Today I invite you to look at the bizarre works of Estonian commercial director Harry Egipt. In the early 80s, high on consumerism and sex appeal, Egipt cranked out a whole slew of strange, lurid, sometimes nightmarish Soviet ads for such mundane things as kitchenware and meat. Here's one that I think is for shoe polish:
A statue man is "polished" and brought to life by three eager blonde girls, one of them briefly topless, in the middle of an empty urban lot. Could this be a analogy for rigid times of communism giving way to the perverse charms of capitalism? And note the empowering new-wave song, complete with an oddly placed Beatles sample. In the end, this commercial seems to be selling the sexual as much as the material; the statue man doesn't appear to give a shit for his shiny new boots, as he is too busy embracing his young, beaming savior.
And here, if you can stomach it, is a disturbing ad for chicken:
This one skips any attempt at narrative or concept and goes straight for the message: carnivorous consumption is glamorous. Here is a chicken, here is that chicken's meat, here are some lovely women eating that chicken's meat. The music is industrial avant-garde with some woman repeating (so I've read) the words "chicken" and "beef". It's hard to imagine that Egipt wasn't leaning towards the macabre in this ad, and maybe he was.
"Producing a TV commercial is an obstinate process. And the course of action has to be controlled by one man only. Until the very end. Though a good result is guaranteed if the makers are having fun while producing the film." -Harry Egipt, from an interview.
Recently several clips from his commercials were seen by the masses during the end sequence of the Borat movie. To see the original ads in their zany entirety, just search for Harry Egipt on YouTube.
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