Anna Nieman is an independent film scholar, specializing in Soviet and
Russian cinema. She graduated from VGIK in 1995 with a degree in Film Studies.
Currently at work on her thesis, “Man of War: Films of Aleksey Balabanov in the
Context of Post-war Russian Cinema”. Anna’s articles have appeared in “Art of
Film”, “Caravan Magazine”, “Odnako” and MUBI.com.
For documentary filmmakers, filming just one subject and telling
a story of one life can be challenging. Pavel Kostomarov and Alexandr
Rastorguev seem determined to document the story of the entire nation. In the
new documentary project “Realnost” ( “Reality”) they are giving “the power to
the people” and letting their subjects film themselves. The award-winning
filmmakers first relinquished control over the camera in 2009, surrendering it
to a bunch of twenty-somethings from the blue collar city of Rostov-on-Don in
southern Russia. The resulting semi-scripted “I Love You” got a mostly positive
reaction at home and in Europe. To get the film seen, the filmmakers took a
hands-on approach to distribution. For months they’ve toured Russia and
Ukraine, appearing in-person at multiple screenings, conducting discussion
panels and engaging with the audience.
Next came the Election year in Russia. A new wave of political protests
brought thousands out of their kitchens and cafes on to the streets of Moscow.
As the protest movement collided with the apparently unshakable Putin regime and
was all but swept under, the filmmakers were in the thick of it, filming.
Arrests and searches followed, but out of these tumultuous months a new project
was born. The online series “Srok” (The Term) is an alive and growing, almost
organic, document of Russia under Putin. Almost daily it continues to add
episode after a shocking episode. Within the same year Kostomarov and
Rastorguev have also premiered the second installment in the reality diptych “I
Love You /I Don’t Love You” and in January put out a casting call for their
most ambitious project, yet: the reality series “Realnost”. Like “Srok” before
it , “Realnost” is produced by Aleksey Pivovarov, a well-known maverick
journalist. According to Rastorguev it will be “a universal anthropological
experiment”. The filmmakers are inviting all who, according to the project’s website, “are willing to open their lives to
us”. The participants will film their daily life to create a unique quilt of
modern Russian experiences.
Kostomarov began his career and continues to work as a cinematographer
and sometimes director in both documentary and feature film. His work has been
recognized at home and abroad, notably receiving the Silver Bear for an
Outstanding Artistic Contribution at 2010 Berlinale for his camera work in “How
I Ended This Summer” (2010, dir. A. Popogrebsky). As a director, Kostomarov
often works in collaboration with the Swiss filmmaker Antoine Cattin, who is
also involved in “Realnost”. Their latest project is “Playback”, an on-set
documentary of the late Alexey German’s last film, “It’s Hard to Be God”.
Rastorguev is a documentary director with degrees in both philosophy and
theater. While his filmography is much shorter than Kostomarov’s, his influence
within the Russian documentary scene is no less powerful . His award-winning
two-hour documentary “Wild, Wild Beach”(2005) is a powerful mosaic that lays
out the sunburned humanity in all its unvarnished glory. Along with his
earlier film “Clean Thursday”(2003), it’s a direct precursor to the current
projects.
In 2009 Seance.ru published Rastorguev’s Manifesto, called “The Natural
Cinema”. A year later another statement , this time
co-authored with Kostomarov, was published on OpenSpace.ru
Rastorguev’s ability to strip the filmed events to their natural, harsh
and sometimes grotesque core, combined with Kostomarov’s cinematic
fluidity and skill, backed by Pivovarov’s journalistic savviness, could prove
to be exactly what it takes to document and eventually process the complexities
of modern day Russia.
My conversation with the filmmakers took place in May, 2011, as the two were getting ready to premiere “I Love You”.
Copyright of this text and interview transcript belongs to Anna Nieman.
AN: First of all, thank you both for gathering, because I
thought you didn't get [the e-mail].
AR: Yeah, sometimes we have difficulties getting it. Has
to do with us being slow.
PK: Yep, we get it and then we lose it.
[All laughing]
AN: I don't think you guys are being fair. I think you are
way smarter, than that.
PK: More harmonious, as Sasha says.
[All laughing]
AN: Especially as collaborators! Actually, as I was
following your project, - since 2009, I believe, - I was surprised to see how
it all came together so harmoniously, if you will. So...
AR: What kind of problems did you see in it?
AN: I didn't, couldn't have, not seeing the project
itself. Just through following the press and the conversation, about the
project, seeing how you have changed the initial concept. Actually, if you
could right now, please share a bit about the initial idea for the project.
What was it?
AR: OK. So, who's talking? Pasha? You?Me?
PK: The idea was quite simple. I guess, Sasha you better take
it.
AR: [Laughing]
PK :The idea was simple: “To come up with something new”. So
that was the formal push for the project. The rest Sasha wrote about and
formulated so clearly and eloquently in his Manifest, that he can do it right
now.
AR [Chuckles]: Yeah, well. So, you see, Anya, we had this
understanding of the technical opportunity that we had with this little camera,
that, when transferred to film, produces a pretty decent image. So here we saw
this strange technical opportunity. After that Pashka recalled a text by Tolstoy,
called “The Forged Coupon”
You remember it, perhaps? The story goes that a person gets this counterfeit
note and is trying to get rid of it. Give it to someone else. And everyone who
gets their hands on it suffers some sort of an upset. So, as the coupon passes
hands, each behaves differently with it. And... I don't remember, Pasha, does
someone destroy it in the end?
PK: No. The thing is that the forged coupon puts its owners
in a position of a choice. The choice is very simple: you can either stop the
vicious cycle and break it; surrender the fake bill and take it to the bank, or
you will try to pass it on, extracting some sort of a personal benefit from the
transaction, capitalize on it. So, each person would try to get rid of it,
continuing the deceit . What interested me in it was that this thing, the
coupon, or, in our case, the camera, became this...
AR A lever!
PK Yes, it would open people up, become sort of a latchkey
that would prompt a person to act and thus expose himself. It’s a magic wand of
sorts that unwraps a cocooned person. Just like boiling water poured over a
tea-leaf forces it to unfurl and blossom. Whether it will be beautiful or not,
that depends on the tea. Our hopes were with the camera. We hoped it would
become a lancet the would reveal the social, psychological and spiritual
contents of a person.
AN: So this is what you tried to...
PK: This was the initial idea that we, thank God, rejected
later on.
AN: Right...
PK: We didn’t stick to that....
AR: Important thing is that for this story we started
looking for some radically different people. First we found our central
character, and we liked him so much that we decided that we want the camera
to always return to him in some strange manner. That way we would have one core
character. So then we started looking for interesting people who could live
with the camera and create, aside from whatever structure we had, create a
documentary space around our structure. Meaning, their own backdrop, their own
ins and outs, their own micro-details, and so on. So, we needed people that
would not only be alive, open and capable, but also have some rich...
AN: Surroundings?
AR: A world that was right for us, their own unique,
actual world. So...
AN: So, you have both said that it wasn’t that easy, that
there aren’t many people like that. I think Sasha said it, that there aren’t
many people who could so naturally open up and freely exist on camera.
Actually, here’s an interesting question, how free can a person be in front of
a camera, after all? Doesn’t he turn into someone completely different from his
true self? Doesn’t camera change things?
AR: This is a very difficult question... It does happen
for many people: the camera changes them. But there is a type of people, who,
roughly speaking, could be called extroverts, with a quality like that, or it may
be that these people have a greater level
of freedom that can’t be altered by the camera. Those were just the ones we
were looking for...
PK: No... I think camera modifies (people's behaviour). Always and everyone.
Whatever the case may be. Unless you are blind and deaf, and are not aware that
you are being filmed. But, as soon as the camera is pointed at you, it deforms
you. It’s just there are people made out of fluff that it tears to pieces, and
then there are people made out of titanium that sustain a very minimal and
barely noticeable deformation. Those were the ones we were searching for. We
called them “people with great internal freedom” who, in our subjective
opinion, experience minimal change on camera. We had exchanges with them
without the camera present and we saw the footage and we haven’t noticed that the
camera would alter them much. Meaning, within our own frame of reference and
trust,they remained equal to themselves. I guess, in our view, they ultimately
remained themselves, with camera or without. These people were the most
valuable to us. I think, there are few of them anywhere, but when you find them
this method begins to bear fruit.
AN: How did you establish a relationship with them?
Because, shouldn’t it be a very close one, or ... the opposite?
PK: They should be... no so much as close, but there should
be a feeling... the character, the person that is given the camera, who you ask
to bring in the footage, he should feel your unfeigned, real interest. Beyond
that, the relationship should ideally be built on a sort of friendship,
infatuation, or extreme interest in someone. If this occurs: this aura of
friendship and trust, at times an aura of adoration and infatuation even, then
within this field the work can be done. I don’t mean to sound like a medic
here, what I mean is that this creates the necessary conditions, the necessary
moisture for these seeds to grow. The seed that we found.
AN: Actually... this is not the first time I’m hearing this
term from documentary filmmakers especially, about infatuation with their
characters. It comes up quite often, especially when talking to those who
make, let’s say, anthropological documentaries, they claim that they must love
their characters in order to make a film about them. Right? So now I would like
to talk to you about your characters specifically. The people that appear in
your films are not the most glamorous kind, right? These are people who lived a
life and whose faces bear the baggage of those years. Now in your new project,
in this film, this kids are quite young, they aren’t burdened with much experience. So what are you looking for in their faces? What was so important
to find?
AR: Pasha, you think about that for a bit, and let me return
to the previous one about infatuation and all that and the moisture that we
need to fertilize (our films) with... It seems to me that there exists this phenomenon of A
Person With A Banner, or a Person With An Announcement. There are people that
publish ads in newspapers that they have a washer, or a bookcase that they want
to sell, and so on. Or they write on a matchmaking site that they are a certain height, they have certain desires that they want to share with someone. So,
there is this kind of people who are constantly making announcements about
themselves. They don’t care, they sort of do it over you, like a newspaper page
or a broadcast. Those are the People with An Announcement. Really, they are the
ideal kind of a character for a documentary. With a forceful announcement about
their art, their life, their grief and their joy, their thoughts. So.. As a
rule these people are quite tyrannical and monologue-prone. And the
relationship with them can shape itself like this: you can either let them express
themselves once and forget about them, or you can let yourself be won over by the force of their expression
and its completeness. I think that the hero of Pasha’s film “Together” ... I
don’t know if you’ve seen it... He’s an artist, I don’t even know what to call
it, a strange sort of an artist, living somewhere deep in Ukraine... He
formulates his aesthetic principles with a terrible clarity and does it so...
scrumptiously that you not only fall in love with him, you are completely won
over by him. Each good documentary
character has this power that takes you over, this is the infatuation, or at
times a very strong dislike, too, that can form the structure of the
relationship.
PK That’s so if you are talking about a “passionary driver”, when the character becomes the
engine of the film. At the same time, remember, “Ten Minutes Older” or
Kosakovsky “Wednesday”, where [this type of character] is absent. There
everything is built upon a variety of people fitting within what you call
“an act”, or a formal solution. They completely lack the energy, they are just
the necessary pieces of smalti within the mosaic.
PK: Yes, that’s right.
I’m talking about a character that becomes enthused and excited under
circumstances that would make the bleak masses anxious and uncomfortable. In
our case...
AR: Well...
PK: In our case we didn’t follow a passionary. We were just
looking for kids who would work within our chosen method: the criteria of
inner freedom, the ability to show yourself to a film crew in a way that otherwise you never would. I may enter in dirty shoes, or tip-toeing in white slippers, still, to them, you are a moron with a
camera, a moron with a cigarette and a moron with a mic. When they follow you,
saying: “We aren’t here. Don’t mind us,”
it’s one kind of the game, but when you are given the camera, and there
aren’t ever anyone around, that’s an entirely different thing. That’s the thing we were
testing out, trying it out, to see if it could... could... be.
AR: But, still, if they didn’t have some inner content,
including passionary, we wouldn’t turn to them.
PK: No, they don’t
have to posses the passionary content, they could just express their lack of
passion, their meekness, their blandness, their nothingness as absolutely real.
In my view, for example... let’s suppose... the cop! The cop lacks Kuzya’s
energy, openness, is less interesting. He is totally constricted, deceitful, monotonous and untrue. He is one
note, one string and he rambles on for about ten minutes. And that’s what he is
good for - being so extreme.
AR: He has the right function.
PK: Right! Right! Exactly what I’m saying! In this case, in
“I Love You”, we didn’t follow a passionary, to the contrary, the formal act,
the idea, our concept was the passionary in this film in my opinion.
AN: Meaning?..
PK The sieve, the actual hole in the sieve was the un-robbed,
un-castrated life, be it smart, or not, pretty, or not, kind, or not, but it
has to be unwashed, raw, unprocessed, in the way it happens, unmediated by a
film crew. This seems to me the most important. The fact that the truly
passionary, wild, young men and women ended up being chosen, that’s our
approach - they were more interesting to us. It was secondary, though.
AR: Generally speaking, difference is not in two, or
three characters
AN: It’s the authors then, I think. So the question would
be, where’s the author’s place? What Pasha just said, contains, in my view, the
seed of the answer to this question. The relationship between the documentary
filmmaker and his material. I wonder what you think about that? Within the
material of “I Love You”, where you, at first glance, are stepping
completely aside. On the surface, of
course. However, it turns out that your participation in it is the most serious
and drastic. Right?
PN: You see, one can manipulate objects by touching, or using
some sort of implement, or by throwing something at them. Or one can create a
field within which they will move due to some magnetic effects, electrostatic
or vibration, whatever: without direct contact. In this sense, our direction,
which, as we keep on screaming, “is not there!”, consists of us creating this
field, I think.
AR: We structure
the experiment...
PK: Yes, right...
AR: I’d like to add, excuse my interrupting, that the most
valuable thing is the emergence of a character that expends over any structure.
So you have your act...
PK: Of course he appears, of course he’s there, but when he
is within the structure.... Look, there is a wonderful, or not so wonderful,
film “Stalker”. In the finale, the girl rests her head on the table and there
is a glass in front of her. This girl is beautiful, the table is beautifully
textured, the cinematographer is great, the lighting is perfect, and so she can
move the glass with her hand, or push it and it will fall. It all would be
quite right and quite well. But what does Tarkovsky have happening: the girl moves
the glass with her eyes. Because of that, for the viewer something completely
different occurs, because she does it without direct contact. So, I think, we
were this wonderful girl. We have nothing special happening, the people say the
same old things that are being written in SPEED-info (a now-defunct Russian
tabloid), been known for the last 10,000 years. There is nothing new there.
They perform basic acts. But they have the camera in their hands and the
“glass” moves, now here I’m back to the Tarkovsky example, it moves on its own not
by a hand or a leg, or whatever. That’s what makes the girl absolutely magical.
I think that the words, the actions, the thoughts of these kids, acquired by us
through this method, they posses more weight, because they were collected with
no hands, and moved with no hands. Maybe it’s presumptuous of me to make these comparisons,
but it’s all about the manipulation without the contact. We kept on talking about
curling: that you can throw whatever implements, or you can …
AN: Create the space?
PK: Rub the ice next to it, and it begins to move on its own.
and you... you don’t touch the character.
Hello?
Hello?
AN: Oh, I’m just listening [Laughs]
PK: Yeah, I should really stop now.
AN So, are you talking about the space of the experiment?
PK: Well, yes. About the new, new to us, anyway, method, more
interesting and, maybe, effective. So back to the question that you asked
earlier. Can people act naturally around the camera. Being around a camera,
they are more real when they are alone with the camera, and not alone with the
filming crew. That’s it. It’s clear by now, I shouldn’t repeat myself.
AN: Right... In articles describing your film the term “
language of You Tube” is being used often. Is it really the language of
YouTube? Or what is it, what kind of language? Because, the space and the
language that you afford your characters are really authorial inventions.
AR: Anya, I think what they do [on YouTube] differs from a
language the way a bunch of syllables differs from a sentence. We have given
them an opportunity to begin talking and then took their syntagms and assembled
a coherent text. Meaning, the language of YouTube is contained somewhere
inside, and on the meta-level it’s a complete, established statement in the
form of a film, quite conventional for a theatrical distribution.
AN: Meaning?
AR: So the point is in...
PK: I... What’s the point? Please, continue, Sasha.
AR: The point is in twisting and rearranging the various
elements of the traditional for the Internet, methods of expression, the
existence of a modern person who documents himself with a phone, a home video,
a web-cam, Skype, whatever, all these things in a more complex form exist
withing the method of the language. And all the “words” uttered through these
methods are present within the film. However, they are composed according to
the syntax of a cinematic expression, this is syntax laid over the chatter, the
din of YouTube.
PK So, yes, generally speaking, the term “the language of YouTube” is
not completely correct. The alphabet of YouTube, the “letters” and
“symbols” of YouTube from which we create the “text” in an absolutely normal
cinematic language. Because YouTube, as I see it, is for when something unusual,
impossible, unique …
AR: That you saw..
PK: .. you managed to film. Capture it on your phone. How
your beloved kitten suddenly ate the neighbor’s dog. That’s it. There is no
further development. Just some “letters”, maybe, “syllables”, at best, that
you post, just to share some sort of a statement, a tornado, a flood that you
witnessed, so “here, look at it!” Beyond that, form these “letters” and
“syllables” of YouTube, some real stories can be assembled. Real statements.
That’s what we tried to accomplished.
AN: Enter the author... Enter the author who through the
authorial gesture composes an entire world from these bits and pieces.
AR: Yes the author monitors these experiences, follows the
results of the experiences.
PK: He monitors them and out of them constructs a logical
chain or a web, and again... contemplates these statements while assembling a
story.
AR: There is a method in geometry, when a problem cannot
be solved. Say there’s something about this triangle that can’t be understood
through the given data , at times the solution lies in completing it with a
mirror shape. So, the triangle is completed into a parallelogram. We are
completing each statement to its full
meaning. Not discarding, the way it’s usually happens in documentary film, but
magnifying it to the full complete presence of the entire world. The unfurling
of it. They are bringing you a tiny bomb, and you are unwrapping it, taking it
apart: all these nuts and bolts, and all the pieces, lay it all out, all
possibilities... Ok, where was I?..
AN: Ok, so what were you adding? How were you completing
it?
PK: I have a similar example. Maybe not very good one, but to
the point. There is this documentary about a landfill, it made some waves
recently. The point is, the artist collects the trash, and creates...
AN Paintings?..
PK From seemingly useless things creates, say, a Madonna. A
huge collage. So, it’s a bad
comparison, I don’t mean to say that our characters are
trash, their feelings, emotions and actions are trash. But from these elements
another picture can be created, that doesn’t belong to them anymore, their
feelings and their thoughts. We conjoin the moments and, again, syllables,
counterpoise and lay them out in such a way, under your special angle, a
special view point. That where the director is! He didn’t disappear. Then under
this particular light and angle, at that particular moment suddenly it all
comes together. You know those pictures, where you can’t make anything out,
it’s “language of YouTube”, gibberish, but, if you focus, adjust your eyes...
AR: … or turn on another light...
AN: … or step back a bit...
PK: … yeah, light it, squint, tilt your head. And, there it
is! A bunny appears!
AN: OK, so who is the “bunny” then?
PK: The bunny? It’s our portrait.
AN: So it is, indeed a self-portrait?
PK: Yes, I think so!
AN: Then, in the way of self-evaluation, what kind of face
is it. How did the bunny come out?
AR: The bunny came out a wolf!
[laughing]
PK: I don’t think it’s a wolf, a pig may be... [laughing]
Generally...
AR: The important thing is.. Sorry for interrupting,
Pasha. In the end the story that makes the film, actually, bears no relation to
their life.
PK: Yep, that’s right!
AR: The story told in the film is not a story of one
concrete life, lived by them. So what is it, what is the result? I think it’s
what we made the title. What we wanted to get out of it.
PK What came out is what’s been said long ago: omnia
vincit amor. Love conquers all. And the only solution to all of this is “I
Love You”. Yes, no, Sasha?
AR: Yes, yes. It’s the only feeling that changes us all...
PK: … Changes us all, unites us all. And generally, gives us
meaning and purpose … when it’s there...
AN: Do you then being somewhat out of cinch with Sasha’s Manifesto, speak of, instead of
suffering and … not destruction, no … but, instead, of love and development,
creation?
AR: [softly chuckles] Anya, you see, in this act there is
an aspect of sacrifice, too. Because these characters, frankly, delivered
themselves, their spare parts to us.
PK Donated their organs so we can create some sort of a
Frankenstein. A creature with 80 hearts and 50 spines. May be they are
compromised by alcohol and drug use [chuckles], but they are alive. And we
connected them however we wanted with sinew, made it..
AR.. speak..
PK: … it began to move!
[Laughing]
AN: Is there the authorial sacrifice? If you are turning
them … letting them turn themselves inside out, with all their innards, however
pretty or not they may be, then to a certain extent, going back to the Manifesto, then should there not be some sacrifice on the authors' part?
AR Indeed! Because we have surrendered the realm of
authorship, the realm of directing, which forever in cinema belonged to an
auteur, where he would expel a story and groom the actors to fit into it. Ended
in the right spot, began in the right spot. We surrendered our authorship to
them more than anyone else before. So that aspect of gifting, giving the
cinematic territory to a lay person, in that was both the authorial sacrifice
and the gift.
AN: So it was an exchange of sorts? You've given them your
control and, in a sense, your world, and they?..
AR Yeah, gave them our spine and took... what.. [laughing]
PK: … Their skull!.. [laughing] I don’t know...
AN How is it then now I’m reading the press and so often
they say something along the lines: “Do they, simple folk, do they deserve a
movie being made about them? They are so crude!” Does this question have any
validity? What do you think?
[an audible sigh]
AN Why does it even come up?
AR It’s a question with no context, sorry. It lacks
context, because, you see, there aren’t many movies made over here. Every film
is looked at as a major event, an auteur statement, demanding a world change,
attempting to educate the Russian people in the ideas of goodness and virtue,
patriotism, whatever. So every film is looked at as the next presidential
decree. Within a normal cinematic landscape, like, say American one, where you
have films made about rappers, films about presidents, there are films like
“Tron” and whatever computer stuff. This normal landscape doesn’t treat films
as such as a serious, massive, I don’t know, a life-altering thing. So I think, the
claims against our film are based exclusively in the Russian mentality.
AN: So, it’s the usual Russian desire to put an author up
on a pedestal and make him a Teacher.
AR: Right! Make him a Teacher of Life. It’s the tendency
of Russian culture, though I think that has became somewhat morbid. Especially,
in the context of such project as the Internet TV channel Besogon TV
[ Eng.: Exorcist] Are you familiar with
it?
AN That’s the first time I hear about it. What is it?
AR: Really? You don’t know? [Chuckles]
AN: Nope! [Laughing]
AR: It’s a Nikita Mikhalkov venture!
AN: Ah... [Laughing] No, I haven’t been following his
ventures.
AR: Oh, but it’s very interesting! Nikita Mikhalkov
appears and proceeds to exorcise the devil from Russian society.
AN You mean he himself alone? With his mighty hands?
Against the devil?
AR Yes,he himself, Mikhalkov! His Holiness the Pope!
AN [Laughing]: That’s a must see!... All right... Let’s
talk about what’s happening...
AR Hang on a minute, Anya.
AN: Yes?
AR: Pasha? I didn’t monopolise the conversation, did I?
PK: Oh, no! I think this is a question of arrogance and
rigidness of some people, who think they can decide, who can and cannot be
shown. Surely, this is... This question is so... (pause) It’s such an idiotic
question! It’s same as “Do they [the characters] deserve the right to exist?”,
or “Let’s not talk about them.” To me it’s just...
AR: Nazism!
PK: Yes! Nazism and idiot-ism. I don’t understand it... What
is being said? “Why show this?” And another favorite phrase, an amazing one:
“I, we, certainly understand, we are cultured people. But you can’t show this
to the common folk!”
AN: “They won’t understand!”
PK: Right. “They will be simply proud of it!” They pop up
very often these questions and to me they are markers of sorts. If a person fails to see himself in it, but
immediately puts himself “above the squabble”, looks at it from a “high hill”,
in my opinion those people are finished, hopeless idiots. The people that say
these two things: “Why did you choose to show these people?” and “You shouldn’t
show these people!”
AN: When I was first e-mailing you, the director from
Balabanov’s “Trofim” came to mind. The one that discards the film. Seems that
these people take on a similar position.
PK: Yes, yes! I appreciated you reminding me about this
short. So, yeah, there it is... I often catch myself at this, forever saying:
“Go, go! Get out of the shot! You’re in the way.” It’s a touchy subject. I
sense it’s presence in me quite strongly. (long pause)
AN: Let’s turn to something else then. Let’s talk a bit,-
since we have sort of began already, what with Mikhalkov being mentioned, and
all, - about what’s happening in Russian cinema right now. Just bearing in
mind, though, that just like I, our readers have an outsider’s view of Russian
cinema. So, now with all the talk about the birth of a new language, the new
wave, you two, as well, are talking
about “creating something new”; is what’s being brought forth truly a new
language? Or, at least it seems to me, that people just learned how to shoot
well. Unlike when we were going to film school, now everything is more
accessible: good quality equipment, good quality film, etc. So they see things, they
learn the technology, does this mean a new language, though?
AR: You know, let me answer the way I understood the
question,ok?
AN: Sure.
AR: So, are you saying that film Bakuradze (the director of the film Shultes”, or the
film “My Joy” by Loznitsa, or the film by A. Popogrebsky “How I ended this summer” (both filmmakers worked on this film: Pavel as the
DP and Alexandr filmed “The making of...” segment- A.N.) are by no means
discoveries to a European, or an international viewer, but when they are viewed
within Russian cinema, they say it’s a new language being born?
AN: Well, when it comes to Bakur’s film or Loznitsa, too,
I think they feel just as unusual to the Western audience as they do back home. I’m
just talking about the gap that occurred in Russian film in the late 90’s and
what began to happen afterward, and the attempt to find your own voice within
it. Is there a language? Or is it just syntax?
AR: Ok, I’m just going to express my own opinion here,
Pasha doesn’t happen to share it. Even at its best, Russian cinema today is
following in the footsteps of the well known discoveries of the auteur cinema
of Europe. Bakur’s, film to me, generally speaking, repeats the tone of
Kaurismäki, who in turn, repeats Fassbinder in his best examples. So, as for something
radical, new, artistic discoveries... not even, because it’s not as if we began
to use a cog transmission, instead of a belt one. No, it’s about the new
concept of relations between the art and the world, the reality. Obviously, the
whole structure of life... the 2000’s ushered in the new technological
possibilities, having to do with the Internet, social networks, and for the
entire world community a new techno-based situation has developed. On the other
hand, in the 90-s because of a complete pause in development of the cinematic
landscape in Russia, because there was no real film production, there was no
real change of generations, no transfer... but these are such silly
formalities, I think. A revolutionary situation has occurred in the world, and
it has to do with technological advancement, and to find the adequate
connection between the new values that are actually being developed in the
world right now, a new person that is emerging, whoever it may end up being: a
hipster, a cosmopolitan, or an uber-engineer .... these new connections they
must be found, alongside with the technological development. Life demands of
an artist to come up with new forms of delivery, thus the massive rejection of paper publishing, books. What you are doing now: online distribution.
Evidently, the traditional massive, well defined structure of cinema is
disappearing somewhere. And what will replace it? As Kostya Treplev said in the
well-known play by Comrade Chekhov: ”But we need new art forms! New forms are
necessary, otherwise it's better to have nothing at all!” [ Laughs] So there is
the demand for the new conjunctions, to create through new technological
abilities a new picture of the world. So this effort seemed to us as a
legitimate option of conjoining them. So there you have it. And the way people
react, by the way, as if it’s a breath of fresh air, suggests that we got
something right. I’m not saying that it’s the be all and the end all, but it’s a viable
solution to the task. What’s important is the demand for a new language. And,
if the demand exists, the new generation of filmmakers will emerge to answer it
with this new language.
AN: And Pavel?..
AR: Pasha?
PK: Generally, I agree with everything Sasha said. To speak
specifically about the Russian situation, I don’t know of any other examples, except
for (forgive my modesty) the film “I Love You”, where anything new has been offered. All this... You know, like with a stairway: it’s made out of
flights of stairs and, what do you call it?..the landing, where you have to
turn to continue the accent, or descent . It looks, right now, as if everyone
is stuck on this landing...
At this point Sasha’s connection dropped out and Pavel was
called to attend a previous engagement.
Posts
