Stop Potapov.
The amount
of events outside the main competition at the Kinotavr Film Festival don’t
match those of Moscow’s film Festival but there was nonetheless the odd
surprise in store for the viewer. In terms of retrospectives one can only speak
of one significant one – this being the retrospective dedicated to Soviet era war
films curated by Sergei Lavrentiev. The choices are of a number of genuine
classics by masters of Soviet cinema from Tarkovsky to German and not ignoring
Bondarchuk seniors lesser but still powerful film Судьба Человека (The fate of a man). With limited time to get to many
of these films, I have no regrets in choosing the surprisingly surreal film Восточный Коридор (The Eastern Passage) as the one film
which it would have been a crime to miss in this retrospective. Valentin
Vinogradov was a Soviet director who, in spite of having numerous obstacles put
in his way, was more of a believer in the Soviet system than a dissident. This
film is, arguably, his masterpiece and one of the freshest discoveries to have
been made in recent years. I also had no regrets in choosing to rewatch Vadim
Abdrashitov’s Остановите Потапова (Stop
Potapov). A diploma film which decades later seems fresh and brings forth a
certain melancholy nostalgia at how certain films now are no longer possible.
Based on a story by Gorin, the film is a lyrical portrait of the ‘useless man’.
Potapov, reminiscent of Otar Ioselliani’s protagonist in There Lived a Thrush,
becomes through Abdrashitov’s masterful direction, suffused with a kind of
conformist spirit which it is hard to portray with such lightness of touch.
Two leading
film historians Evgeny Margolit and Marianna Kireeva held a class on the
origins popular hits and heroes of Soviet cinema. In fact through the rather
insistent interventions of one member of the audience it was turned into a
discussion of modern Russian cinema. However, both Margolit and Kireeva
accented how the truly popular hits of cinema arose spontaneously and without
any directives. All the Soviet examples Chapaev, the Maxim character of
Kozintsev and Trauberg’s trilogy and the protagonists of Donskoy’s Радуга (Rainbow) arose in spite of and not because of directions
from above. An extreme example of this was Nikolai Ekk’s Путевка к жизни (A Voucher for Life) which was, in
terms of its foreign audience the greatest hit in Soviet film history (as well
as a national hit). And yet this was a film that was strongly resisted by the
film hierarchy of its time. Margolit and Kireeva went on to mention the severe
criticism that films from the studio Mezhrabpom-Rus’ faced throughout the 1920s
and into the 1930s. Yet it was this studio that produced the truly popular
cinema of its time including that of Protazanov. There were some fascinating
moments and Margolit’s drawing links to the influence of Fantomas even to such
a film as Mikhail Romm’s Ленин в Октябре (Lenin
in October) is the kind of suggestive discovery that one comes to expect from
one of Russia’s greatest film scholars. Another interesting point that emerged
during the discussion was how Danelia’s Афония (Afoniya) was the victor of a screen writing
competition about the working class.
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| Evgeny Margolit. |
The question
that arose in the course of the lecture about Balabanov’s film Брат (Brother) led to Margolit suggesting
that there was a thread that led from earlier Soviet characters through to
Daniel Bagrov. So that Chapaev, Voland, Bender, Detochkin and Bagrov are part
of one and the same archetype. Whether this thread has been broken and whether
a repeat of Balabanov’s feat will be repeated was discussed. For Margolit and
Kireeva Balabanov’s film was produced because of a number of circumstances all
came together. It was the last period in which these circumstances have
favoured such a possibility. Margolit sees some continuity in Detochkin’s film Деточки and yet there is almost no
distribution for this film at all (in spite of it being a popular rather than
art house film). Interestingly both Margolit and Kireeva were among the few
scholars and critics at the time to acknowledge the power and significance of
Balabanov’s film for Russian cinema. Balabanov’s film was at the receiving end
of just the same hostile criticism that the other Soviet films that they
mentioned above.
Other films
mentioned by Margolit of the past decade were Abdrashitov’s last film Магнитные Буры (Magentic Storms), Melikian’s Русалка ( Mermaid) and some of Andrei
Gryazev’s early documentary films. Another neglected name was Dmitry
Svetozarov. Much of the prepared lecture had to be abandoned by the rather
insistent intent of one member of the audience to bring contemporary issues
into the forefront (whereas what had been prepared was a more historical look
at popular Soviet cinema). Nonetheless in spite of this, Margolit and Kireeva
managed to produce a wealth of fascinating observations to their talk.
On the
Friday of the festival a large round table on ‘How to Help Russian Cinema?’ was
held, chaired by Russia’s film critic Andrey Plakhov. Many leading lights of
the Russian film industry were present from many different areas of operations.
Much of the discussion was about the complex issue of state support. Is it
necessary and how to use it (without being used by the state). Anton Dolin, a
film critic, made a provocative suggestion of refusing all state support and
trying to get the industry to swim by itself. Most speakers seemed to feel that
this was impossible although Victor Matizen argued that the dependence on
government funding forced the film industry to act in a schizophrenic way. The
film director Khotinenko argued for his idea of having a Year of the Debut-
only in this way could the film industry encourage new blood into the industry.
Vitaly Mansky talked of the absurdity of the state support in documentary film
where nearly all the funds go to finance films that nobody ever gets to see
(and which are very badly produced). Those documentaries which do have success
are only ever extremely rarely given any state funding. Another point was made
as to how Russian film shouldn’t be compared to the American film industry with
which it has nothing in common but rather to the Brazilian film industry. The
quantity of viewers and the number of films made are somewhat similar.
Vyacheslav Smyrov spoke about how there was not one model of cinema and that
the Soviet model was in a way a more open model than the present model because
as well as a state component it also had a social component to it. And the
general dialogue between cinema and society that was present in the Soviet
times has been lost. Here he mentioned Margolit’s and Kireeva’s lecture and how
some of the leading films of the late Soviet period were produced through
script writing competitions. As well as Danelia’s film mentioned above, the
Oscar winner Москва слезам не верит (Moscow
doesn’t believe in tears) was also produced this way. Some suggestions were
made by Joel Shapron and Nancy Condee as to how things were done in France (how
the state supports the whole variety of film) and America (the importance of
film in education and the university film clubs and discussion around film as
part of a university education). Rodniansky emphasised how Russian cinema is
orientated only towards its own market and not any others. In fact, as Andrey Plakhov mentioned in his
introduction there have been no international hits since Zviagintsev’s Елена (Elena) or Sokurov’s Фауст (Faust). Interestingly an earlier talk on
international co-productions was reported to have been one of the least
attended sessions of this festival and the figures of actual co-productions are
exceedingly depressing.
All in all
the round table made for some depressing listening. Whether this gloomy picture
reflects reality or a certain tendency to look more on the dark side of things
is a question to be considered. Nonetheless, one can also hear these statements
in many other countries from Italy to the UK and, perhaps, the gloom
surrounding cinema’s future is not merely a Russian issue. Equally gloomy was a
round table discussion on cinema on television which came to the conclusion
that no quality cinema was ever likely to reach large audiences in contemporary
circumstances.
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| Gennadi Sidorov |
One of the
special screenings was devoted to the last film made by Gennadi Sidorov (but,
alas, he was unable to edit the film before his untimely death). An adaptation
of M. Ageev’s (a pseudonym of philologist and translator Mark Levi) cult
underground émigré classic Роман с Кокаином (Novel with Cocaine), it transferred the
story to the Moscow of the present time. Uneven but atmospheric this film
curiosity nevertheless demonstrates what a lost talent Sidorov could have been
for Russian cinema. In his lifetime Sidorov played many other roles in film
other than director of movies but on the basis of this film if he had
concentrated his talents on filming more, recent Russian cinema would have been
all the richer for it.
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| A Novel about Cocaine |
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