Падчас прэзентацыі будучага фільма ў Варшаве. Фота: Руслан Серадзюк.
This week, screenings of works by documentary filmmaker Maksim Shved were supposed to take place in Budva. However, due to what was described as overcaution by Ryanair, which did not accept the Polish travel document of the Belarusian filmmaker, the cultural event was canceled, and the director had to abandon his trip to Montenegro.
The incident prompted Reform.news to learn more about the new project by the author of “Pure Art,” which is currently in production.
Maksim Shved is now working on a documentary film about Johnny Cosmic (Ivan Smaliar), a Belarusian photographer whose name “made waves” earlier this year thanks to an exhibition in Warsaw. The event was organized by the Belarusian cultural community as a birthday gift for the artist. Everything about this story is captivating: a secret chat with almost 200 participants, 2,000 photographs collected by friends to showcase Johnny’s work, and the fact that he entered photography almost like Don Quixote.
Johnny Cosmic’s method can be described as a pilgrimage into photography as presence. For years in Minsk, the artist took photographs of people at parties only to later give the pictures to them absolutely free of charge. This practice continued in exile, in Warsaw, where he relocated. Calling him Don Quixote refers not to “fighting windmills,” but rather to a certain idealism — the author stubbornly maintains that photography is communication, not craft.
“A strange guy appeared on the streets and at parties, approaching you with a photograph and handing it over — and it was you in the picture. (And you don’t even remember being photographed),” his friends say about him. “At first it felt unsettling: he wanted nothing in return (which felt creepy), not everyone liked themselves in the photos, but over time, as Belarusians do, people got used to it. Vanya became an inseparable part of the entire cultural and party scene; people began recognizing him and learning to love themselves in his pictures.”
The strange — though perhaps inevitable — idea came to Johnny’s friends precisely in exile: to congratulate Cosmic on his birthday in a grand way by organizing an exhibition of his work.
“We thought: what if we gathered all those photographs we carried across the border or received in our new homes and created a collective exhibition curated by ourselves? Because Vanya had been creating an archive of Belarusian happiness all these years, and all we had to do was assemble it,” the project’s organizers recall.
The result became a major event. A huge secret chat involving nearly 200 people, two Warsaw venues serving as celebration spaces, buymeacoffee links to help organize everything properly, celebrity guests, curatorial work — and finally an exhibition that astonished not only the main “hero of the occasion,” but inspired the Belarusian community on both sides of the border.
All Belarusian independent media wrote about how Belarusians had united to organize an event “for one photographer” that effectively grew into a small festival. The emotions and excitement of Vanya himself, captured in photographs and videos, proved so powerful that everyone wanted to join the celebration — there was so much kindness and joy in the event that it hit people hard.
No wonder Maksim Shved himself was drawn into the story, especially since he had directly contributed to organizing the surprise. The author of the film “Route Rebuilt” shot a congratulatory video from friends that was shown during the celebration.
After that, he could no longer step away from the story.
A Reform.news columnist managed to watch a rough cut serving as the foundation for the future documentary. Maksim Shved’s film is titled “The Johnny Cosmic Effect,” and the filmmaker captured all the key moments of the “happiness party” organized for Ivan Smaliar — and much more.
Part of the project consists of stories from friends and acquaintances about the Johnny phenomenon. But the film truly comes alive when the director begins capturing real action — the live reactions of the protagonist and those around him — placing himself at the center and in the flow of the event itself.
Maksim Shved calls his cinema “fractal documentary filmmaking,” meaning it multiplies into several realities: cinema as a point of connection and transformation, and cinema as witness to what is happening. The director filmed preparations for the birthday, the culmination itself, and what will follow afterward — the camera acts both as an observational tool and as a performer in its own right.
In this context, it is worth recalling Shved’s famous work “Pure Art,” in which artist Zachar Kudzin painted in public urban spaces, provoking reactions from passersby while Shved’s camera documented it all. “The Johnny Cosmic Effect” allows Johnny himself to provoke his own space of culture and meaning.
It is also important to pay attention to the project’s title — “The Johnny Cosmic Effect.” The film does not follow the traditional path of an artist portrait documentary; instead, it attempts to identify or even create a phenomenon. Johnny has spent ten years doing something for others, and finally the community responded with an explosion of gratitude and attention. What happens next? Will it collapse? Dissolve? Or lead to a new point of energetic explosion?
One observation: while watching the footage, you catch yourself asking, “Why Ivan specifically?” and “Will this interest anyone besides Belarusians?” But after a while you realize that in the project’s concept, eccentric Johnny is not a typical “story of a popular Belarusian artist.” Johnny represents one of us — one of the “beaten-down” and “unrecognized pilots” — and each of us wants to be loved and seen.
“What else is the Johnny Cosmic Effect capable of? How will it affect Vanya himself and all of us? Is this an exclusively Belarusian phenomenon or a universal story? How will Vanya use the new capital he won in the karmic lottery? We will spend the whole year looking for answers — until Vanya’s next birthday,” the film crew says about the project, whose shape is still changing in real time.
The team describes the current stage as development. In addition to Maksim Shved, the group includes professional filmmakers preparing pitch projects for foundations and festivals while continuing to “follow, film and edit Vanya’s new adventures and our own alongside him.” Another presentation of the film was supposed to take place in Budva, and even the fact that it was canceled has now become part of the project. As has this text itself, which may or may not influence the film and support for it.
In a project like this, the community becomes another protagonist. On the Gronka website, the filmmakers have launched a special fundraiser aimed at involving the community in the film. People can support the project in many ways: by donating a certain amount, one can receive a cozy postcard from Johnny or even order a photo session from him.
Maksim Shved also speaks about Ivan Smaliar’s archives, which were gifted to him, and says this material may also influence the future direction of the film.
Asked whether he is afraid of becoming the protagonist of a documentary, Johnny Cosmic replies that he is not, because the experience strongly motivates him. He already intends to publish his own photo book by his next birthday.
Finally, it is interesting to reflect on the subject matter of the photographer’s work: will his method as an artist change? His circle of inspiration? If previously most of his subjects came from the Belarusian creative class community, then who will come next? The space of photography is limitless, and it too offers vast possibilities.
You can support the project here.
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