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Beat Film Festival 2017
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May 25 - June 4
 This year's festival program includes 35 feature films featuring David Bowie, Iggy Pop, Cate Blanchett, Michel Waelbeck, Ricardo Villalobos, Leonard Cohen, Major Lazer and Laibach. The opening will be the sensation of the Sundance Film Festival - a hedonistic-melancholic, crazy-lyrical, documentary-play "All These Sleepless Nights". It is an observational film about what is usually called youth. Director Michal Marczak erases the borders between feature movie and documentary work, showing the joy and abashment of the younger generation feeling freedom of their twenties, while life is disintegrating into a series of hedonistic episodes. The movie has already conquered the critics of the Sundance festival. Michal Marczak paints a picture of Warsaw powered by a new generation bursting with energy, and stakes out its own cinematic terrain. For that the director was already named the new Terrence Malick.
The festival will be closed by the Russian premiere of a new work by Francis Waitley "David Bowie: The Last Five Years". Waitley will continue the history of the pop icon, which he started in "David Bowie: Five Years." Recording of the albums The Next Day and Blackstar, more than a dozen video clips, a theatrical production on Broadway, an exhibition at the Victoria and Albert Museum in London - the film "The Last Five Years of David Bowie" will reveal the details of the large-scale artistic operation that became Bowie's farewell experiment.
In the music program Beat Film Festival 2017 is one of the most celebrated documentary films of the year "Liberation Day", a chronicle of the tour of the Slovenian rock band Laibach to North Korea, a grandiose conceptual action, during which its participants have to check on themselves, what totalitarianism is and where the boundaries of real freedom are. The premiere in Moscow will be visited the director of the film Morten Trovik, a modern media artist, the author of the action, which became Laibach concerts in Pyongyang. After the festival premiere, Beat Films will release a film on limited edition on June 8.
Two world icons of pop culture will meet in a life-affirming film about the suffering "To Stay Alive: A Method". Iggy Pop reads Michel Houellek's essay "Staying Alive" - a lyrical and frank manifesto about insanity, survival and art - and sees himself in it. Another film is "Hype!", a witty guide to the underground scene of Seattle in the 1990s, in which the main characters of the grunge boom, led by Kurt Cobain, are treated on an equal with bands whose names are few to remember today. And all in order to eventually find out: the famous "Sound of Seattle" did not start with Nirvana and did not end on Soundgarden. The history of rock music will continue the cinematic odyssey into the consciousness of one of the greatest rock photographers, "Shot! (The Psycho-Spiritual Mantra of Rock)", it will talk about the author of the most famous photos of David Bowie, Iggy Pop, Lou Reed, Blondie and Queen.
Contemporary art at the festival will be presented by the mesmerizing picture "The Challenge" about the exotic entertainments of the Qatar "golden youth" and the art blockbuster "Manifesto", in which the Oscar-winning Cate Blanchett delivers the texts of the main artistic manifestos of the 20th century, changing into different characters. June 8 distributors A-One Films and Russian World Vision will release the film in the Russian rental.
"Citizen Jane: Battle for the City" tells about the legendary Jane Jacobs, the founder of the "new urbanism" and the author of the book "The Life and Death of Large American Cities." The film will open a joint program with the Strelka Institute under the title "Action point".
Beat Film Festival is an international documentary festival with a focus on music and modern culture that takes place annually in May and has a regional showcase in 15 cities — called Beat Weekend — that runs in November. It is currently one of the largest documentary festivals in Russia, with 20.000 attendance in Moscow and another 10,000 in regions. Its program is a vibrant mix of screenings and special events, parties and discussions that is aimed to set both comprehensive and cutting edge cultural agenda for several generations of local youth.
Beat Film Festival was founded in 2010 as an independent cultural initiative that united music and film in one exciting program of music documentaries, dj-sets, parties and talks. By 2016 the Beat Film Festival has grown to be one of the largest international documentary festivals in Russia that sets an agenda across all cultural fields, be it social thought or sports, street culture or fashion.
 Films by Artists
Films by Artists is a Garage Screen project with Beat Film Festival featuring four films at the boundary of cinema and video art made by video artists, anthropologists, and performance artists. Held in the new Garage Screen summer cinema, the program will be accompanied by artist talks with the films’ directors and experts.
Manifesto. Documentary. Australia, Germany 2015, 95 min. Directed by Julian Rosenfeldt. Starring: Cate Blanchett. In English with Russian subtitles. Manifesto, a documentary by the German director Julian Rosenfeldt is a smart collage comprising thirteen scenes, all performed by Cate Blanchett. In each of the episodes, she reads texts of the twentieth century’s key art manifestos bearing different guises: a school teacher, a choreographer, a homeless person, or a news presenter.
Artist talk: Morten Traavik and Yury Saprykin's with the assistance of Nina Nazarova. Before the screening Liberation Day an artist talk will take place between Beat Film Festival curator Yuri Saprykin, journalist Nina Nazarova who covered the concert for Afisha, the top lifestyle outlet, and the co-director of the film, Norwegian media artist Morten Traavik. In English with simultaneous interpreting into Russian. Registration
Liberation Day. Documentary. Latvia, Norway, Slovenia 2016, 100 min. Directed by Ugis Olte, Morten Traavik. In English with Russian subtitles. Liberation Day chronicles the Slovenian band Laibach’s trip to North Korea, as they plan to take part in the PRK’s most important state holiday, Liberation Day, with a new program of songs from the American film The Sound of Music, prepared especially on the occasion.
Somniloquies. France 2017, 73 min. Directed by Verena Paravel, Lucien Castaing-Taylor. In English with Russian subtitles. Somniloquies is a radical experiment staged by Verena Paravel and Lucien Castaing-Taylor in the field of visual anthropology and based on audio recordings of New York’s most famous “sleepwalker” of the 1970s, Dion McGregor.
Artist talk: Yuri Ancarani and Antonio Geusa. Before the screening The Challenge the director (his visit is supported by the Embassy of Italy in Russia) will be in discussion with Italian curator Antonio Geusa. In Italian with simultaneous interpreting into Russian. Registration
The Challenge. Documentary. Italy, France, Switzerland 2017, 69min. Directed by Yuri Ancarani. In English with Russian subtitles. The Challenge movie is a strikingly beautiful yet ironic visual poem about present-day Qatar, where century old traditions coexist with fantastic wealth. Remaining detached from his subject matter, the Italian director Yuri Ancarani follows the milieu of Qatar’s “golden youth”, turning documentation of their luxury lifestyle into a sci-fi film of sorts.
Garage Screen schedule:
May 26, Friday. 21:00. Manifesto
May 27, Saturday. 20:00. Artist talk: Morten Traavik and Yury Saprykin's with the assistance of Nina Nazarova
May 27, Saturday. 21:00. Liberation Day
May 28, Sunday. 21:00. Somniloquies
May 29, Monday. 21:00. Manifesto
May 30, Tuesday. 21:00. Liberation Day
May 31, Wednesday. 21:00. Somniloquies
June 1, Thursday. 20:00. Artist talk: Yuri Ancarani and Antonio Geusa
June 1, Thursday. 21:00. The Challenge
June 2, Friday. 21:00. Liberation Day
June 3, Saturday. 21:00. The Challenge
More info & Tickets
 Action Point
Action Point is a series of films, discussions and lectures devoted to urbanistics, architecture and people whose ideas have changed the face of modern cities. All the events will be held within the framework of the summer public program at Strelka Institute. Also Strelka Institute will show " All these Sleepless Nights" - film triumphantly programmed at Sundance shot between documentary and fiction about trials of young adulthood and ecstatic experience soundtracked by Caribou.
Citizen Jane: Battle for the City. Documentary. USA 2017, 92 min. Directed by Matt Tyrnauer. In English with Russian subtitles. In 1960 Jane Jacobs’s book The Death and Life of Great American Cities sent shockwaves through the architecture and planning worlds, with its exploration of the consequences of modern planners’ and architects’ reconfiguration of cities. Jacobs was also an activist, who was involved in many fights in mid-century New York, to stop “master builder” Robert Moses from running roughshod over the city. This film retraces the battles for the city as personified by Jacobs and Moses, as urbanization moves to the very front of the global agenda. Many of the clues for formulating solutions to the dizzying array of urban issues can be found in Jacobs’s prescient text, and a close second look at her thinking and writing about cities is very much in order. This film sets out to examine the city of today though the lens of one of its greatest champions. Film - official selection by Toronto International Film Festival 2016, Doc NYC 2016, IDFA 2016.
Rem. Documentary. USA 2016, 75 min. Directed by Tomas Koolhaas. In English with Russian subtitles. In the canon of great Dutch architects sit a number of renowned practitioners, from Berlage to Van Berkel. Based on influence alone, Rem Koolhaas—the grandson of architect Dirk Roosenburg and son of author and thinker Anton Koolhaas—stands above all others and has, over the course of a career spanning four decades, sought to redefine the role of the architect from a regional autarch to a globally-active shaper of worlds – be they real or imagined. A new film conceived and produced by Tomas Koolhaas, the LA-based son of its eponymous protagonist, attempts to biographically represent the work of OMA by “expos[ing] the human experience of [its] architecture through dynamic film.”
Stockholm, my Love Drama/Musical. Sweden, UK 2016, 88 min. Directed by Mark Cousins. Starring: Neneh Cherry. Stockholm My Love is a city symphony, a love letter to Stockholm, the fiction debut of director Mark Cousins and the acting debut of musician Neneh Cherry. It follows one woman's footsteps through the streets of her native city, on a journey of recovery from a bad thing that happened to her exactly one year before. It's an exploration of grief, identity and the power of architecture and urbanism to shape lives, and a celebration of the power of walking and looking to make us all feel just a little bit better. With new music by Neneh Cherry, old music by Benny Andersson (of ABBA) and Franz Berwald, and images by Christopher Doyle and Mark Cousins.
Strelka Insitute schedule:
May 25, Thursday. 21:00. All these Sleepless Nights
May 30, Tuesday. 21:00. Citizen Jane: Battle for the City
May 31, Wednesday. 21:00. Rem
June 1, Thursday. 21:00. Stockholm, my Love
June 2, Friday. 22:00. Northern Disco Lights
June 04, Sunday. 21:00. Citizen Jane: Battle for the City
More info & Tickets
 All these Sleepless Nights. Drama. Poland, UK 2016, 100 min. Directed by Michal Marczak. Starring: Krzysztof Baginski, Michal Huszcza, Eva Lebuef. In Polish with Russian subtitles. A new era is coming, and Warsaw stands uncomfortably at its edge. Art school classmates Christopher and Michal, on the precipice of their own coming of age, restlessly roam their city's streets in search of living forever inside the beautiful moment. Never content with answers, they push each experience to its breaking point, testing what it might mean to be truly awake in a world that seems satisfied to be asleep. The movie has already conquered the critics of the Sundance festival. Michal Marczak paints a picture of Warsaw powered by a new generation bursting with energy, and stakes out its own cinematic terrain. For that the director was already named the new Terrence Malick.
If I Think of Germany at Night. Documentary. Germany 2017, 100 min. Directed by Romuald Karmakar. In German with Russian subtitles. Aficionados of electronic dance music know that Germany remains one of the greatest producers of techno in the world, and that visiting Berlin's infamous nightspot Berghain is the EDM equivalent of making the pilgrimage to Mecca. In the documentary When I Think of Germany at Night (Denk ich an Deutschland in der Nacht), director Romuald Karmakar hammers that point home by focusing on five major DJs who are keeping Teutonic techno alive and well. Speaking — and sometimes freely associating — about the music they make and its evolution over the past decades, international stars like Ricardo Villalobos and Roman Flugel take us behind the turntables to reveal the methods to their madness.
Give Me Future: Major Lazer in Cuba. Documentary. Cuba, USA 2017, 85 min. Directed by Austin Peters. In the spring of 2016, global music sensation Major Lazer performed a free concert in Havana, Cuba for an unexpected audience of almost half a million people. A concert documentary evolves into an exploration of youth culture in a country on the precipice of change.
Raving Iran. Documentary. Switzerland 2016, 84 min. Directed by Sue Meures. In original with Russian subtitles. Anoosh and Arash are at the center of Tehran’s underground techno scene. Tired of hiding from the police and their stagnating career, they organize one last manic techno rave under dangerous circumstances in the desert. Back in Tehran they try their luck selling their illegally printed music album without permission. When Anoosh is arrested, there seems to be no hope left. But then they receive a phone call from the biggest techno festival in the world. Once landed in Switzerland, the haze of the instant euphoria evaporates quickly when the seriousness of the situation starts to dawn on them.
Leonard Cohen: Bird on a Wire. Documentary. UK 2010, 106 min. Directed by Tony Palmer. In English with Russian subtitles. Directed by celebrated British filmmaker Tony Palmer, "Bird on a Wire" follows Cohen on his 1972 European tour. Long lost 16mm prints were restored for this release, not seen since 1972.
Letters from Baghdad. Documentary. USA 2017, 95 min. Directed by Sabine Krayenbühl, Zeva Oelbaum. Starring: Ammar Haj Ahmad, Adam Astill, Tom Chadbon. In English with Russian subtitles. Gertrude Lowthian Bell, sometimes called the "female" Lawrence of Arabia was a British adventurer, archaeologist and political powerhouse, who helped shape the modern Middle East after World War I. Voiced and executive produced by Tilda Swinton, the film chronicles Bell's journey into the uncharted Arabian desert and all-male halls of colonial power with never-seen-before archival footage of the region shot a century ago. The film takes us into a past that is eerily current.
Patience: After Sebald. Documentary. UK 2012, 86 min. Directed by Grant Gee. Starring: Jonathan Pryce. In English with Russian subtitles. Using the late WG Sebald's book "The Rings of Saturn" as its template, this documentary traces the immensely respected author's account of a walk through Suffolk; a tour which prompted tangential musings.
American Anarchist. Documentary. USA 2016, 80 min. Directed by Charlie Siskel. Starring: William Powell. In English with Russian subtitles. The story of one of the most infamous books ever written, "The Anarchist Cookbook," and the role it's played in the life of its author, now 65, who wrote it at 19 in the midst of the counterculture upheaval of the late '60s and early '70s.
Tickled. Documentary. New Zeland 2016, 92 min. Directed by David Farrier, Dylan Reeve. In English with Russian subtitles. Journalist David Farrier stumbles upon a mysterious tickling competition online. As he delves deeper he comes up against fierce resistance, but that doesn't stop him getting to the bottom of a story stranger than fiction.
The City of Ghosts. Documentary. USA 2017, 90 min. Directed by Matthew Heineman. In English with Russian subtitles. A documentary that follows the efforts of "Raqqa Is Being Slaughtered Silently," a handful of anonymous activists who banded together after their homeland was taken over by ISIS in 2014. With deeply personal access, this is the story of a brave group of citizen journalists as they face the realities of life undercover, on the run, and in exile, risking their lives to stand up against one of the greatest evils in the world today.
The New Radical. Documentary. USA, UK, France 2017, 120 min. Directed by Adam Bhala Lough. In English with Russian subtitles. Uncompromising millennial radicals from the United States and the United Kingdom attack the system through dangerous technological means, which evolves into a high-stakes game with world authorities in the midst of a dramatically changing political landscape.
Shot! The Psycho-Spiritual Mantra of Rock. Documentary/Biography. USA, UK 2017, 95 min. Directed by Barney Clay. In English with Russian subtitles. The Mick Rock Documentary is an odyssey into the colorful and crazy recesses of rock 'n' roll's history. A reckless joyride that delves deep into the mind of rock's greatest living photographer: Mick Rock. Told through the distorted lens of rock 'n' roll mythology, icon-maker, psychedelic explorer, shambolic poet and custodian of dreams, Mick Rock navigates his story from the glam rock shimmer of London to the snarl of NYC punk, and deep into the new millennium. Awaiting heart surgery after after a series of heart attacks, Mick turns inward to face himself - his past, the present and the future that will be born from the ashes of his resurrection. He stretched his nervous system to the limit to bring us the iconic images of the likes of David Bowie, Syd Barrett, Blondie, Queen, Lou Reed and Iggy Pop. He shot them all and imprinted them on our collective psyche forever. "I'm still in awe of the power of the camera and its magical reflections. In many ways I love it more than ever..."
Hype!. Documentary/History/Music. USA 1996, 84 min. Directed by Doug Pray. In English with Russian subtitles. The world of grunge. This documentary examines the Seattle scene as it became the focus of a merging of punk rock, heavy metal, and innovation. Building from the grass roots, self-promoted and self-recorded until break-out success of bands like Nirvana brought the record industry to the Pacific Northwest, a phenomenon was born. More than just an examination of the music, this is a look at how this artistic movement became a societal and fashion trend with a major effect on American culture.
To Stay Alive: A Method. Documentary. Netherlands 2016, 70 min. Directed by Arno Hagers, Erik Lieshout, Reinier van Brummelen. Starring: Michel Houellebecq, Iggy Pop. In English with Russian subtitles. Michel Houellebecq and Iggy Pop first met in 2009 after having admired each other's works for a long time. Houellebecq been a big fan of The Stooges since he was a teenager and Pop ended up recording two albums in French as a consequence of his encounter with Houellebecq. The director Erik Lieshout had first met Houellebecq when he interviewed him for Dutch television during the promotion of the novel "The Possibility of an Island", and ended up directing "Last Words", a behind-the-scenes documentary for Houellebecq's own film adaptation of the novel.
David Bowie: The Last Five Years. Documentary. UK 2017, 90 min. Directed by Francis Whately. In English with Russian subtitles. A documentary about David Bowie's final two albums "The Next Day" (2013) and "Blackstar" (2016) and Broadway musical "Lazarus". David Bowie: The Last Five Years will focus on the three major projects of Bowie's last five years - the best-selling albums, The Next Day and Blackstar, alongside the musical Lazarus which, following rave reviews and a sold out run off Broadway, is arriving in London this Autumn. With unprecedented access to Bowie’s closest friends and collaborators this will be an unforgettable tribute to one of the greatest musical icons of modern times. And it will also be an opportunity to experience some of Bowie’s iconic songs from his incredible back catalogue which will illustrate the continuity of his later work with the rest of his career.
Shapeshifters. Documentary. Sweden 2017, 85 min. Directed by Sophie Vukovic. In Swedish with Russian subtitles. When filmmaker Sophie Vuković runs into a long-lost friend at a demonstration, it stirs up memories that take her on a trip through time and place on the path of her own experiences of migration. From former Yugoslavia via Australia to Sweden today, weaving personal documentary footage with the fiction of memories and dreams, Shapeshifters is poetic exploration of what it means to belong in a globalized world. A film about feeling nostalgic for a home you never experienced. About friendship, desire, and how you build new forms of belonging that are not defined by national borders.
Brexitannia. Documentary. UK, Russia 2017, 80 min. Directed by Timothy George Kelly. In English with Russian subtitles. The first documentary on Brexit. On/off. Yes/no. Leave or Remain? While referenda always divide people, Brexit did so in a manner unprecedented in modern British history: old pitted against young, nationalists against migrants, the countryside against the city, and “the people” against “the elite”. But underneath these binaries we find human beings whose individual stories influenced the outcome of this historic and perplexing vote. In the referendum the UK was torn apart by debates over the great themes of our age: migration, waning empires, work and its decreasing relevance in an outsourced world that is becoming ever more automated. Brexitannia is a portrait of a democracy in all its impossible and ugly glory. With subtle force, yet without judgement, it presents the people of a once powerful empire as they negotiate their identities in a world that is changing faster than ever and in which power appears to lie further and further from people’s own hands.
In the Robot Skies. Audio-visual show. UK 2016, 60 min. Directed by Liam Young. "In the Robot Skies" is the world's first narrative shot entirely through autonomous drones. In collaboration with the Embedded and Artificially intelligent Vision Lab in Belgium the film has evolved in relation to their experiments with specially developed camera drones each programmed with their own cinematic rules and behaviors. Above a council estate tower block in London a network of surveillance drones monitor the residents below. Through the eyes of the drones two teenagers are kept apart, each held by police order within the digital confines of their own tower. Jazmin is a drone hacker and has hijacked and decorated one of the aerial cameras, scrawling messages on it with her marker, passing notes to her boyfriend Tamir in the tower opposite. In this near future city drones form both agents of state surveillance but also become co-opted as the aerial vehicles through which two teens fall in love. "In The Robot Skies" was a collaboration between architect Liam Young and electronic producer Forest Swords, who performed the accompanying score live in London’s BFI IMAX Cinema. His music created a tense musical dialogue that provided the only constant in the film, which cuts suddenly between locations, camera angles, points of view and color contrasts with no clear and overt plotline. But while the film is focused on drones, human characters do feature; it traces the love story of two teenagers, Jazz and Tamir, who are separated by tall concrete buildings and communicate illegally via drone. "In The Robot Skies" isn’t Young’s first project to meld a relationship between live music and drones or to flirt with the boundary between nature and technology. His mechanical Beamer Bee used robots to pollinate flowers, and in 2014, he and prolific Welsh artist John Cale flew drones around London’s Barbican concert hall as part of a mechanical orchestra performance that provided a new context to machines designed for military functionality and surveillance. Young’s use of drones in "In The Robot Skies" both vilifies and humanizes the machines, which survey and observe but also express their own personality through unique decorations like spiraling white structures or colorful plastic toys. The overall effect is that the machines seem to play a bigger role in the film than its human characters.
Northern Disco Lights. Documentary. UK 2016, 74 min. Directed by Ben Davis. Starring: Annie, Bill Brewster, Bryan Ferry. Northern Disco Lights tells the untold story of a group of teenagers in the arctic city of Tromsø, who set off a chain of events that would go on to transform their country. To escape the boredom they created their own music scene.
Schedule & Venues.
Karo 11 Octyabr:
May 26, Friday. 19:00 Tickled
May 26, Friday. 20:00 Leonard Cohen: Bird on a Wire. Q&A with Tony Palmer
May 26, Friday. 21:00 Raving Iran. Q&A with Sue Meures
May 27, Saturday. 17:00 The New Radical. Q&A with Adam Bhala Lough
May 27, Saturday. 18:00 To Stay Alive: A Method
May 27, Saturday. 20:00 If I Think of Germany at Night
May 27, Saturday. 20:00 Hype!
May 28, Sunday. 18:00 The City of Ghosts
May 28, Sunday. 19:00 In the Robot Skies
May 28, Sunday. 20:00 Give Me Future: Major Lazer in Cuba
May 28, Sunday. 20:30 Shot! The Psycho-Spiritual Mantra of Rock
May 29, Monday. 20:00 Brexitannia, Q&A with Timothy George Kelly
May 30, Tuesday. 20:00 American Anarchist
May 31, Wednesday. 20:00 Leonard Cohen: Bird on a Wire
May 31, Wednesday. 20:00 Tickled
June 1, Thursday. 19:00 The New Radical
June 1, Thursday. 21:00 Raving Iran
June 1, Thursday. 21:00 The City of Ghosts
June 2, Friday. 20:00 American Anarchist
June 2, Friday. 21:30 To Stay Alive: A Method
June 3, Saturday. 18:00 Brexitannia
June 3, Saturday. 18:00 Shot! The Psycho-Spiritual Mantra of Rock
June 3, Saturday. 19:00 David Bowie: The Last Five Years
June 3, Saturday. 20:00 If I Think of Germany at Night
June 4, Sunday. 18:00 All these Sleepless Nights
June 4, Sunday. 20:00 Northern Disco Lights
June 4, Sunday. 20:00 Tickled
Tickets
Documentary Film Center
May 26, Friday. 19:00 Shapeshifters. Q&A with Sophie Vukovic
May 26, Friday. 21:00 Hype!
May 27, Saturday. 17:00 Patience: After Sebald
May 27, Saturday. 19:00 Raving Iran. Q&A with Sue Meures
May 27, Saturday. 21:00 All these Sleepless Nights. Q&A with Michal Marczak
May 28, Sunday. 17:00 Shapeshifters
May 28, Sunday. 19:00 If I Think of Germany at Night. Q&A with Romuald Karmakar
May 29, Monday. 19:00 The New Radical. Q&A with Adam Bhala Lough
May 29, Monday. 21:30 Hype!
May 30, Tuesday. 19:00 Letters from Baghdad
May 30, Tuesday. 21:00 Give Me Future: Major Lazer in Cuba
May 31, Wednesday. 21:00 Brexitannia
June 1, Thursday. 19:00 Patience: After Sebald
June 1, Thursday. 21:00 Letters from Baghdad
June 3, Saturday. 21:00 Northern Disco Lights
More info&Tickets
Multimedia Art Museum, Moscow:
May 27, Saturday. 19:00 Leonard Cohen: Bird on a Wire. Tickets
June 3, Saturday. 17:00 Patience: After Sebald. Tickets
More info
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