater alive?
I had to take on many different roles: general co‑producer, creative producer, co-author, and presenter. During the production, I faced a whole set of challenges and employed a lot of creative techniques.
RARE FOOTAGE
I definitely didn’t want our film to be a sequence of boring Soviet official footage. The historical materials had to be unique. Thus, I managed to discover some really rare footage, such as Stalin’s funeral shot in full color from the window of the US Embassy. I wrote letters to the grandchildren of Soviet party leaders, including Nikita Khrushchev, and managed to obtain some extraordinary content from them.
ANIMATION
I refrained from using interviews in the movie: what could be more predictable than an old actor who has told his stories hundreds of times?
So I decided to use animation in order to dramatize the key scenes of the past. We found an amazing duo of artists and a team of animators to develop and bring to life characters from the mid-20th century.
RESEARCH
My team and I started extensive research and dug through thousands of historical photographs, movies, footage, old books, and documents. I have considerable experience in working with archives and private sources, but this time we had to run an entire research center and investigate a story that had been covered by many people before.
The difference is that we have found much, much more.
REENACTMENT
We didn’t want any actors playing real characters in the story. Actors playing actors in a television film would have been overkill. The only scenes we decided to use reenactment were the scenes shot from the point of view of Nikita Khrushchev. I thought no one had ever shown these epic events on his behalf. We found some precise descriptions of his everyday life and staged them.
AUGMENTED REALITY
You can’t make a movie about theater and not talk about theater productions. And that is usually the most boring part. We managed to avoid being boring here. We placed actors from old photographs onto the contemporary stage. As a presenter, I was able to interact with them right in front of the camera.
FILM FACTORY
My flagship project was a documentary television series ‘Raevsky’s Moscow’, where Moscow’s landmarks became starting points for exploring Russian culture and history. I was also the showrunner and creative producer.
We have made over 200 films. I wrote and presented each and every one of them.
STORYTELLING
From the balalaika and the Moscow Metro to Malevich’s Black Square and Constructivism, we explored all aspects of Russian life throughout the ages. The stories I found were sometimes profoundly unique. How did Michael Jackson sneak into a secret Russian military base? Why did Stalin try to humiliate Churchill in the Kremlin? How did the Mona Lisa end up in Moscow?
Finding answers to questions like these was quite fascinating. My entertaining and sometimes comical storytelling have gained much love from the audience.
CREATIVE TECHNIQUE
Writing a script for me is never about just writing words. I always need to come up with a new way to shoot a scene.
We made extensive use of animation, computer graphics, historical props, and extreme locations. As a writer as well as a producer, I worked with several departments to achieve certain results.
Producers scouted various locations, from rooftops to dungeons and from Red Square to maximum security facilities. The director and I supervised our CG department. The property master acquired historical props, such as costumes and even antique pieces.
IMPERSONATION
As a presenter and a show‑runner at the same time, I had to control everything in front of and behind the camera.
Sometimes I was more than just a presenter, I was also an actor.
But even in front of the camera, I was always thinking about the entire film, sometimes re‑writing the script or checking the editing right after the “Cut!” call.
ARCHITECTURE
Architecture has always been an important field for me and my team. We have made dozens of films specifically devoted to architecture. We made films about great architects (such as Le Corbusier and Konstantin Melnikov), about the most striking styles (like Constructivism and Soviet Modernism) and the finest examples (St. Basil’s cathedral and Art Nouveau mansions). I gained a lot of experience in shooting architecture and explaining it to all my viewers.
THE HISTORY
OF TOTALITARIANISM
I have always explored totalitarian regimes and tyrannical rulers (Russia has an abundance of them). Practically every film I have made deals with Stalinism, as the history of the 20th century is inseparable from the Tragedy. The results of my research were sometimes astounding. The American gentleman who almost convinced Lenin to surrender, Stalin’s puppet minister changing Russians’ eating habits, Brezhnev longing to cancel the scandalous 1980 Olympics and so much more.
SUCCESS
My work in television has been recognized with several national and independent awards in Russia, including two TEFIs (Russia’s equivalent of an Emmy Award) in 2018 and 2020 for Outstanding Educational Show, and 2018 Golden Ray Prize for Outstanding Host.
A STRIKING IDEA
Art should always strike. Sometimes it strikes the entire society, which leads to a public scandal. I thought that would be a great idea for a documentary series. I pitched the idea to the producers, and they loved it. Then I managed to double the budget. Then negotiated financial support from the Saxony Tourism Board.
Again, I was not only producing, but also writing and presenting. I suggested four great stories and turned them into four documentaries. We filmed them in Moscow, Dresden, Leipzig, and Munich. Though even the doubled budget was rather tight, I managed to use a lot of CG, animation, and archival footage.
The films gained the producer’s approval and spectacular ratings.
The Sorrows
of Young Werther
written by an equally young Goethe, sparked a pandemic of suicides in 17th‑century Europe and mass attempts to cancel the future classic
Moscow Manege
Exhibition of 1962
with Soviet underground artists publicly trashed by Nikita Khrushchev
Russian Futurists
the world’s first art hooligans
Otto Dix
and ‘degenerate art’ persecuted by the Nazis
THAT'S WEIRD
That is exactly what I wanted everyone to exclaim when I was pitching this idea. I have seen so many brilliant documentaries about the Prado and the Louvre, but for some reason no one ever filmed the most unusual museums in the world. And there are so many of them!
My idea was accepted, and I started to develop it. I chose four European museums we could shoot during one single trip: from Vienna to Zagreb and then to Dresden.
In my scripts, I tried not only to show the unusual, sometimes bizarre exhibits but also to find a great city story behind them. So, I told the true story of Mozart’s burial in the film about the Vienna funeral museum. For Zagreb’s Museum of Broken Relationships, I unearthed a great love story from the 19th century. The thriller with the fake Hitler diaries perfectly matched The Museum of Art Fakes, and the Nazis also left their dreadful touch in the story of the Hygiene Museum.
We made these films in 2016, and they are still being broadcast on My Planet, Russia’s leading travel channel.
The Funeral Museum
in Vienna filled with luxury coffins, funeral fashions, wake ceremonies, and devices for rescuing those buried alive
The Museum of Broken Relationships
in Zagreb with objects left behind from real people’s break-ups
The Hygiene Museum
in Dresden created as a public venue for healthcare education and used by the Nazis to produce materials propagandizing racial ideology and promoting eugenics
The Museum of Art Fakes
with works by the renowned Vermeer forger Han van Meegeren and the British art restorer Tom Keating, and items produced by Konrad Kujau, creator of the fake Hitler Diaries
In 2018, I managed to raise money from the US Department of State to produce a film about mutual interest between Russians and Americans despite their ideological rivalry.
Margaret Marjorie Post, a wealthy American woman, the wife of the second US Ambassador to the USSR, arrives in Russia in 1936 and buys a tremendous collection of Russian art for next to nothing. The collection travels to the US and throughout the Cold War serves as a window to Russia behind the Iron Curtain.
Incredible adventures of Americans in Russia, the totalitarian regime at its worst, diplomatic games and love.
The film premiered at the US Embassy in Moscow in the presence of Ambassador Jon Huntsman.
I persuaded a private client, Roman Tyshkovsky, to invest in a family documentary to preserve the memory for future generations. A noble and heartfelt man, he agreed. I conducted massive archival research to reconstruct the family history into a dramatic narrative.
I wrote the script on the client’s family’s history throughout the 20th century: from pre‑revolutionary Odessa and Stalin’s Moscow to Perestroika and Yeltsin’s Russia. Filming took place in Odessa and Moscow, and I created a lot of special tricks to represent the family history with cinematic lavishness. Roman, the client, was happy, and his entire family cried at the private screening.
This film was followed by a sequel, also commissioned by Roman. Next time, his elderly parents told the story of their family themselves.
