"The Quest for the Lost Paintings of Siberia" is a feature length
documentary film that chronicles the attempted rescue of 17 of Pacific
Northwest artist Jack Gunter's 1989 paintings that toured Russia in 1989 and
were trapped in the basement of a Soviet era museum for 24 years by cold war
bureaucracy. The film follows Gunter on an 11 day sortie into one of
Stalin's secret science towns near the Mongolian border to locate the cache
of kidnapped egg tempera artworks and attempt to get them back to the United
States.
THE STORY: The year was 1989. SeaTac Airport needed a third runway and
Stanwood, Washington was being considered as one of the options. Camano
Island artist, Jack Gunter, reacted to this by creating a satirical series
of 17 paintings called, "The last time they saw Helen's Kitchen," in which
he crashed airplanes into everything the little coastal community held dear,
including the town's greasy spoon cafe,
and Dale Chihuly blowing glass at the Pilchuck Glass School nearby.
The art event was a success and the runway was built instead in Seattle. The
same year a friendship mission from Siberia, headed by Valeryan Ivanchenko
arrived in the northwest to promote mutual economic cooperation.
Ivanchenko met Gunter and liked the artist's satirical view of history. He
invited the artist to bring his work to the Soviet Union for a series of
museum exhibitions. Gunter packed the large paintings into crates and flew
to Moscow in the fall of the year 1989. The Russian museum tour was a hit in
three Russian museums.
One year later, when Gunter returned to Siberia to retrieve his work, he was
told the officials would not let the paintings return to the United
States--bad paperwork and Russian customs had combined to deny passage out
of the country. Heartbroken, Gunter returned empty-handed. He promised
himself he would return someday to rescue his work. Because of the
difficulties of long distance communications in those years he lost contact
with Ivanchenko and waited 24 years for some bureaucratic miracle while the
paintings gathered dust in a Siberian museum basement and were forgotten.
In September, 2013, to his great relief, Gunter regained contact with his
Russian host through Facebook. He quickly assembled a rescue team--two
respected filmmakers looking for an adventure--and booked tickets for an 11
day insertion to attempt to rescue the lost artworks and bring them home.
Chances for success--unknown.
This is a film
about those 11 days.
THE RESCUE TEAM:
Jesse Collver is the second of two sons from an artist mother and an
electrician father from Seattle Washington. He began his love for film at
the ripe young age of 8 years old making home videos with Star Wars action
figures, graduating to operating camera for his older brothers Zombie movies
at the age of 10. Jesse landed a needle in a haystack position as the
Executive Assistant for the creator of the T.V. series CSI in Las Vegas. The
position ultimately allowed him to land a position on the hit show CSI:NY in
Los Angeles, CA. Jesse has acted, done stunts, Coordinated Inserts and 2nd
Unit in over 100 episodes of CSI:NY which allowed him to hone his overall
skills as an independent film maker. He has now directed two short films and
produced multiple others' which have garnered over 20 awards on the festival
circuit. Most recently Jesse received his first major network producing
credit on ABC's "Whodunnit?". He continues to work on his skills as an
actor and just finished writing his first feature length script. Jesse
joined Generosity Water and made multiple trips to Haiti following the quake
of 2010 as videographer to raise awareness about the water crisis and would
love to continue to use his abilities as an artist to create awareness in
the world for humanitarian and global causes.
Ken Rowe is an award-winning Independent Filmmaker and Cinematographer. His
films have been on PBS, TLC and CINEMAX. Festival screenings include the the
European Media Art Festival, Ann Arbor Film Festival, and the National Video
Festival at American Film Institute. He received his Masters degree from the
University of Buffalo, and taught at the University of the South Pacific in
Suva, Fiji, Sierra Nevada College, and Henry Cogswell College. He is a
faculty member at The Art Institute of Seattle. In 2011 he founded Rowe
Visuals, a full-service production company specializing in cinematography,
lighting, and audio.
Jack Gunter is a respected artist, writer, 20th century decorative arts
dealer, and filmmaker living on Camano Island, Washington who has been in
active in the arts for 35 years. During this time he has painted over 2,000
paintings in egg tempera, exhibited in twelve museums, and won numerous
awards. His paintings hang in the collection of Bill and Melinda Gates, the
Nordstrom Collection, and the Museum of Northwest Art. His books include The
Gunter Papers, an illustrated futuristic science book and guide to the
fourth dimension, Avon Books, NY, five novels in the Wally Winchester
adventure series, Original Finish, The Egg Rocker, Mother of God, Soft
Focus, and Tintoretto's Daughter, Ingram Books, and A Pictorial Guide to the
Pacific Northwest including the Future, Flying Pig Publications. His films
include Secrets of the Mount Vernon Culture, and 3-D Experiments in
Alternative Spectrums. and numerous short films.