Music

00.00.00

Ladies Night at club

Campbell:  It's Ladies Night at one of Moscow's more affordable bars, the Hungry Duck. About 500 women have paid $1.50 each for a night of free alcohol and naked men. Nineteen year old Masha has come with her mum.

00.32

Masha and Mother

Mother:  I liked it.

Masha:  Very nice boys.

00.48

00.49

Mother:  My husband allowed me to come here and have a look, and said maybe he could do it for me.  I said "No need. I want to look at the young boys."

00.53

Women in club

Campbell:  Outside the Hungry Dark, Russia is enduring a soul sapping economic crisis. Inside, nobody's even thinking about it. By now, most couldn't even pronounce it.

01.08

Campbell to camera

Super:

ERIC CAMPBELL

Campbell:  Moscow by day is a pretty grim and grey place. And since the August economic meltdown it's been getting progressively worse. But strangely enough, it seems there's nothing like economic collapse, political turmoil and social chaos, for a good night out.

01.22

Dancing in club

Music

01.39

Campbell:  If anything, the crisis may have added urgency to Muscovites desire for a good time.  With the rouble tottering, many are keen to spend their money before it's worthless. But is this a sign of something much darker. Perhaps a nihilistic end of century rage against the dying of the light. I decided to find out.

01.43

Night time, Campbell walks to Krai club

My next port of call was a very different sort of night spot. Like all Moscow's alternative clubs, Krai is almost impossible to find. There's no sign and no advertising.

02.06

FX:  Knock

02.18

Campbell:  The people a neon sign might attract, like Mafia or rich new Russians, are definitely not welcome.  This is a seriously cool place.

02.26

Performance in club

The entertainment began at 11 pm with an avant garde performance of that old crowd pleaser, Faust. The highlight was an actor drinking his own blood.

02.41

It may not look like it, but these are exciting times for places like this, just as much as for the Hungry Duck.

02.58

Unlike rich Russians, artists have lost nothing from the crisis. They had nothing to start with.

03.05

Artist:  We always live under unusual circumstances and the club is out of the ordinary. We don't aim to be popular - we want to remain mysterious and there is sense in not uncovering the last mystery. We call the crisis our kind helper s it helps us to remain hidden.

03.11

Brightly lit club

But the crisis has hurt the kind of places artists hate, the night spots that are dying are they ones popular with people who kill.

03.40

Campbell to camera

At places like this, Mafia and crooked businessmen paid $40 just to get through the front door. Once they're inside a night can easily cost $500. It's a little bit outside our budget, but we're reliably informed that since the crisis, most bandits can't afford it either. No matter where they're going instead, I know one other place where you won't find them.

03.48

Club in Boris's apartment

At 2 am, this nightspot in the cheap end of town is just getting started. This is perhaps Moscow's oddest club, and it's even harder to find than Krai. It's a private apartment. But every weekend its tenant, Boris Raskalnikov, turns it into a club. It's here that I found some of the answers I was looking for.

04.14

Woman in club

Woman:  If we don't have fun it'll be hard to survive the crisis - we'll cry... suffer... sleep... stay at home and watch TV.  But now we go to clubs and it's not so bad.

04.36

Clubbers

Campbell:  Boris, who by day is an painter and musician, believes the crisis is the best thing the could have happened.

04.51

Boris

Boris:  After August 17, it became even better. People stopped having illusions and started to live... love... feel.

04.57

Woman:  We know each other better now.

05.00

Boris: Yes, we know each other better now. We understand each other.

05.02

Woman playing toy piano

Campbell:  And so perhaps the collapse of capitalism has helped people rediscover the simple joys of life, to appreciate alternative music and to revel in creative self-expression. And perhaps not...

05.23

Inside Hungry Duck

Back at the Hungry Duck, art and philosophy are the last things on anyone's mind.

05.39

By 3 am, hundreds of men have found their way inside, and all around the room, deep and lasting relationships are being formed. So, is Moscow gripped by a caring, post-crisis festival of love, or a moral decline into cultural nihilism?

05.48

I think I'll worry about that in the morning.

06.06

Music

06.07

END