At the Solyanka Gallery in Moscow a Tarkovsky exhibition has just opened. Apart from showing almost fourty films about or by Tarkovsky and those most closely associated with him it also has a number of exhibits ranging from photographs, to sketches for films and storyboards as well as a selection of film posters, costumes from various films and juvenilia ranging from letters that Tarkovsky wrote as a child to his parents to some of his own early art works. It is in many ways a minor exhibition for those who don't have the time to sit in to watch the films but nonetheless the Solyanka is one of the few places in Moscow to mark the 80th anniversary of Tarkovsky's birth and they should be commended for this small but worthwhile exhibition.
The photos range from sketches for Andrey Rublev, Solaris, his VGIK film 'The Killers', a costume for Ivan's Childhood, posters for 'The Steamroller and the Violin' and 'Stalker' and an oil painting by Tarkovsky from 1956.
Last month at the Multi-media Museum in Moscow a small exhibition of stills from Kozintsev's 'Hamlet' took place. Here are some of the stills on display (apologies for the poor quality of the reproductions).
If most of the attention on Russian film this year is focused on Zviagintsev's 'Elena' and Sokurov's 'Faust' this year another film deserves a certain recognition. A recognition that it clearly hasn't seemed to get even in Russia. This week Nikolai Khomeriki's black and white film Сердца-бумеранг (Heart's Boomerang) has been released and yet it is showing at only one cinema in the whole of Moscow - the Pioner - on Kutuzovsky Prospekt. A great shame as there is a lot to be said in defence of this film even though few commentaries- even among professional critics whether in the Russian film journal 'Seance' or in the recent article by Mihaela Mihailova for the site Kinokultura http://www.kinokultura.com/2012/35r-bumerang.shtml have really shown any real enthusiasm. And yet Khomeriki is starting to look like one of the few really original voices to have emerged from the New Wave that has emerged in fits and starts since 2003 and the Zviagintsev/Koktebel revelations of that year.
As Elena Gracheva argued in her article Bместо катарсиса ('Instead of Catharsis') in the Seance magazine, Nikolai Khomeriki has managed to use a perfect plot for melodrama and turned it fully against itself. That the predicament of learning that one can be victim to sudden death can be cathartic is done away with in this film. The knowledge for the protagonist is not a turning point and only seems to deepen his catatonic acceptance of a life lived with reticence and apathy. It is this truth which shatters preconceptions that have been held far too long and which makes the film so radical. (In this way it resonates with Zviagintsev's 'Elena' and the protagonists similar lack of a noticeable reaction to her own act of murder). There are other parallels with Zviagintsev (this time with the film 'Banishment') in the deliberate refusal to locate the action and furthermore in stirring up the confusion by filming in two contradictory locations - in 'Heart's Boomerang' the St Petersburg underground is filmed with Moscow external scenes.
What Khomeriki brings to Russian film is a new sensitivity that is not necessarily purely Russian. His work with Leos Carrax and Philippe Garrel and his studying at French as well as Russian film schools (in Russia he studied under Khotinenko but was also taught by Alexei German and Vladimir Menshov) has meant that there are certain aspects of Khomeriki's work which are rather unique to Russian film. He himself has spoken about how few Russian directors have given their full attention to filming female characters (and his previous film сказка про темноту 'A tale about darkness' was notable in the attention paid to bringing about a new angle to the cinematic image of woman in Russian film). He has reached a point in 'Heart's Boomerang' where these two cinematic cultures have managed to merge successfully and where their negative aspects are excised. The Russian film critic Roman Volobuyev succintly spoke of how their is a contrast between the European phonetics and syntax of the film (Garelist mis-en-scenes and elipses) and a deeply Russian semantics- with all of Khomeriki films exploring the world of тоска́.
The film recalls a number of films of the Thaw - whether it be Ioseliani's Жил певчий дрозд (There lived a song-thrush) or the early films of Muratova but Plakhov also mentions Agnes Varda's 'Cleo from five to seven' as being as the source of inspiration for the film. The unrelenting but rhytmical beauty of the sequences in which the protagonists travels trance-like into the tunnels of the metro also recollect something of Ermanno Olmi's rhythmical exploration of lifeless routine in his films 'Il posto' and 'Lunga vita alla signora' as well as the laconic protagonist of Свободное плавание (Free Floating).
This is a film which will surely gain a greater reputation in time and people will surely soon wonder at the lack of an adequate inital response to this truly world-class film by a truly original voice in Russian and European cinema.
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The emphasis on confinement and isolation is achieved thanks also to the superb cinematography of Shandor Berkeshi who has managed to perfectly capture the visual reality of "a world where freedom is no longer an option" (Mihailova in Kino Kultura). Berkeshi also shot 'Roads to Koktebel'' that first venture into the new Russian cinematic wave that Khomeriki belongs to.
One of the most unusual films I remembered watching at Moscow's Muzei Kino- before it was shut down by gutless bureaucrats and Nikita Mikhalkov- was the yiddish-language film Возвращение Нейтана Беккера 'The return of Nathan Becker', made in 1932 at the behest of Belarus Film studios. One of the only yiddish language films made in the Soviet Union this was to be only part of a long history of Jewish cinema in the Soviet Union whose story has been recounted by Miron Chernenko in his volume entitled Red Star- Yellow Star Красная звезда - желтая звезда (кинематографическая история еврейства в России). No clips of the film seem to be available on Youtube but I did find this extraordinary clip of Mikhoels playing King Lear at the Jewish State Theatre in 1935. Mikhoels was to be killed off in a staged motor accident in 1948 (given his phenomenal popularity in the Soviet Union and abroad a show trial would have been too risky for Stalin) whereas the script writer Peretz Markish (father to the Russian language Israeli author David Markish) was subjected to a show trial along with a number of Jewish intellectuals and exceuted along with them on what was to become as the Night of the Murdered Poets. In English the extraordinary tale of Yiddish cinema in the Soviet Union is told in J. Hoberman's short essay 'A face to the shtetl: Soviet Yiddish Cinema, 1924-1936' (published in 'Inside the Film Factory'). A film on Jewish Theatre in the Soviet Union called 'Balancing Acts' has been made (a short clip of which is available on youtube http://www.youtube.com /watch?v=KF1ZOvMi18k ). This article from Haaretz also talks about David Markish's relation to his father and to Isaac Babel http://www.haaretz.com/culture/arts-leisure/tongue-tied-on-the-page-1.284239
The Soviet 1920s didn't signal only the flowering of Yiddish language art but was also the location of a brief renaissance in Roma culture- a story which has been barely told. I was made aware of this fact one day on a car journey from Bratislava to Brno by one of the Czech Republics foremost scholars of Roma culture, the late Milena Hübschmannová, who told me of the extraordinary Soviet writer of Czech roma origin, Alexandr Germano and the flourishing renaissance of roma culture in the Soviet Union of the pre-Stalin period. The Romen theatre, founded in 1931, is still running today and in fact the first major musical-dramatic performance was Жизнь на колёсах (Life on Wheels)- based on a play by Germano. A brief history of this theatre is given in its wikipedia entrance http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Romen_Theatre
From the Russian Film Blog I discovered this little gem of an animated film by Dziga Vertov (here is the link to this post http://russianfilm.blogspot.com/2012/03/soviet-toys-1924-dziga-vertov-goskino.html). By the way for any Russian/Soviet киноманы (film buffs) I'd strongly recommend the blog as it is much more regular in posting than I am and offers a whole host of subtitled clips of recent and sometimes historical films. Knowing of Vertov's contempt for fiction I was quite astounded at this ten minute clip. It seems though that Vertov was at the very heart of the process of initiating Soviet animated film. Another two films Случай в Токио (An Incident in Tokio) and Юморески (Humoresque) are recorded as being directed by Vertov. The rather basic techniques used in the 'Kultkino' studies in 1924-1925 were soon superseded. For some notes in Russian on this early period here is a link with further information: http://www.myltik.ru/index.php?topic=interes/history&fe=history3
In a previous post http://giuvivrussianfilm.blogspot.com/2010/02/telemaco-signorini-ilya-repin.html
I noted the similarities between a painting by Telemaco Signorini and
one of the great classics of Russian art: Ilya Repin’s ‘Barge Haulers on
the Volga’. A visit to the Tretiakovskaya Gallery a few months ago on Krymsky
Val suggested that the link between Telemaco Signorini and Russian art
was more than simply hypothetical. Although the great Russian artist is
better known for his works on historical and religious or biblical
motifs, the time spent in Italy clearly shows how Ghe was influenced by
the macchaioli movement and, in particular, by Telemaco Signorini. He
spent a number of summers in the Gulf of Poets near La Spezia which was
to influence not only Shelley and Byron but also D.H.Lawrence and Mario
Soldati. Many of Ghe’s landscapes of San Terenzo or Carrara bear the
unmistakeable stamp of the macchaiolo technqiue of Signorini or
Cabianco. One more link in the chain of mutual Italian-Russian
influences. And one more indicator that Liguria and Tuscany are the most
‘Russian’ of Italian regions. The great Mordovian sculptor Stepan Erzia who I blogged about yesterday would also spend time in
Italy precisely in this Ligurian-Tuscan borderland so rich in artistic
and literary history. Other names linking Russia to Liguria include
those of Marina Tsvetaeva, Tchaikovsky, and Vrubel. An early twentieth century writer from the
La Spezia region who has written some fascinating pages on the Cinque Terre and Lunigiana Ettore Cozzani also had many links to late 19th century Russian exiles living in Liguria.
A trip to Saransk in September 2001 was the first time I
would hear of Stepan Erzia, a sculptor from a Mordovian tribe who would spend
most of his life outside of Russia living for over two decades in Argentina and
also spending years in France and Italy. A further exhibition in Moscow later
in the same year meant that for the first time I could see a selection of his
sculptures. (In Saransk as far as I remember the museum was closed for
reconstruction). It is only now that I have decided to return to the city and
visit the museum which holds the largest collection of his works. A whole floor
of the museum is devoted to Erzia’s sculptures and the chance to see some like
his sculpture of Moses is undoubtedly a rewarding experience. While it is
stated that the Museum holds two hundred of his works, less than a hundred were
on display. Many of these were those produced in Argentina with new materials
such as the quebracho and algarrobo and yet it was well before this period that
Erzia made a name for himself.
Erzia would become Mordovia’s most rooted and yet most
cosmopolitan and universal of artists owing much to his extraordinarily errant life
story. His birth in a small Mordovian village – Bayevo- to a family of peasants
in pre-revolutionary Russia meant that his development as artist was no simple
one. In fact his professional education would only begin at the age of 26.
Nonetheless, his assimilation of this training was very rapid. His
revolutionary sympathies with the 1905 revolution would lead him to emigrate to
western Europe in 1907 due to the
repressive climate of the aftermath of the revolution. His trip to Italy and
then France would lead him to absorb all the influences of classical Italian
sculpture as well as more contemporary European sculpture. He would visit the
studio of Rodin in Paris and be influenced by the tragic images of this sculptor
as well as the bright expression of images (a greater influence than the exuberance
of Italian impressionists). A return to Italy in 1914 would lead to his
mastering of marble (given his presence in the marble capital of Massa
Carrara). Amidst his works created in Italy were the figure of St John the Baptist
created for the cathedral in la Spezia and a figure of a Priest. A friend of
his, an inspector of museums, Ugo Nebbia, would write a novel based on the life
of Erzia in Italy entitled ‘Il Viandante’ (The Wanderer).
Erzia would return to Russia in 1914 at the eve of World War
One and although he planned a rapid return to Western Europe (leaving his
sculptures in European studios) he was not to return for over a decade. His marble
sculptures in the latter period of the 1910s allude to the influence that
symbolism was to have in this period of his career (‘Repose’ in 1915 and his
monumental ‘Dream’ (1919) were the two most notable examples of this
influence). Post-revolutionary times would show him active both pedagogically
and in the erection of public and monumental sculpture in Yekaterinburg, Baku
and Batumi. Influenced by the work of Sergey Konenkov he would change from using
marble to wood- this search for a new style would become evident in his time in
the Caucasus and a certain modernist influence is perceivable in his work ‘Flying’
– the influence of Vrubel’s ‘Demon’ is detectable in this work.
His exhaustion of the revolutionary theme was
becoming palpable and an invitation to Paris on the behest of Lunacharsky would
evidently lead him on to a new odyssey which would mark his mature years. Due
to the difficulties of travelling within Europe Erzia would arrive in Argentina
via Montevideo and then spend two and a half decades working with quebracho and
algarrobo (two types of wood) to model some of the most impressive of his
sculptures. The hardness, the wide range of hues and the expressiveness of
quebracho would especially lend itself to Erzia’s sculptures and the expressive
contrast between the polished and the unpolished in these works are central to
his unique place in contemporary sculpture. The contrast in style between the
male (more expressive and indicative of a sense of abandon and hopelessness) and
female (more full of grace and perfection) portraits is an especially
significant indicant of his work. His models of different national types are
another important feature of this period. His return to a Mordovian theme reflected
in some ways a sense of homesickness.
His return to the Soviet Union in 1950
would be a return marked with both initial neglect and it was only after Stalin’s
death that an exhibition of his works would be staged in a showroom on
Kuznetsky Most in Moscow. This exhibition in 1954 would be one of the first artistic
signs of the post-Stalinist thaw. However his final years were a mixed time in
which he live in a country which he barely recognised. He died in 1959
(according to one legend he died after tripping onto the statue of his head of
Lenin hitting his own head against the head of the leader of the world’s
proletariat). He was buried in Saransk.
The death of Tonino Guerra has been felt most in two countries- the two countries between which Tonino Guerra acted like a bridge. If the squalid rapport between Putin and Berlusconi in politics was an affront to both peoples the symbol of a real common cultural link was exemplified by Guerra. In an interview Guerra called himself an Italo-Russian and, if the reaction to his death is anything to go by Russians seemed to treasure Guerra even more than Italians did. I've often blogged on Italians in Russian (Soviet) cinema whether it is about Pietro Marcello's film on Peleshian and his views on Russian film, or about other Italians such as Gino de Marchi http://giuvivrussianfilm.blogspot.com/2011/05/italians-in-soviet-cinema-gino-de.html , Italian adaptations of Russian classics http://giuvivrussianfilm.blogspot.com/2011/03/lattuadas-overcoat-and-viscontis-white.html as well as the earlier relations between Italian and Soviet film history http://giuvivrussianfilm.blogspot.com/2010/02/soviet-cinema-in-italy.html and the fascinating story of Francesco Misiano (the Italian who brought the Battleship Potemkin to Berlin in a suitcase and who played a major part in the formation of Mezhrabpom film studios) http://giuvivrussianfilm.blogspot.com/2009/12/francesco-misiano.html
Tonino Guerra's link with Russian and Soviet cinema as well as Russian culture as a whole was simply enormous and in fact the warmest tributes to Guerra have from Russia. If Guerra was to write over 100 film scripts of some of the most significant films in post-war European cinema working with Fellini, De Sica, Antonioni, Rosi, Petri,the Taviani brothers and many others in Italy as well as Theo Anghelopous very few of these European titans are now living. it is only in Russia where many of his closest colleagues are still alive. Although he will always be remembered for his collaboration of Tarkovsky in Nostalgia, he has also worked with Andrei Khrzhanovsky who flew to Italy to be with him during his last days http://www.inosmi.ru/europe/20120322/188849280.html#comm Krrzhanovsky called Tonino Guerra someone who should be compared with the titans of the Renaissance - he was not merely a scriptwriter of many great films but also a great artist, sculptor, a poet and a philosopher. He spoke of his extraordinary human qualities as did Naum Kleiman (another close friend of Tonoino Guerra) who was to compare Guerra with an angel bringing forth light and being able to transmit the joy of life so that it would stay with one for the rest of one's life. Other close friends of Tonino included Iurii Norstein and Iurri Liubimov who would stage Guerra's play Мед (Honey) at the Taganka theatre. In recent years Moscow Dom Nashchokina presented Guerra's artistic works to the Moscow public.
I remember hearing Roman Balayan in a talk about Sergei Paradjanov describe a visit by Guerra (who joined the campaign for Paradjanov's release from jail when imprisoned) to his house. Guerra ended up shouting from balcony that Sergei was a genius (he had told Paradjanov this who replied that he already knew but that his neigbours in Yerevan needed to know this). Tonino Guerra was also to recount how while crossing the road in Rome in the early 1960s he was to be nearly run over by a car. He uttered a loud blasphemous phrase to the car's occupants only to quickly find that out of the window of the car popped Pope John 23rd's head who proceeded to bless Guerra with a smile and the sign of the cross (the blasphemy- by the way- could be considered more offensive than that uttered by Pussy Riot at the Cathedral of Christ the Saviour last month but Vsevolod Chaplin is no John 23rd and nor have there been any successors in the Vatican to match the humanity of this Pope either). Another tale has been told about how Guerra scared away a secret policeman in incognito after a walk with Tarkovsky in the snow. Guerra's offer to the policeman to come up and drink something in that cold weather terrified the kgbeshnik so much that the agent was to flee the scene in terror!
Guerra's contribution to European cinema and culture is one of these things that will only be apparent in decades to come. Russians because of the vicinity of Guerra to their culture have managed to appreciate the real cultural force of this true poet and renaissance man and in Russia he has always been a truly popular figure. In years to come his name will stand out as perhaps one of the greatest scriptwriters of late 20th century but also as an artist, sculptor, playwright and poet of similar stature. His poetry has been translated into Russian by none other than Bella Akhmadulina. Other names close to Tonino Guerra and one artist and cinematographer with a similar outlook on life is the extraordinary artist and close friend of Tonino Guerra, Shavkat Abdusalamov.
Here is one of Andrey Khrzhanovsky's films made from the script of Tonino Guerra - 'The Lion with a Grey Beard'
Having intended to write my next post on Sokurov's 'Faust' in the past weeks there has been little else on the culture front than the 'Pussy Riot' scandal here in Russia. Even though this subject is not a cinematic one it is impossible to ignore it. Impossible because religion has been encroaching on cultural life in Russia to such a disturbing extent that it has affected and poisoned all areas of culture including film. An earlier post of mine noted the increasing number and tendentiousness of religiously based films in recent Russian cinema http://giuvivrussianfilm.blogspot.com/search?updated-max=2010-02-25T01:37:00-08:00&max-results=20&start=20&by-date=false and the 'religious plague' as I called it then seems only to have increased in pace. The Khotinenko's, Mikhalkov's and Burlayev's are only the most visible representatives of this trend first identified by Frederick Jameson in a footnote on his splendid article on Soviet Magic Realism in 1988. The link between autocracy, Orthodoxy and nationalism has also been exemplified in the appalling 'Admiral' a few years ago.
The signs that Orthodoxy was going to launch a frontal assault on cultural diversity and attempt to impose a quasi-totalitarian grip on the arts have steadily grown more evident. The scandalous persecution of the Sakharov Centre, art curators as well as humanist or secularist artists and the accompanying hooliganism of fanatical Orthodox thugs was most evident during the 'Beware Religion' (Осторожно, религия!) exhibition in 2003 ( along with evidence that the state was actively supporting these trends): this was surely one of the the first and most worrying signals of this threat. 2012, however, has seen this assault threatening to blow up to ever more absurd proportions. The Mikhalkov scandals in the Union of Cinematographers http://giuvivrussianfilm.blogspot.com/2010/04/schism-in-cinematographers-union.html as well as the attempt to force feed the contemporary Russian viewer with his national Orthodox re-reading of World War Two http://giuvivrussianfilm.blogspot.com/2010/04/burnt-by-sun-2-cranberry-soup-quick.html have been two more (among many) examples of this national-patriotic-religious tendency in the arts. However it has only been this year that the assault by the hierarchy of the Russian Orthodox Church and assorted nationalists and black one hundred мракобесие has become blindingly obvious to all and sundry. The story surrounding the takeover of the weekly newspaper/journal Культура (the voicepiece of the Russian intellighentsia which had always given one of the most detailed and knowledgeable accounts of trends in all the arts) and its 'conversion' into a ranting rag in which its editor - previously Mikhalkov's ranter-in-chief in the newspaper Izvestia, Elena Yampolskaya - can rave, harangue and spew her poisonous diatribes against all the enemies of Orthodoxy.
With this journal under their belt, the Orthodox Black Hundred claque have felt it possible to move on to new territory. Diatribes, rants and harangues are not enough- the acquisition of the voice of the dwindling intelligentsia is such a small catch compared to the opportunity they decided to grab with both hands after the irreverent performance of one of the more radical art groups - the masked and anonymous feminist punk outfit 'Pussy Riot' - at Moscow's Christ the Saviour Cathedral. An initially quiet church reaction was revved up into hysteria by such church autocrats such as Vsevolod Chaplin and in turn they instigated more hysteria in the media and in society.
The polemics over the detention of band member's, the calls for leniency amongst more reasonable members of the Orthodox Church, the increasingly fanatic stance taken by Chaplin leading him to assert that holy shrines have more value than human life, and the violence of many orthodox national-patriots against pickets in solidarity with Pussy Riot- a violence given an endorsement by those in the Church like Chaplin who, in the face of the absurd seven-year sentence that alleged members of the group have been threatened with, complains that if the state will not punish blasphemy the 'people' will. By 'the people' he appears to mean his band of thugs and hooligans- all these facts have been at the centre of attention here in Russia in the past month.
While all this, of course, is mainly straight polemics it is nonetheless the wider context from which Pussy Riot and groups like 'Voina' have sprung and have tried to resist in their own inimitable way. Their reaction has been, in many instances, radical and, given the context, militant. It is surely difficult to judge them in purely artistic terms because of this context. They deserve, I believe, all the solidarity that they can get - facing a seven year jail sentence, a hysterical campaign in the state-run press and being threatened with losing the custody of their children is the kind of vile atmosphere that militant secular humanists and fighters for 'unpopular causes' such as feminism and LGBT rights are increasingly forced to face. Their two month arrest before the actual trial contrasts nauseously with the house arrest given to police officers who violated a prisoner to death with a champagne bottle in the city of Kazan. The downplaying of real violence or ,rather, the emphasis on offense, blasphemy and sacrilege so as to justify the downgrading of human life and the incursion of religious fanaticism into culture has been to me the most worrying aspect of the past few months. In another blog, however, I hope to continue the argument regarding Pussy Riot linking it to other manifestations of artistic dissidence and dissonant trends reacting against clerical Orthodoxy or more openly anti-clerical manifestations. Here for now ends this polemical introduction to the subject. My next post hopefully will be of a more historical character. For now I'll leave readers with Vysotsky's Моя цыганская and his prescient words:
В церкви - смрад и полумрак,
дьяки курят ладан...
Нет, и в церкви все не так,
все не так, как надо!
In the church; stench and gloom,
Preachers burning incense.
No! Even in church everything's wrong,
Not as it should be.
The Garazh Centre of Contemporary Culture, Moscow.
A couple of years I posted on various film venues to be found in Moscow http://giuvivrussianfilm.blogspot.com/2010/05/blog-post.html This time I thought it would be worth writing about some art venues in the capital of Russia. There are too many to actually do justice to and perhaps it is not really worth giving more space to the really large and estabished museums such as the Tretyakov galleries and Central house of the Artists, or the well established Pushkin Museum of Art or the nearby museums including the Museum of Personal Collections. These museums are so well documented in any guide that it would be pointless to add much here. However, I thought I'd try to write about some of my favourites and hope that I will continue on another post.
1) One of the largest complexes of art space is the Garazh Centre for Contemporary Culture http://www.garageccc.com/en. This space is actually moving this spring to Gorky Park. It is not necessarily a favourite of mine (for reasons as much political as cultural) but most definitely has had some spectacularly important exhibitions. Most recently it hosted two of the greatest contemporary artists alive in the world today: Marina Abramovic' and William Kentridge and last year hosted an important extended cinema exhibition devoted to the works of Isaac Julien, Eija-Liisa Ahtila and Yang Fudong. Another major exhibition was devoted to Cuban photography during and after the revolution. Rothko and David Lynch were other exhibited artists and the centre was inaugurated in September 2008 with a major retrospective of Ilya and Emilia Kabakov.
2) Another major art centre in Moscow is the Vinzavod Complex http://www.winzavod.ru/eng/ It is a complex of tens of small galleries some of which are more interesting than others. My favourites are the Proun gallery (which always seems to exhibit the more historical art - at present it has a collection of family portraits of Russian avant-gardists Nadezhda Udaltsova and Aleksandr Drevin http://echo.msk.ru/blog/tatiana_pelipeiko/861425-echo/ Other exhibitions included one devoted to Georgian artist Niko Pirosmani as well as another exhibition of rare cinema posters from the early years of Soviet cinema. The gallery has small exhibitions but the quality of artwork well compensates for its small quantity. The Marat Guelman gallery in Vinzavod is also usually well worth a visit. http://www.guelman.ru/gallery/moscow/
3) The photographic arts are well catered for in Moscow. Apart from large exhibitions such at the Photography Biennale held at the Manezh, the largest space for photography is the newly reopened Photography Museum called the Multimedia Art Museum in the Ostozhenka. Now housing seven floors of exhibits it has housed some really fabulous exhibitions. http://www.mamm-mdf.ru/exhibitions/ A film buff would be particularly interested in the photographs of Stanley Kubrick taken between 1945-1950 http://www.mamm-mdf.ru/exhibitions/history-in-photographs-1945-1950/ Another favourite of mine was the retrospective of photographs of the Spanish photographer Alberto Garcia Alix.
4) A smaller photographic centre is the Bratiev Lumiere http://lumiere.ru/ located near the old Red October Chocolate factory. Its recent exhibition of Italian neorealist photography as well as the Koudelka exhibition this autumn http://afoniya.wordpress.com/2011/10/23/koudelka-exhibition- in-moscow/ are only two of the fascinating exhibitions held in this small centre. The Italian neo-realist exhibition was accompanied by the showing of Italian neo-realist classics in its centre. At present an exhibition of Silver Age St Petersburg photography is exhibited alongside an exhibition documenting recent political demonstrations for political changes in Bolotnaya Ploshchad and Sakharov Prospekt.
5) Cinematic subjects are regularly touched upon in one of the most interesting art museums of the capital Dom Nashchokina http://domnaschokina.ru/ Exhibitions dedicated to Otar Ioseliani and more recently to actress Liudmila Gurchenko have been supplemented by a whole range of very high quality exhibitions ranging from photographs of Che Guevara to artists ranging from Zinaida Serebriakova to Anatolii Zverev.
I have written a number of times on this blog about the many links between Italian and Russian or Soviet cinema and this is another occasion in which I will do so. The motive is a new documentary film by the director of 'La Bocca del Lupo', Pietro Marcello. Marcello's attentiveness to Russian and Soviet cinema was highlighted in an interview published in the Russian review 'Seance'. A wide-ranging interview occasioned by the showing of his documentary film 'The Silence of Peleshian'. The film, commissioned by Italy's Rai Tre (at times an oasis of cultural excellence that somehow survived the asphixiation of culture by Berlusconian videocracy), is a portrait of the figure of Artavazd Peleshian and was shown to great acclaim at the Venice and Rotterdam film festivals. Peleshian has been described by Russian film critic Oleg Aronson as the only real successor to Soviet montage cinema of the 1920s and it is an immense shame that his name is not known more among cinephiles. While Jean Luc Godard is reported to have said that he is willing togo down on his knees in fornt of the director, Peleshian is not a household among either in Russia or abroad. Marcello stated that half of the film journalists at the press conference had never heard of Peleshian and the other half were surprised that Peleshian was still alive.
Marcello in this film- made with the agreement of, in the presence of and with the participation of Peleshian (even though Peleshian is not interviewed in the film, hence the title) - also attempts to display his own relation to Soviet cinema. In the interview with Seance, Marcello talks about his favourites. He rates Sokurov's 'Faust' as the strongest film and has a rather critical view of Zviagintsev's 'Elena'. He praised Khomeriki's film 'Hearts Boomerang' («Сердца бумеранг»). In terms of periods in Soviet cinema, he singles out the Thaw period stating that he believes Khutsiev's 'July Rain' («Июльский дождь») to be the best film of that epoch. He adds that Shukshin is a kind of Russian Pasolini (albeit without the bourgeois origins of the Italian master). Pietro Marcello's acknowledgment of his debt to soviet cinema and the 'distanced montage' of Peleshian (which becomes explicit in his film homage) is yet another sign that Russian/Soviet (Peleshian like in part the great Paradjanov being Armenian rather than Russian) and Italian cinema have extremely strong ties. (Sokurov's insistence that his book of essays and sketches should be first printed in Italian is yet another sign of these close links). Marcello's extraordinary and hitherto lesser known film 'Il Paesaggio di Linea' (available on youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RLNjCAMu9rE) was shown by Sokurov to his students in Nalchik as an example of how to treat reality in documentary cinema.
Moscow's Literature Museum have offered Moscovites a real treat with its exhibition presenting the art and animated films of Alexandre Alexeieff- a Russian artist who in spite of spending spent all of his creative life outside Russia can not really be seen as anything other than an artist deeply wedded to a Russian mentality and Russian themes. His illustrated art was concentrated on Russian literature and his animated art was equally Russian-centric - Mussorgsky and Gogol. Alexeieff's invention of a pin screen technique can be seen as a precursor of many contemporary animation techniques using computer software and yet it was Alexeieff's desire to animate his book engraving maintaining its texture and chiaroscuro effects that led him to animation. Moreover, he rejected any commercial techniques that were then in vogue. In fact, his invention -the pin screen- certainly brought no commercial benefits. The work on an animated film with this technique was laborious and the first film made by Alexeiff and Clair Parker - A Night on Bare Mountain - would take over a year and a half to make. Alexeieff managed to keep his art pure from commercial constraints by earning his living through advertising work where he would use more conventional animated technqiues. His pin screen films would make nothing (he refused to use them for commercial use) but they would leave an artistic legacy of enormous potential.
Nikolai Izvolov, in a fascinating essay printed in the catalogue to the exhibition, links Alexeiff's artistic research to a search for the fourth dimension linking his attempts to those of Kibalchich and Tsiolkovsky in their meditation on rocket and space science while imprisoned (Kibalchich) or working as a provincial mathematics teacher (Tsiolkovsky), or to the revolutionary Morozov whose reflections on the fourth dimension were made in a dark cell in Scliesselburg and finally to Eisenstein's notion of harmonic montage as being the fourth dimension of film. Izvolov concludes his essay by stating that Alexeieff strove all his life to stray in a space where consciousness and unconsciousness are on an equal footing. One of the few artists who seems to have travelled on a journey akin to that of Alexeiff is Yuri Norstein, the author of another article in the catalogue. Norstein calls Alexeiff one the great makers of animated film, far superior to that of producers such as Disney and he goes on to state that "Alexeiff was the first animator to place animated film in the context of world culture, to have grapsed the musical essence of the art of animation." The works that he created "are neither caricatures nor cartoons, but works whose dramatic action constitute the very essence of figurative art".
The exhibition in Moscow promotes the work of an artist whose real contribution to animated film has yet to be fully understood. A truly original master.
Returning to Russia may have meant little opportunity to watch any great films here with the closure of the Eisenstein library, the discontinuation of the Meyerhold and cinema lectures and the relative dearth of any supremely interesting modern films (with the partial exception of Zviagintsev's 'Elena' and the expectation of being able to watch Sokurov's hopefully in the near future). However, a visit to Moscow's best bookshop 'Falanster' has made me aware that a lot of significant new writing has been published on Russian film and that this, at least, is a cause for some joy. Hopefully, I'll review some of these books in more depth in following months but here, for the time being, is an indication of the titles and the subjects of these books. One of the first joys was to find a biography of Paradjanov being printed in Molodaya Guardia's series 'The Life of Remarkable People'. I am half way through this title and although at times I would have liked the author to have been more of a film critic in speaking of some of the films and have said more in defence of some of Paradjanov's early films instead of insisting too heavily on the view of a total break at the age of fourty from mere executor of external pressures from the Soviet film bureaucrats to a wilful artist who did everything in his power to give life to his real artistic vision, this book contains nonetheless some fascinating accounts of Paradjanov the man and the artist from someone who knew him during different periods of the artist's life.
Other titles include a new book by the author of the splendid monograph on Kira Muratova, Zara Abdullaeva. Her new book published by НЛО in their Кинотексти series is entitled Постдок (Postdoc) and is devoted to the theme of the border between Narrative and Documentary films- as well as being a reflection on this important theme, Abdullaeva publishes a number of interviews with film-makers and other cultural figures such as Vitaly Mansky, Lev Rubinstein, Sergei Bratkov, Anatoly Vasiliev and Ulrich Zaidl.
In the same series a monograph on Aleksei German by Anton Dolin. A book which includes interviews and scripts as well as plenty of detail on German's biography at the heart of Leningrad's cultural elite this promises to be a fascianting read.
Two books of unpublished articles and occasional pieces by Russian film scholars whose untimely deaths were a severe loss to this field have also been published. Rashit Yangirov's great oeuvre on Russian filmmakers abroad in the late 1920s and early 1930s Рабы Немого ( 'The slaves of silence') has been supplemented by a new book of essays entitled Другое Кино ('Another cinema') and includes essays on the history of Russian cinema in the first third of the twentieth century including essays on Khanzhankov and Drankov, Jewish cinema in Russia from 1908-1919, an essay on the history of Kuleshov's 'Mr West...', another on LEF as well as a potentially fascinating essay on the reception of Soviet films by Russian emigre writers. These are only some of the essays of Yangirov and the book promises to be a fascinating read. The other book includes some biographical prose by the great Neya Zorkaya called Как я стала киноведом (How I became a film scholar) and as well as including some of her notes towrads an autobiography, includes her memoirs of other film scholars and directors including those of Ilya Averbach, Viktor Demin and Tolomush Okeyev. A section is also devoted to memories of Zorkaya by such names as Mikhail Ulyanov, Inna Vishnevskaya, Alla Demidova, Aleksei Levinson and Olga Surkova. Further unpublished pieces by Zorkaya are included including a piece on Fellini as are some writings by her younger brothers Andrei and Pyotr.
Finally, new issues of Киноведческие Записки and Сеанс are out. Сеанс devotes its latest issue to the theme Faust to coincide with Sokurov's new film and КЗ has an interview with Sokurov, some articles to mark Yuri Tsivian's sixtieth birthday and a whole host of articles dedicated to the theme of Cinema and Theatre including one on Chaplin, Biomechanics and Meyerhold. Time to find some spare time and get reading all this.
Museum of Contemporary Art as part of the 4th Moscow Biennale of Contemporary Art is hosting a full-scale exhibition on Necrorealism. Not simply the films of Necrorealism but also the art work. Necrorealism has clearly come of age as far as the Moscow art establishment is concerned and this offering is a more than welcome one. The fact that some of the films are supplemented by texts (on necro dynamics, necro statistics and necro methodology), and some extraordinary art work and installations allows one to see the bigger picture of this movement.
Its appearance during the late Soviet stagnation period (the stagnation was to prefigure the appearance of a future corpse- the Soviet system) and its obsession with death was to lend itself to a certain reading which, although not necessarily mistaken, has arguably failed to account for the repeated significance of this movement. Once dubbed the Lenin of the Punk movement (Russian lead punk singer Svinya was said to have remarked that it was Iufit rather than Johnny Rotten who should be seen as the true leader of the world punk movement), Evgeny Iufit was clearly a much more significant figure than has hitherto been recognised by most contemporary film critics.
The necroperformances in which passers by would be horified by the appearance of presumed corpses after a staged fight and the early films made in the early eighties would become part of the Leningrad underground scene.
Iufit's move into 35mm filmmaking was facilitated by Aleksandr Sokurov who allowed him to work within his new Independent Studio in 1988. Iufit made his Knights of Heaven (Рыцари поднебесья) film there but this film was to signal a break between Sokurov and Iufit. Nonetheless the presence of the theme of death (and an unconventional approach to this theme) unites Sokurov's and Iufit's cinematography. Equally there are many references in Necrorealist film to Lang's expressionism as well as to Vertov and Eisenstein and to 1920s eccentricism. Even Andy Warhol's interminable shots seem to be another influence.
The exhibition gives us a chance to see some of the extraordinary works of necrorealist painters - including Iufit's but also that of Sergei Serp, Vladimir Kustov and Andrey Mertvy. In the case of Iufit this chance to see both some of his films as well as his art work offers an opportunity to assert the continuity of his essential vision. In Iufit's own words "the irrational force of nature, the pathology of the human mind, black humour and social grotesque incombination with the traditions of silent film, define the originality and the paradoxical nature of this movement."
That Necrorealism as a movement requires rediscovery outside of Russia has been argued in a splendid essay by Thomas H. Campbell in which he asserts that Iufit's body work represents a thoroughgoing "allegory of the social, political, psychological, artistic, and critical dead ends of the present day". http://www.kinokultura.com/2006/11-campbell.shtml#27 Whether it be true or not that Iufit is the only decent filmmaker working in Russia today as one of his more enthusiastic advocates argued in 2005, it is certainly true that Necrorealism must be considered as one of the most fascinating trends with late Soviet and early post-Soviet cinematography and art and deserving of a major reappraisal by major film and art critics.
Back in Russia for little over a fortnight it appears that little has changed in Russian film given the fact that the main news story is over Mikhalkov's film Цитадель being sent as Russia's Foreign Language Oscar- hopeful. This fact didn't pass through without a scandal with the chairman of the Russian Oscar Committee, Vladimir Menshov -a former Oscar winner with his Москва, слезам не верит (Moscow doesn't believe in tears) -stating that the film wasn't the right one for the Oscars and that there was no real discussion of the film by the committee. His calls for Mikhalkov's film to be withdrawn were followed by calls for him to be sacked. That Mikhalkov's film is part three of a trilogy and that his second part was very coldly received at Cannes didn't seem to move the Oscar Committee in its promotion of this film. Anyway, it seems that the Mikhalkov saga still has steam in it yet to cover the gossip pages. It seems that there will be little hope of either Putin (in the political sphere) or Mikhalkov (in the cinematic sphere) losing their monopolies for the time being.
One of the few sites in Moscow to promote the very best of Russian and Soviet cinema - the Eisenstein library- (which last year had some excellent retrospectives) has yet to return with a programme for this year. It has been closed for building repairs during the summer and seems only slowly to be coming back to life. The excellent series of lectures and film showings at the Meyerhold Museum which took place during the past two years seems to have been discontinued. A great shame: some of the most interesting scholars of Soviet cinema were to be seen there giving some excellent talks on former Meyerhold students who were to become some of the greatest actors or directors of Soviet cinema. To hear a lecture by such scholars as Naum Kleiman, Evgeny Margolit, Irina Grashchenkova or Vladimir Zabrodin and others by the great animated film director - Andrey Khrzhanovsky- was a true delight. Alas, this year it seems that this consolation has been denied.
As yet, film going in Moscow has only offered two films of any note in this fortnight. Avdotia Smirnova's comedy on relations between the intellighentsia and the power elite was a well-made film starring Fyodor Bondarchuk and Ksenia Rappoport. A well-made film and a well-scripted film but which didn't quite convince. My first impression of Zviagintsev's 'Elena' was far stronger. Zviagintsev has proved not to be Russia's new Tarkovsky but in Elena he has, it seems, made something new. A new artistic vision is certainly present and this was acknowledged at Cannes where Zviagintsev's won the Special Jury Prize in the Un certain regard competition. Some commentators suggested that it would have given Malick's 'The Tree of Life' a run for its money had it been included in the main competition. It is a film that finally talks about class in Russia today- some critics have given it a reactionary slant highlighting a kind of lumpenphobia in its message (and Zviagintsev himself has spoken of wanting to call the film 'The Invasion of the Barbarians') but, nonetheless the film artistically is far beyond what is normally dished out by Russian film-makers and deserves its worldwide distribution.
Other news includes the recent death of Tatyana Lioznova (in the photo). She was best known for the spy series Семнадцать мгновений весны 'Seventeen Moments of Spring' (1973) and her film Три тополя на Плющихе 'Three Poplars at Plyushchikha' (1967). The spy series is probably the ultimate classic of Soviet spy thrillers (along with Barnet's much earlier Подвиг Разведчика ' Exploits of an Intelligence Agent'). Lioznova, like Muratova, studied under Sergei Gerasimov at VGIK and became alongside both Muratova and Shepitko one of the Soviet Union's most notable female film directors (Lioznova would go on to teach at VGIK). However, unlike them Muratova and Shepitko her sucess was one in the field of popular film rather than in that of creatng a whole new aesthetic direction to Russian film.
Given that I've been rather a long time without having had the opportunity of watching Russian and Soviet films or even reading much on the subject I thought I'd write a slightly superficial blog. A kind of list of those films which have given me the most joy. I'm not sure if I can define joy- it is not entertainment, not (just) aesthetic pleasure but an almost erotic pleasure of stepping out of accepted boundaries. If for me the most joyful experiences of film is Jean Vigo's 'Atalante' then these are some Russian or Soviet moments of joy.
У самого синего моря (By the bluest of seas). A French critic is reported to have spoke of getting an erection watching the first ten minutes of the film (surely no British critic would be so directly and honestly personal in describing such a film!). For me the film represents one of those films which are closest in spirit to a Vigo spirit. Shipwrecked engineers who arrive at a fishing kolkhoz and do nothing but pine after the kolchoz chairwoman Mashenka. Their jealous rivalries and constant failures to seduce her (for she loves a third sailor present only in a photograph) take up all their productive energies. As this is 1936 in any other film these characters would be unmasked as saboteurs. Here they are free roaming troubadours- a miracle in the desert of the impoverished Stalinist imagination. Moreover, their official papers have been blanched and they come and go from the kolchoz as they please (suspicious characters indeed but not in this film). The scene of Masha's resurrection is as joyful and as moving as the moment where Atalante's sailor sees the image of his beloved under water.
Barnet, of course, was a tender and erotic filmmaker who freed himself from the imprisoning and lifeless ideology imposed at the time. If any of his films were to be ideological he made them so badly they would be useless (Ночь в сентябре 'A Night in September' springs to mind). Nonetheless there are many other joyous films, especially his Дом на Трубной (A House on Trubnaya Square) and Девушка с коробкой (A Girl with a hat-box) and his absolute masterpiece Окраина (The Outskirts).
Lutsik's Окраина is another of my great joys. About a quest for justice this post-soviet film drew all the best from the ideals of fighting for justice to make a film about a harsh revolt to reclaim land. Leaving out all the superfluous jargon and certainty of ultimate victory, Lutsik celebrates the momentary joy of an anarchic and hopeless revolt. An anti-capitalist film without the execrable thanatos-like grip of Soviet Marxist teleology, certainty and rhetoric.
Ioseliani's 'Listopad' (Falling Leaves) was one of those other films which utterly enchants. Just like Barnet's engineers Ioseliani's enologist behaves in a completely inconceivable way in his surroundings. If they ignore the order of the kolkhoz, Ioseliani's character subverts Soviet production by a revolt elevating the principle of true creativity. His revolt consists of pouring glue into a barrel of wine rather than letting it be bottled at the wrong time. His quasi insane sincerity when this is discovered makes him a joyous outsider. He also avoids the tricks that other men fall for escaping (unlike them) from the grips of a flirtatious woman winning, perhaps, her astonishment if not respect or love. A film showing the way to free oneself from the rhetoric and ways of the system, the tyranny of certain feminine whims or wiles and pointing towards an ideal of creation and autonomy. Ioseliani is a poet of joy and would have other films to add to this list. His most recent film Chantrapas returns to the Georgian language and the idea of autonomous creativity. In fact only a Chantrapas character would be able to create this joyful cinema (and Lutsik, Barnet and Ioseliani could all be defined as Chantrapas types).
Kanevsky's Замри, умри, воскресни! (Freeze, Die, Come to Life) would hardly be called by many a joyous film and yet it is an extraordinary tale of childhood love and friendship between the two characters Galia and Valerka (as much as anything else) in the harshest of environments. Their survival is miraculous in its way given the horrendous environment in which they find themselves but this was a strange joy to watch.
Other joyous jewels include Medvedkin's Счастье (Happiness), Kuleshov's Необычайные приключения мистера Веста в стране большевиков (The Extraordinary Adventures of Mr West in the land of the Bolsheviks)- the first film I saw at Moscow's legendary Musei Kino and which drew me to Soviet film. Elem Klimov's early comedies/ satires Добро пожаловать, или Посторонним вход воспрещен (Welcome, or no unauthorised entry)- almost a Soviet Zero de Conduite and his Похождения зубного врача (Adventures of a Dentist). Danelia's 'Mimino' (a Don Quijote based tale of a Georgian and an Armenian in Moscow) is incomparable as is his tale of a Soviet alcoholic plumber 'Afonija'. There is also joy in Папиросница от Моссельпрома (The Cigarette Girl from Mosselprom) and Komarov's excellent Поцелуй Мэри Пикфорд (The Kiss of Mary Pickford)- pure reflective joy looking at cinema making and cinema stardom.
To most people's minds to mention Odessa and cinema an image of the massacre at the Potemkin Steps in Eisenstein's 'Battleship Potemkin' comes to mind. Yet the history of cinema in Odessa is a long and fascinating one. In fact some Odessans like to claim that it was Josif Timchenko who shot the first cinematic film at Odessa's Hippodrome. His "Jumping Horseman" was shown on January 24th 1895 during a medical congress (weeks before the Lumiere brothers patented their cinematic machine in France). Whether Odessa is the real birthplace of world cinema or not, it is surely a city that has played a significant but often unacknowledged role in Russian and Soviet cinema history.
One of the few books available on this subject is Vadim Kostromenko's two-volume anecdotal history of the Odessa Film studios. In it he recounts his own memories of the studio after the Second World War and, in less detail, some of the original figures who developed cinema in Odessa including such figures as Peter Chardynin and the great silent move actress Vera Kholodnaya who died young in 1919 of the Spanish influenza and was buried accompanied by a huge crowd of Odessans. The films scripted by Odessa's literary legend Isaac Babel include the magnificent Benya Krik. Mayakovsky was also to write scripts for the Odessa Film Studio- seven in total (of which two were actually shot). Another name linked briefly to Odessa and cinema was Nikolai Erdman (one of the Soviet Union's greatest satirists). Among those who rebuilt cinema in Odessa in the post-revolutionary period of the 1920s was the legendary Mikhail Kapchinsky who, though arrested three times during various waves of repression, was to survive into the 1980s. It was Kapchinsky who brought Eisenstein's film 'Battleship Potemkin' to Odessa from Leningrad in order to save it from the autumnal climate of Leningrad which was making filming impossible and it was this fact that meant that the film would concentrate on the Odessa episode of the 1905 revolution and the fate of the Battleship Potemkin. In the 1920s profits from Italian films starring Lina Cavvallieri and Francesco Bertini would help restore film production in Odessa (rather than the American films popular elsewhere in the Soviet Union at that time).
A film about the Soviet-Polish War shot in Odessa was to star the legendary historical personage Kotovsky who agreed to play himself. This Robin Hood bandit figure turned Bolshevik unfortunately was not to live to become a film star. He was assassinated just before the film was about to go into production and so future generations have been denied this historical curiosity of watching the real Kotovsky act out his own life.
Alexander Dovzhenko was to begin his cinematic career in Odessa and although it was certainly not a successful beginning, it was here that he would develop his style of film-making to become one of the leading directors in the world.
Film-making in Odessa was to enter an uncertain period after 1929 which was to continue into the late Stalin period. In fact between 1929 and 1941 and between 1944 and 1952 the director of the Odessa Film Studios would be replaced almost annually. Many who worked here were to suffer repression and even execution (including many of Dovzhenko's former scriptwriters, co-directors and cameramen). The main task in the immediate post-war years in Odessa was to restore the film studio to its previous glory given the destruction and theft carried out by the Roumanian occupying forces during the war years.
Cinema in Odessa in post-war years got off to a slow start and it was only with the advent of Alexander Gorsky as head of the film studio that in 1953 film production would be reset on an upward course. Under his direction and that of his successor Gennady Zbandit, Odessa would return to quality film-making. In 1956 one of the most important films of the early Thaw period was to be made in Odessa - Marlen Khutsiev's (and Feliks Mironer's) Весна на Заречной Улице (Spring on Zarechnaya Street). A young cameraman would work with the two directors and would go on to have a long association with Odessa: Peter Todorovsky. The actor (and subsequently one of the Soviet Union's most important post-war directors) Vasily Shukshin would also debut in Odessa in Khutsiev's second film 'The two Fyodor's'.
One of film's most promising but unsuccessful figures Genrikh Gabay (in the photo above) was to have a career dogged by misfortune. His masterpiece Зеленвый Фургон (The Green Truck) shot in Odessa was to be mauled by Kiev officials and made unrecognisable. After shooting films from completely unsuitable scripts, he was to emigrate to Israel invited by Golda Meir. Yet even here he was to be given roles and films that he could not accept - he turned down Golda Meir's offer of post as Minister for Cineamtography as he wanted to shoot films. Then he was given the script of a national patriotic film to shoot- he turned this offer down in disgust affirming that he had too much of fighting in war to incite his then countrymen to fight against their Arab enemies. Gabay would then leave for the United States and find himself equally marginalized. It was not in his nature to shoot commercial cinema. Invited by a priest to shoot a long documentary on the life of Christ his Jewish roots and atheist leanings caused further problems with his producers. Maybe little remains to prove Gabay's talent but his journey through the cinema of three countries surely deserves to be told belonging to the history of cinema's would-have-beens as well as serving as an exemplary tale of one of cinema's more admirable refuseniks.
Another of life's refuseniks - Joseph Brodsky - was to star in the unlikely role of an Odessa party secretary in Vadim Lysenko's Поезд в далекий август (Train for a distant August) in 1970. Lysenko's assistant Leonid Mak noted Brodksy's similarity to Naum Gurevich and given Brodsky's need to find work the future Nobel Laureate jumped at the chance. Unfortunately Brodsky's role in the film came to the notice of party officials in Kiev and all shots of Brodsky were ordered cut from the film. However, unknown to the authorities only the close-ups were reshot and medium and long shots of the character are still those acted by Brodsky himself.
Odessa's major contemporary name is, of course, Kira Muratova who has remained faithful to the city and still uses the studio. Another long-term association with Odessa and the studio was kept by Stanislav Govorukhin who shot many films here. The legendary Vladimir Vysotksy acted in Govorukhin's most popular film series Место Втречи изменить нельзя (the Meeting Place can not be changed) but also in other films shot in or about Odessa. a lesser-known but by no means minor director - Georgy Yungvald-Khilkevich - shot a number of films here including the film 'The art of living in Odessa' based on Isaac Babel's short stories about Odessa.
In short, the history of film in Odessa is in no way a negligible one. If the Odessa Film Studios were not one of the Soviet Union's major film studios, cinematic history in Odessa is, nonetheless, a fascinating and inspirational one and deserving of a major historical work.
The season of major Russian film festivals- Sochi, Moscow and the new Saint-Petersburg International Cinema Forum is coming to an end. In a recent article for Moscow News Yuri Gladilshchikov argues that the St Petersburg festival is overtaking that of Moscow in terms of quality and significance. The Moscow Film festival seems to be a victim of Mikhalkov's overbearing need to live on the rhetoric of challenging Cannes and Venice without being able to match its prestige. The absurd inflation of self-importance attributed to it by the Russian cinema elite ignores the fact that it doesn't attract the international attention that other major European festivals do. At the same time it also manages to alienate its own local audience by excessive ticket prices. The modest beginnings of St Petersburg's international film forum (now in its second edition) nonetheless has been based on a solid foundation- Alexei German shadows (or even overshadows) Nikita Mikhalkov, while film critic Andrei Plakhov is its chief selector - a heavyweight counterpart to Moscow's Kirill Razlogov. Moreover, the St Petersburg festival with red carpet guests including Natasha Kinski and Ornella Muti is based on a more solid relationship to the public of St Petersburg given that ticket prices are half the price of those of Moscow.
This week another Russian-language festival of significance has taken place. Smaller in scale to St Petersburg and Moscow's film festivals, the Odessa International Film festival has nonetheless attracted the likes of John Malkovich to the red carpet and visiting directors include Valery Todorovsky, Otar Ioselliani, Sergei Soloviev and the, alas, rather ubiquitous Nikita Mikhalkov. Kira Muratova- an Odessan herself was also present both at the screening of her own film as well as among the audience of Soloviev's Anna Karenina at the Odessa Film Studios. One of the more spectacular events of the festival was the most well-attended as well as free. A large screen projected Fritz Lang's 'Metropolis' with a live orchestra at the botoom of the Potemkin Steps to a crowd of thousands. At the first festival last year Battleship Potemkin was itself projected with live orchestra - a fascinating idea that brings back the magic of great silent cinema to a whole city. Each evening of the festival films are projected on to a screen on the other steps called Lanzheron Steps (not far from the Potemkin steps) for free thus giving at least a democratic veneer to this festival. Ticket prices are also not exorbitant - at the Rodina cinema they are between $3 and $5, at the Odessa film studios between $1 and $3 - far below the Moscow prices of up to $15. The opening ceremony was preceded by the walk along the red carpet towards Odessa's opera house. Odessans are less star-struck than others and people turned up simply out of curiosity - even the stars such as John Malkovich were met with restrined applause at most. A number of single demonstrators turned up to shout 'Down with the Oligarchs' and hold placards but soon they left to have a laugh with the Odessan policemen (maybe their British policing colleagues should be sent to the Ukarine to learn restraint and good- humour).
For me the highlights of the festival have been the screenings of Ioselliani's 'Chantrapas', Kaurismaki's 'Le Havre', Loznitsa's 'My Joy' and of course Kira Muratova's 'Melody for a Barrel Organ'. Soloviev's Ukranian premiere of 'Anna Karenina' was equally significant (but for me somewhat a delusion) and an interesting tale of a mid-life crisis of three band members (a doctor, a policeman and a taxi driver) using Inarritu's narrative trio style to describe Russian realia. Another Ukrainian film called Dvoe (the Two) set in World War Two provided a reflection about friend and enemy not too far apart from Rogozhkin's Кукушка 'Cuckoo'. It also explored the inner dynamics of two groups of two people- one pair pursuing (two Germans one male and one female as well as an army dog and another pair pursued: a Soviet soldier and his captured German soldier who appears willing to change sides). Loznitsa's film was by far one of the darkest films of the festival about a man who finds himself lost in a territory from which there is no escape but death. This film had some critical acclaim at Cannes and Trieste. At one point the possibility that it might win a major award at Cannes Film Festival brought a howl of alarm by the Mikhalkovian national patriots who were to ready to argue that the film would have won because it denigrated Russia and painted it in overly black terms.
Soloviev's 'Anna Karenina' was its first Ukrainian premiere and well-attended by the Odessan public: yet for me it suffered too much from many drawbacks and in spite of some superb acting by the likes of Drubich, Yankovsky, Abdullov and Garmash, it was rather a deluding film even though it attempted to do something new in the genre of literary adaptations. A good piece of criticism has been written by Anindita Banerjee in Kino Kultura here: http://www.kinokultura.com/2009/26r-karenina.shtml
Watching Anna Karenina at the Odessa Film studios was Odessa's director Kira Muratova. Her short question and answer session after the showing of her film 'Melody for a barrel organ' was welcome but far too short. However, it was interesting to know that the war veteran excluded from the de luxe waiting room was actualy reciting his own personal history. In an answer to the question as to whether she thought there may be light at the end of the tunnel she cut the questioner short by saying that the light had completely gone out. She then defined herself as a happy pessimist and described the work of a film director to that of a surgeon. Although the surgeon cuts open the human body s/he still thinks of his/her own profession as something of beauty. Muratova insisted on the joy of her own profession defending the necessity of such films. In fact this dialectic between the sheer aesthetic beauty of the film and the absolute horror of the actual subject- a kind of contemporary fairy tale about the Slaughter of the Innocents in which the male orphan freezes to death with a handful of balloons in his hands (a nod to Fritz Lang's 'M') while a group of gastarbeiter's stand around in Gogolian awe while one of their member hiccoughs uncontrollably. The unbearableness of the ending, the sheer beauty of the film, the fairy tale form make this film Muratova's most shocking statement but perhaps also one of her most accessible. Yet she brings us to a point of aesthetic joy and utter madness that Mayakovsky reached with his line about loving watching children die. It is not as first appears a film about our indifference and cruelty to children but something far more uncanny and terrible than that. Its radical scope in going beyond what most directors are capable of made this film the most significant one of the festival. A shame that the film festival organisers cowardly failed to show this film at last year's festival. They, in the words of Muratova, were too concerned at its dark vision and too afraid of its pessimism. European and US distributors probably won't touch it with a barge pole which means that one of the truly great films of the past decade will go unseen until some rediscovery is made some years along the line. During the showing someone had brought their child along with them to watch the film, the child repeated a number of times during the seance "как красиво, как красиво" (how beautiful).
One more film that should be mentioned was Iurii Kara's 'Hamlet of the twenty-first century' - an eclectic film setting the story amongst car races and night club- Hamlet and his rivals between twenty-somethings. The emphasis that Kara gives to the figure of the Osric (played by Sukhorukov) as the venemous benefactor of the chaos and the brilliant acting of Diuzhev, the spectacular Crimea setting of the film (filming was done at the Vorontsov palace, the Sparrows Nest palace and near Balaclava)make it a visually unusual film. However, arguably the stylization goes too far and the eclecticism is too extreme with many roles apart from those of Diuzhev's and Sukhorukov's being less than memorable.
A number of Ukrainian comedies were also shown at the festival including Paradzanov's 'First Lad' and 'The art of living in Odessa' based on Babel's Odessa stories (and included the actor Viktor Avilov). A sparsely attended event but an interesting one nonetheless. Given that Dovzhenko began his career as a director of comedies in Odessa (Love's Berry), the Ukrainian film comedy section merited its place at the film festival.
All in all, a festival which hopefully will grow in future years. A small festival but one which has learnt to balance its obligations to the locals with an attempt to put this festival on the map.
At Turin's 'Salone del Libro' (Book Fair) the one guest from Russia representing cinema was Aleksandr Sokurov who presented a book of essays which haven't been published in Russian. In fact, as far as I know, the only edition yet to come out is the Italian edition. The title of the collection is 'In the centre of the Ocean' (Nel Centro dell'Oceano). The essays are varied- from the film script of his film on the war in Chechnya 'Alexandra', to various work diaries and a selection of his Japanese diaries, from an essay on philosophy and Martin Heidegger to what for me was the most interesting text in the collection: a re-evaluation of the role of Sergei Eisenstein in cinema. An essay that needs to be read more than once given that it is very rich in observations. Sokurov, like Tarkovsky before him, have both tried to find an escape route from the influence that Eisenstein undoubtedly has in Russian and world cinema. Sokurov's placing of sailors in his film 'Russian Ark' was no casual choice: they were undoubtedly an allusion to Eisenstein's 'Battleship Potemkin' and not an allusion that had much of the positive about it. Sokurov's call is a call for a return to a pre-revolutionary ethos and whatever his respect for Eisenstein his is a call for pressing the delete button. Yet he knows, too, that this attitude is impossible. This, for Sokurov, is the dialectic of his dilemma.
Like Tarkovsky, Sokurov champions Dovzhenko over Eisenstein. The Dovzhenko who acknowledged the importance of atmosphere in the construction of a frame and who knew how to render human suffering and pain on the screen bringing cinema closer than anyone else to art and literature. Yet in the essay this is all he has to say about Dovzhenko. It is, nonetheless, Eisenstein with whom Sokurov wants to confront himself with, to clash with.
Sokurov's speech at the 'Salone del Libro' took the form almost of an anti-cinema diatribe. He stated that if humankind were left without electricity and there were no possibility of watching films any longer nothing much would happen, but if humankind were to be left without the book that, for Sokurov, would signify the end of the world. An extreme position but a fundamental one to understand Sokurov's place in cinema. For Sokurov, cinema is an imperfect and much too young art that doesn't have the weight of literature (and for Sokurov Nineteenth Century literature is central to civilisation as is Faust which he is filming for his tetralogy on Power (Moloch, Taurus and Sun being the three others taking a look at Hitler, Lenin and Hirohito).
What Sokurov sees as Eisenstein's negative influence is his extreme masculinity, his destructive energy (leading to a lapse into a cinema of unheard of cruelty- the child suspended from the staircase in Strike), that cinema has transformed the mysetry of death into a visual commodity and he even comes to the conclusion that this trend in cinema has led to the clash of civilisations.
Sokurov's critique (one might almost call it an attempted demolition) of Eisenstein is based on the premise that Eisenstein set cinema on the wrong track and that it is necessary to return and start on entirely new foundations. For Sokurov the return is to Nineteenth Century literature. He often exhibits a kind of nihilistic despair over the possibility of cinema. In Turin he stated that "cinema is where I work" but he had no fundamental interest in discussing this area. In his essay the only suggestion that cinema might find a new path is in a note explaining Mikhail Romm's return to a kind of Pushkinian montage. Sokurov suggests that Eisenstein could only really explore his artistic freedom in his drawings which illuminated both his thirst for freedom and his solitude. In spite of the enormous artistic resources of Eisenstein's cinema, Sokurov concludes that one discovers in Eisesntein the footnotes th the bottom of a page in which nothing is written.
Sokurov is one of the few to have put into words this total denial of Eisenstein which is common both to him and Tarkovsky. His is almost a Dantesque judgement- mixing compassion with condemnation and certainly is a judgement full of nuance. Both one of the most negative judgements on Eisenstein but also one of the most pregnant with insights into Eisenstein.
One of the lesser known stories , as far as I know, is the presence of many foreigners in the history of Soviet cinema. Of course, the Herbert Marshall's, the Jay Leyda's and the Willy Munzenberg's have had their tales told. In Italy a number of books have come out on the life of Francesco Misiano- a character I mentioned in a previous blog. Another book recounts the tragic life of an Italian documentary filmmaker - Gino de Marchi - as well as the struggle of his daughter to fight for his memory. The account by Gabriele Nassim is written in the context of a tale about the behaviour of Italian communist emigres towards each other. It damns many of them but holds up the moral stature of Antonio Gramsci who was one of the few to help De Marchi out of genuine difficulties upon his arrival in the Soviet Union. There developed a close tie between De Marchi and the Gramsci family from generation to generation. De Marchi's subsequent fate in the Soviet Union was to prove a bitter one: in Italy in a moment of weakness he had confessed to the existence (and pointed out the whereabouts) of a cache of arms to be used for the revolutionary struggle against fascism (he did so to save his own mother from arrest). He was sent by his comrades to the Soviet Union as much as a punishment as to save him from a three and a half year jail sentence. In fact he was to begin his Soviet odyssey in prison (and it was Gramsci who was to save him from this initial fate). He then was to work on collective farms. It was to be Francesco Misiano who would employ him at Mezhrabpom and Gino would eventually become director of a number of documentary films, mainly on the Kolkhoz and Stakhanovite themes. De Marchi himself would gain the reputation of a Stakhanovite director, managing to organize a work method allowing him to cut production times.
The book by Nissim says little about his actual films- just that they were "documentary films dedicated to the 'great successes' of Stalinist agricultural collectivisation" (p 184)- alas, he gives little more detail. The book also concentrates little on the detail of his cinematic work - the few details he gives are to delineate the just (some of his cameramen) from the unjust (a certain Britikov who would denounce De Marchi and go on to make a successful career in the Soviet cinema world as well as to block the career of De Marchi's daughter as actress). Nonetheless, she (Luciana De Marchi) was to work with Giuseppe de Santis on his film about Italian soldiers in the Soviet Union during the Second World War, entitled 'Italiani brava gente'. Nissim also speaks of a Russian film scripted by Lev Roshal on the life of De Marchi made in 1992. Another Italian in cinema who was to share De Marchi's eventual fate (that of execution) was Aldo Gorelli who was better known as Gheffi Torre and would work as a sound technician from 1932 at Soyuzdetfilm. Whether there were other Italians working in the Soviet cinematic studios is a field that deserves some research.
Solomon Mikhoels
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