Exact Time
Exact Time
Точное время
Exact Time
Russia, 2017
Color, 26 minutes
In Russian with English subtitles
Director, Screenplay, Camera, Editing: Tat'iana Stefanenko
Cast: Mikhail Khalgatian, Evgenii Fedoseev, Boris Vozdvizhenskii
Sound, Color: Iurii Geddert
Production: Marina Razbezhkina and Mikhail Ugarov School of Documentary Film and Theater
Tat'iana Stefanenko
Tat'iana Stefanenko was born in Novosibirsk in 1982 and trained as a philologist. She then worked as a librarian, correspondent, and editor. She pursued her passion for documentaries while studying at the School of Documentary Films of Marina Razbezhkina and Mikhail Ugarov. Her works were shown in Russian and international festivals (e.g., Moscow International Documentary Film Festival DOKer and Les Saisons Russes de Lyon).
Selected Filmography
2020 I Have Nothing to Add
2017 Exact Time
2015 Passengers
Program Participants
Curator: Dinara Garifullina (University of Pittsburgh)
Introduced by: Bella Grigoryan (University of Pittsburgh)
Respondent: Anastasia Kostina (Yale University)
Discussion Host: Dinara Garifullina (University of Pittsburgh)
Daria Shembel —The documentary made by Marina Razbezhkina’s graduate, Tatiana Stefanenko, is about the Time Service Department of MSU Sternberg Astronomical Institute (GAISh). In the USSR, GAISh served as an important center for astronomical research and time control. With the advent of highly accurate atomic clocks, GAISh equipment, which had never been updated since its installation, became obsolete and incompatible with accepted standards of time management. At the same time, GAISh scientists continue coming to work every day and adjust the clocks mechanically using timekeeping practices developed in the 1920s.
Like many of Razbezhkina’s graduates who are excellent at discovering a fabula in everyday routine, Stefanenko happened to film in the Institute during a minor occupational crisis. One of the Institute’s clocks lagged 20 seconds behind “Moscow time” (in comparison, atomic clocks are accurate to one second over 138 million years). While a senior researcher suggests—time being of the essence— that it will be possible to synchronize the clock within the next 2-3 days, his younger colleague politely insists that he prefers to have at least one week to do things properly. “Are you in any hurry?”—he inquires philosophically.