About The Film
Bus stops will never stop.
Canadian photographer Christopher Herwig travels former Soviet Republics from Ukraine to Uzbekistan, Armenia to Far Eastern Siberia, and all points in between, in a decades-long bus stop treasure hunt across more than 50,000 kilometres. Uncovering the stories of the designers who built fascinating architectural marvels during the Soviet regime, Soviet Bus Stops is an ode to the power of individual creativity that would not be suppressed.
Architecture, like anything else during the Soviet period, was under strict centralized supervision. While art and grand monuments were expected to advance the state narrative of communism as paradise on earth, sometimes the benign bus stops were overlooked. As a result, hundreds of architecturally distinctive bus stops are now scattered across the former Soviet Republic. Built by individuals who decided to follow their own artistic urges, they found a way of expressing local and artistic ideas, in this small form. Their bus stops were built as quiet acts of creativity against overwhelming state control.
In 2002, Canadian photographer Christopher Herwig came across his first of these distinctive pieces of architecture, and has since pioneered a bus stop hunting trend from Kiev to Vladivostok. The bus stops he has chronicled represent an astonishing variety of original styles and types, from the strictest Brutalism to exuberant whimsy. Herwig’s resulting photography books have become international bestsellers and are critically praised as gems on architecture and cold war history.
Shot over a period of 7 years, the documentary Soviet Bus Stops follows Herwig on several bus stop hunts, listening in as he seeks answers as to how these unique creations came to exist. Puzzled by their origins, and without historical records, Herwig tracks down several of the creators and finds inspiration and a strengthened belief that the special bus stops need to be remembered.
Today, cursed by the memory of the era in which they were created, many bus stops have been torn down or disregarded as strange and embarrassing. Few people see them as the phenomenon Herwig does. He considers them to be one of the largest and most diverse architectural collections in existence. Their rejection of established forms is key to this appreciation. Herwig’s twenty year-long efforts in photographing hundreds of bus stops is an attempt to memorialize them before they are all demolished.
Soviet Bus Stops accompanies Herwig on his unforgettable road trip, as he meets some of the humble and charming bus stop creators from Ukraine, Estonia, Georgia, Belarus, and Lithuania. The remaining bus stops represent the stories of people who created small acts of poetry against all odds.
Quotes from the documentary
“The bus stops are disappearing so fast. If I come back a year from now, they could be gone, demolished, or rebuilt. These pictures may be all that’s left in the end. I want to give them some kind of immortality.”
— Christopher Herwig, Photographer and Bus Stop Hunter
“We refer to the Soviet times mostly as a totalitarian period. There was a single unified ideology. The human consciousness was focused to these set, predetermined ideals, which meant there was a uniform style in architecture, a uniform style in literature, a uniform style in music.”
— Armen Sardarov,
Belarussian bus stop designer
“Of course, the farther from the centre, the less it was controlled. It’s a huge territory, you know. You can’t control everything from one point.”
— Anna Bronovitskaya,
Professor, Moscow School of Architecture
“The bus stop was the result of the new road. We didn’t wait for orders from anywhere. It was created for the local people. Nobody saw it as a Soviet thing. It was ours.”
— Bus stop builder Jüri Konsap
PRODUCTION INFO
Production Countries: Denmark, Canada, UK, Sweden, Latvia
Duration: 60 minutes
Year of Completion: 2022
Languages: English, Ukrainian, Russian, Estonian, Lithuanian
Subtitles: English
FROM THE BOOKS
Soviet Bus Stops and Soviet Bus Stops Volume II
CPH:FORUM*
The film was pitched at Baltic Sea Docs and Dox:Forum
DANISH FILM INSTITUTE
WWW.DFI.DK
SUPPORT FROM
Danish Film Institute
Film commissioner Cecilia Lidin
AWARDS
Danish Academy Award, Robert Prisen 2024 (Nominee, Short film of the year: Documentary)
2023 Lund Architecture Film Festival (Winner, ArchFilmLund Prize 2023)
CPH:DOX Official Selection (In Competition, NORDIC:DOX AWARD)
DOCVILLE International Documentary Film Festival (In Competition, International Selection; Ranked #5 in the Audience Award Top 10)
VIFF: Vancouver International Film Festival (Official Selection; Received an audience rating average of 4.68 out of 5 from hundreds of ballots cast)
2023 Leo Awards (Nominee, Best Short Documentary)
FESTIVALS (SELECTED)
CPH:DOX, In Competition Nordic: Dox Award (Denmark)
Docville (Belgium)
Vancouver International Film Festival (Canada)
Millennium Docs Against Gravity (Poland)
Architecture & Design Film Festival (NYC, Toronto, Vancouver, Chicago)
The Norwegian International Film Festival - Haugesund (Norway)
Urbaneye (Romania)
Way Out West (Sweden)
DMZ International Film Festival (South Korea)
Architecture Film Festival (Rotterdam)
FIFAAC International Festival of Architecture Film (France)
Noordelijk Film Festival (Netherlands)
Lund Architecture Film Festival (Sweden)
Broadway Cinematheque (Hong Kong)
Para:Dox (Denmark)
Broadcasters
Avrotros (Netherlands)
DR (Denmark)
ERR (Estonia)
MM Square (Taiwan)
SRF (Swiss National Broadcasting)
YLE (Finland)
Distribution
291 Film Company (North America)
DR Sales (World, excluding North America)
© 2022 Empty Chairs / 291 Film Company Inc.
Still images © FUEL / Christopher Herwig
All Rights Reserved