New Russian Documentaries in the Pipeline.

One of the many events of Moscow Business Square this year during its Day of Documentary Films was the presentation of a number of Russian documentary projects which are in various stages of production. The world of Russian documentary is, in many ways, a very specific one and unjustly neglected one and the projects presented before a jury which included Nick Fraser were films with differing aesthetics and approaches but which all managed to offer insights into Russian reality.

Vlad Ketkovich, one of the most active Russian documentary film producers who is behind two of the most documentary film projects presented at this year's Moscow Business Square.

The entry judged by the jury to be the most successful project was Dmitry Vasyukov's Happy People: Altai. It is part of a documentary cycle devoted to filming different communities of people living in harsh nature but in a harmonious way. The film team has launched a very successful crowd funding scheme and given the fact that a previous film in this cycle was made with the help Werner Herzog, this alone could draw the curiosity of an informed film buff. Here is a clip from one of his previous films in the cycle:

Tatiana Soboleva- the director of Siberia's Floating Hospital- a film which explores a community on the Russian periphery, its way of life and how it interacts with the few outsiders (a group of doctors) with whom it comes into contact.

Another film that explores distant regions in Russia in Tatiana Soboleva's Heralds from the Floating World (Siberia's Floating Hospital). In the Spring as ice melts a group of twenty -mainly female- doctors board a ship to visit outlying villages and treat patients in this zone. The doctors are often the only connection that these villagers have with the outside world and so the film is much more than just an exploration of healthcare in remote areas. It explores the relationships within the medical collective as well as their relationships with their patients. It had been granted funding by Channel 4 and is produced by the Ethnographic Research Foundation and Vlad Ketkovich (one of the most active Russian documentary film producers). A clip of the film can be found on Vimeo.

Ketkovich is also the producer of Elena Demidova's Men's Choice. An exploration of men who work for Gazprom in the isolated northern outposts of the Yamal Peninsular in Russia and forced to leave their wives and families for long periods of the year in order to earn enough to maintain these families. Demidova has been active in documentary film-making for a number of years and one can ascertain a special style in her accounts of people's lives. She has a special ability in teasing out the special Russian touches of universal stories. Whether it is the story of Lesha who returns to his village destroyed by the flames of summer fires and whose retelling of his life and thoughts is one of the most extraordinary cinematic portraits or Sasha, Lena and the Iron Dragon two elderly people refusing to leave their khruschyovka apartment (five storey buildings first built during the Khruschev period but now seen as poor quality) marked for demolition. In their struggle to resist a transfer to another part of Moscow and the inexorable destruction of their home by the "iron dragon" (the bulldozer and, by extension, bureaucracy) we see all the humour and absurdity which becomes attached and sticks to their dramatic tale. Life, in Demidova's films, often acquires the essential  that Bela Balazs discovered in Boris Barnet whereby explosions of laughter arise in the most dramatic of tales.

Films which have a strongly social and even political theme abound and yet the ways in which they are tackled are very different. The moral purpose behind the film of Olga Arlauskas and Nikita Tikhonov-Rau's film Children of the State on the effects of the notorious Dima-Yakovlev Law makes it appear as a strong expose' of the political games which adult politicians play and their tragic effects on the lives of children and prospective adopting parents. A clip is available here. Irina Vasilieva's project Twice Born, Twice Dead looks at the story of a prisoner previously sentenced to a death sentence but saved by Yeltsin's moratorium and how the life sentence appears nothing less in reality but an ongoing execution. It also looks at the stories of two other people connected to the prisoners story including that of Jimmy Boyle. Another film Spirit in Motion looks at Russian paraolympians and is directed by Sofia Gevelyer, Yulia Byvsheva and Sofia Kucher and produced by the director of Russia's version of Michael Apted's 7-up series, Sergey Miroshnichenko.

Anna Moiseenko, a former student of Marina Razbezhkina,who is proving to be one of the most innovative young documentary film-makers in Russia today. 

Two films have as their subject matter migration or relations between Russians and other ethnic or national group. One is Nikita Sutyrin's beautifuly shot film Adaptation on the experience of nomadic Nenets children in a Russian school questioning what adaptation means in this context. A trailer is available here. Anna Moiseenko's film tries an innovative way of describing A Migrants' Life by having a migrant- Abdumamad Bekmamadov- compose ballads about his life in Moscow. A singer in a former Soviet folk band, his life in Moscow in the fifteen years has since become a much harsher one constrained to low paid jobs to feed his family. He has worked in a show regarding his life and that of migrants and this show won a prestigious theatre prize, the Golden Mask. Interestingly, the producer told the audience at the presentation of the film even his award at the Bolshoy Theatre didn't prevent members of the 'cultured and middle class' audience from making rather racist remarks on seeing a gastarbeiter in their midst proving that this theme is an important one. Moreover, tackling it in such an innovative way, Anna Moiseenko surely has found the right formula giving the voice and the story to the film's protagonist. Moiseenko, a student at the Razbezhkina school, worked on the awarded Winter, Go Away documentary and made a fine portrait of a commune in her S.P.A.R.T.A. The Territory of Happiness (which can be seen here).

The artist and migrant Abdumamad Bekmamadov who, through a series of ballads, retells the tale of a contemporary migrant in Moscow in Anna Moiseenko's forthcoming film 

Finally Sergei Kachkin's Perm 36: A Territory of Freedom is for Russian documentary watchers a long-awaited film. Coming after his debut On the Way Home, which found a way of recounting the routine and even mundane life of a couple in a subtly new way and with a very fine aesthetic, Perm 36 will give us a unique insight into the world of the functioning of the only gulag museum in modern Russia, the stories of three former detainees at the camp as well as the Pilorama event held annually but now in danger of being abandoned, along with the museum. A trailer is available on Vimeo here. Sergei Kachkin's previous film has been shown on television both inside and outside of Russia and the release of his new film certainly looks like it will prove to be a major event in Russian documentary.

Pilorama, the annual event which will be one of the subjects of Sergei Kachkin's long-awaited film Perm 36: A Territory of Freedom. 

Film links between Russia and Latin America: Some projects.

While the Moscow International Film festival may not be so much of a talking shop as many other festivals (most of it taking place at the central multiplex Oktyabr cinema on the Arbat), the Moscow Business Square is a different matter. As I mentioned in my previous post the main focus this year was Latin America and it was an opportunity to explore what kind of topics and what kind of themes might unite the two. In many ways this may be a window of opportunity to link two parts of the world that may not be as distant as they seem. The number of possible projects were sizable and their variety also noticeable. Apart from the prospect of a historical thriller The Chosen produced by Monica Lozano (the producer of some of the most internationally recognised Mexican films including Amores Perros) on the assassination of Leon Trotsky there are a number of other projects linking Latin American and Russian themes (or of Latin Americans who wish to make Russian-based films).

Monica Lozano, producer of Amores perros who is hoping to produce a historical thriller on the assassination of Leon Trotsky.

Another significant project which though being a fairly low budget film is likely to generate interest is an art house science fiction by Andre Arancibia and produced by Felipe Aichele and which aims to be shot both in Chile and in Russia (in Karelia). Aichele worked in the art team of the first HBO production in Chile Profugos and Arancibia has studied in film schools both in his native Chile and in the Czech Republic. Their proposed film Incarnation set in the year 2067 aims to use the backdrop of the global extinction of bees as an exploration of the theme of the deepest insecurities of the human mind and emotions. Karelia has been chosen as the location where a scientist from Chile arrives to discover why bees in this part of the world have not become extinct (it is a fact, as the director told me, that Karelia is the only place in the world where the bee population is growing). The film aims to be aesthetically radical too with the visual narrative as important as the actual story (using techniques of dynamic montage, and creative use of visual components such as space, line, shape, colour, movement and rhythm to create tensions and releases through the story). They aim to recreate a Tarkovskian Stalker- like atmosphere. Linking Chile with Russia in the cinematic imaginary is not new and has been associated with some of the most interesting films of recent years. The great Russian documentary filmmaker Kossakovsky in his !Vivan las antipodas! explored this in his portraits of Baikal Lake and Chilean Patagonia as one of his antipodean pairs and Aleksei Fedorchenko in his mockumentary Первые на Луне (First on the Moon) has the Soviet cosmopilot who travels to the moon in 1938 land back in Chile where the Zelig-like character travels back via the Pacific, China and Mongolia to the Stalinist Soviet Union. The hope that Aichele and Arancibia will be able to produce something of equal power re-conceptualising the Latin American-Russian imaginary makes this one of the most fascinating projects presented here.

One of the projects that producer of the Chilean-Russian film project 'Incarnation', Felipe Aichele, has worked on.

A documentary project on the little known wife of one of the icons of the Brazilian Communist Party Luis Carlos Prestes could also make for a fascinating story. Maria Prestes who spent 10 years living in Moscow near where the present Macdonalds stands at Tverskaya Street. As a portrait of an little known woman who lived at the centre of the most extraordinary historical moments of two very different countries this film has a potential for opening up the many stories of Latin Americans who visited the Soviet Union. Much has been written about the Europeans and North Americans who came to the Soviet Union and their illusions and cruel awakenings.

Maria Prestes- subjected of a new proposed documentary to be shot in Brazil and Russia.

It is surely time that the story of Latin Americans experience of the Soviet experience also came to the fore. Christiano Sensi's (director) and Micelli Crestani's (producer) Oranya -another Brazilian film, this time a feature film - also explores the story of migration and refugees between Russian, Europe and Sao Paolo. Here migration is from Europe and Russia to Brazil and tells the story of a Russian pilot and a Brazilian accountant who help the refugees reach the south American country.

The shot of chess player Carlos Torre from Pudovkin's Chess Fever

Roberto Garza and Juan Obregon also have a project that appears promising. Another documentary which links the world of chess, the two continents and a character who briefly appears in the Pudovkin film Chess Fever. Carlos Torre was also said to be a prototype for Nabokov (who was also discovered in one shot of the Pudovkin film). and was to come to the Soviet Union at Lenin's behest to write a book on chess. His chess career cut short by mental illness this film promises to be one in a long list of recent films proving that chess is strangely becoming one of the most cinematographic of sports.

Moscow Business Square was also the occasion for a pitching of a crop of new Russian documentaries and the occasion for the presentation of other Russian-themes film projects including a potentially fascinating film on the unknown world of alternative Soviet music called Soviet Groove. On these projects I will write separately in my next posts.
       

Ongoing Account of 36th Moscow International Film Festival (1)

In these and following posts I'll try to give some ongoing impressions and reflections on the daily events of the Moscow Film Festival, giving some more detail to the first post and also I aim to talk about some of the other events of the Festival.  

One of the main other events of the Film Festival is the Moscow Business Square (which is in its sixth edition) Apart from the traditional focus of the CIS countries and Georgia this year its focus is on the film indusries of Latin America and the UK. As well as an attempt to construct film industry links and foster coproduction between the film industry it is an excellent chance to learn of new film projects in the pipeline. The Latin America section is by far the larger part of the programme and it appears (from the events on at this years Moscow Business Square as though there is a boom in Russian-related themes in that continent being proposed for co-production projects. I hope to be able to write in more detail on some of these projects later.

One of the most exciting news for Russian film buffs linked to this event is the news about a new projected Andrey Khrzhanovsky film based on both Gogol's as well as Shostakovich's Nose and to be entitled The Nose, or the Outside Conspiracy. It promises to follow in the footsteps of the polystylism of Khrzhanovsky's previous film mixing animation, documentary scenes, chronicle footage and acted scenes. Also the producer of the Mexican film Amores Perros is coming to Moscow personally to present a new film project on the murder of Leon Trostky. Other projects are a film on Rudolf Nureyev based on the years before he left Russia and a film project about Dovzhenko in Odessa (surely a fascinating prospect for film purists). Other films from post-Soviet countries are also in the line up. And Louis Beaudemont's film Soviet Groove exploring the Soviet music scene looks like it could be a possible successor to Electro Moskva in the rediscovery of aspects of Soviet life little known about elsewhere in the fog of the old cold war. The programme of talks and events can be found here.

What about the events and the atmosphere so far?

Well, the atmosphere is mixed. There are reports of some international filmmakers staying away from the festival because of the situation in Ukraine - although how many it is hard to say. But it is a fact that neither the Programme Director, Kirill Razlogov nor the overall director Nikita Mikhalkov have denied (the number of 700 reported in the article seems a rather wild exaggeration though). That not a single foreign journalist appeared at Mikhalkov's press conference only seemed to give Mikhalkov one more occasion for rallying the many conservative-minded journalists who flock to this festival and can be heard muttering their disapproval at any film which shows innovation and surprise.

However, there are still so many reasons for being here. Yesterday gave two indications of why a visit to the festival was not in vain. In the morning the one Ukrainian film in the main competition Brothers: A Final Confession by the young director Victoria Trofimenko had its press showing. A strong Ukrainian film which drew some comparisons to a Wajda film and Rogozhkin's Кукушка (The Cuckoo) as well as a hope that the heights of the great season of Ukrainian Poetic Cinema of the 1960s and 1970s are reachable once more. The film, based on a novel by the Scandinavian writer Torgny Lindgren , is a work that has taken five years to complete. And yet so many agreed at the Press conference that it seemed to be one of the most powerful commentaries on the present situation between Russian and Ukraine. Of course, a press conference of a Ukrainian film at Moscow is a complicated affair. Most of the questions fortunately were asked in an intelligent way. Though it didn't quite go all smoothly after one questioner asked 'Why do you all hate us Russians in Ukraine?'. Nonetheless, a sizeable congregation applauded the director's heartfelt reply and her refusal to be drawn in by such an ignorant question as well as Razlogov's reprimand to the questioner that we were here to talk about the film and not the present situation.

The evening presented festival goers with one of the most delightfully demential pleasures so far. Sergio Caballero's La Distancia. It seems to have all the madness of a Cine Fantom film laced with a strong dose of David Lynch. An absurdist, madcap tour de force. It was shown in the framework of the Russian Trace programme- the same one that gave us last year's El Efecto K- El Montador de Stalin / The K Effect- Stalin's Editor by Valenti Figueres. Spanish reimaginings of Russia are surely a worthy topic to write about. The Russian public at yesterday's film were divided between those bewildered (and seemed regularly to leave the hall) and those who could hardly repress their sense of hilarity at the film. In many ways it would have been a very worthy addition to the Cine Fantom programme which will begin later today with the Return od De Bile and the first half of a Evgeny Kondratiev retrospective.

A press showing of the excellent Timbuktu by Abderrahmane Sissako (one of the great contemporary film directors of Sub Saharan African) as part of Andrey Plakhov's Divine Euphoria programme was also an unmissable experience.

Today's events have barely got underway. A press conference here and there and the presentation of the Documentary competition which will be headed by one of Britain's most well-known  documentary filmmakers Sean McCallister. Tomorrow morning he will be giving a master class at the Centre of Documentary Cinema.

Of all the press coverage (and I'll try to summarise some of the main Russian film critics top recommendations) there is a historical piece in today's Kommersant newspaper which really should not be missed. It tells of Naum Kleiman's recollections of how Fellini's 8 1/2 ended up winning the main award at the 1963 Moscow Film Festival. A fascinating tale and which can be read here (in Russian).

The 36th Moscow International Film Festival: A Look at some of the Films.

This year's Moscow International Film Festival (the 36th) - the largest, although not the most loved film festival in Russia. Not because of the lack of good quality films but more because it always seems much more of a prestige project rather than having a real reason or thread running through it. One invariably gets lost in its eclectic morass. So the wealth of individual films here is somewhat set back by an atmosphere of anonymity- there is little real festival spirit that one feels at some of the smaller festivals like Odessa or even at the Kinotavr festival dedicated to Russian cinema alone. Outside a couple of forums the anonymity of the Oktyabr movie theatre means sucks out much of the enjoyment at finding such a sudden embarrassment of riches available for ten days in late June. One film critic Alexey Yusev in spite of suggesting that it has the best competition programme for the past five years has announced that he will not participate in this year's festival detailing a litany of complaints about how it is a festival "with little real authority, (and a) cumbersome, ineffective, expensive event (which exists) purely for the purpose of earmarking the name of and highlighting the prestige of its director Nikita Mikhalkov".

In many ways it is a showcase of that which could be shown throughout the year in Moscow if only the few decently programmed cinemas such as the Khudozhestvenni weren't closing down to be ramped up into expensive multiplexes where art house films will most likely be excluded. Instead Moscovites have ten days in which to gorge on those kind of films which won't come their way for another year.

Some of the competition films certainly do seem as though they could be films worthy of an 'A' film festival (which was certainly not the case last year). Anton Corbijn's A Most Wanted Man; Marc Fitoussi's La Ritournelle starring Isabelle Hupert and Russia's own Valerija Gai Germanika with her film Да и Да (Yes and Yes) are three of the most awaited features (they are for example those chosen by Novaya Gazeta's critic Larisa Maliukova). Another Russian film by Vladimir Yagel' is also in the competition programme.

Valerija Gai Germanika

Of course the most  prestigious out of competition section is the 8 1/2 section where films by the Dardenne brothers (Deux Jours, Une Nuit), the acclaimed Malaysian-born Taiwanese director Tsai Ming-Liang with two of his films being shown here: Stray Dogs and Journey to the West. If one can get into the inevitably packed Godard showing then his Adieu au Langage will be a sure bet. And Robert Le Page's and Pedro Pires's Triptych is surely likely to be another pretty sure bet.

The documentary section is nearly always best served by the Free Thought programme than the competition films but it would be wrong to miss a few of these films too. Jean-Stephane Bron's L'Experience Blocher should be of interest as should Web Junkie by Hilla Medalia and Shosh Shlam. Russia's only entry in the documentary competition is Svetlana Strelnikova's Кардиополитика (Cardiopolitika).

The Free Thought out of competition documentary section has Errol Morris's The Unknown Known; the 3D film project by six acclaimed filmmakers including Wim Wenders on the soul of buildings and entitled Cathedrals of Culture. A restored version of Robert Flaherty's Moana of the South Seas, Godfrey Reggio's Visitors and Michael Glawogger's Workingman's Death are all also must sees. As is the main Russian film in the section Vitaly Mansky's The Book. The opening film of the festival Red Army by Gabe Polsky is also a documentary film from this excellent programme.

The renowned Russian film critic Andrey Plakhov has his own curated programme and of course there is much to see here. Dietrich Brueggemann's Kreuzweg and films by Lech Majewski and Abderrahmane Sissako are likely to be worth watching but it is Alain Resnais's Aimer, Boire et Chanter (known in English as Life of Riley) which is surely one of the films of the festival. The very fine Russian film critic Boris Nelepo has reviewed it here.

The programme director of the film festival Kirill Razlogov has highly recommended the Beyond Fiction and Non Fiction section and probably the most awaited film there is Tony Gerber's and Maxim Pozdorovkin's The Notorious Mr Bout (Pozdorovkin was, of course, the co-director of Pussy Riot: A Punk Prayer which neither got a showing at the Moscow Film Festival nor elsewhere owing to censorship).

There will be some interesting special showings- a mixture of old Soviet films and some Wenders and will apparently include the film on Chechen deportation that has been banned from general release. Chinese, Latin American and a retrospective of Ealing Studio films are further sections. An Ettore Scola film on Federico Fellini and a Russian Trace section only make the impossibility of choosing everything that one would like all the more tormenting.  

Further Russian sections (or films with links to Russia) will include the Russian Trace section (foreign films which have some connection to Russia, however tenuous). Last year it was the Spanish film The K Effect which was the highlight of that section for me. Spain has another film of the nine in this sectiont this year entitled La Distancia by Sergio Caballero. The annual Cine Fantom programme looks very promising with a large Evgeny Kondryatev retrospective which will surely merit a separate post. The Russian programme of the festival is also out and along with an Aleksander Sokurov retrospective should have much to see. However, it appears that the showing of Zvyagintsev's Leviathan is in some doubt. This surely was going to be one of the highlights and unmissable films of the festival for those who had missed it in Sochi.

The Cine Fantom publication- an organisation for two decades producing some fine alternative and underground cinema in Russia. 

A small selection of films loved by that giant of Gosfilmofond Vladimir Dimitriev (who passed away last year) is on show including some fine Soviet classics which it will be a real pleasure to watch if one finds the time in these ten days.

Vladimir Dmitriev

     

On the Current Moment in Russian Film: On the edge of a nervous breakdown?

A return to Russia after an absence of two months gives one an ambivalent feeling when one looks at the state of Russian cinema. There are still many things which inspires one here. The crop of films showing at the recent Kinotavr Film Festival in Sochi has had a good press even from some of the more respected film critics such as Anton Dolin. Sochi has also shown that if Cannes is a very male dominated affair, Russian festivals are a different matter. Eight of the fourteen films selected for the main competition at Sochi were directed by women and at the main documentary film festival Art Doc Fest all of the four main prizes went to women directors. Gender wise the Russian film industry seems to be more progressive than its foreign counterparts. And yet many of the main news stories on Russian film gives one greater cause for concern. If some figures have done as much as they could to salvage links between the Russian and Ukrainian film worlds, other cultural figures took a much more belligerent attitude with explicit support for President Putin. Even underground figures in the Russian art world have been divided over the conflict. The conflict has brought up new issues and affected the Russian film world even more directly with the detention of filmmaker Oleg Sentsov for what many believe to be spurious terrorism charges. The recent call by European filmmakers calling for an investigation into his detention, more information on his whereabouts and either his release or to be charged with a recognisable offence has an impressive list of names many of whom are well-known and respected in the Russian film community. The question remains, though, whether the air of hysteria hanging over this conflict will move the Russian authorities in this case.
An air of general clampdown in the media and in the cultural world as a whole has been a rather constant prospect for years now but things have certainly seemed to heat up most recently. A new law banning profanities in the worlds of theatre, film and literature seems already to threaten the Cannes awarded new film by Andrey Zviagintsev, Leviathan with a ban unless it be mutilated with cuts. As in theatre some intend to fight and others somehow to acquiesce, while there is a section of the film community around people like Mikhalkov who have prepared the way for this absurd new law. Bans on films regarding old national conflicts also seems to be back in vogue (by refusing to give them a certificate). This has happened to a film entitled 'Ordered to Forget' about the deportation of Chechens in February 1944. Politics and especially the culturally ignorant politics of Russia's Minister of Culture, Vladimir Medinsky, are intervening with abandon in cultural aspects. It is with some relief that some with the stature of Alexander Sokurov do publically speak out not just on their own immediate turf but even they have their words cut from the media.
The long-standing sore of the issue of the Cinema Museum and the fate of its director, Naum Kleiman has yet again come to the fore. Receiving notice of the termination of his contract at the end of this month it was reported by the website colta.ru that he had been fired. This was then denied by the Ministry of Culture stating that it was a standard letter  but there seems little understanding of the long term future for Kleiman especially given the previous farce over the announcement of a new building for the Cinema Museum which then turned out to be yet another false hope. There certainly seems to be little hope that in the current set up of things that the Cinema Museum will be resurrected to its former glory. Instead, the Medinsky's and other cultural bureaucrats seem to be trying to make sure that this project (along with its legacy) be buried once and for all while the chance has arisen. However, as Naum Kleiman has mentioned in a superb article devoted to the question of government commissioned films the ability of the state directing the film world in the way it wants to has been tried before during the period of late Stalinism (he was argues convincingly that films like Battleship Potemkin were only made because there was a real social need for these films and that other film classics actually came more directly from society rather than the Soviet state). The kind of iron government control that Medinsky seems intent on imposing has always historically been a dismal failure and previously lead to the notorious film famine of the late 40s and early 1950s. There is little doubt that Medinsky will stand there along with Zhdanov as being a catchword for a Minister of Culture who do their utmost to create obstacles and attempt to destroy the healthiest forces in Russian culture.
If the institutional and general political situation looks as bad as (or worse than) it ever was there is still no absolute certainty that this dire moment will last for long. As this years Kinotavr and many of the lesser known festivals do show the Russian film world doesn't lack talent. Russian cinema may well be on the verge of a nervous breakdown as Andrey Plakhov has argued today but there's still the hope that a new new wave and this time with a female voice may just be able to make itself heard.
In short Russian cinema seems to be swinging between a nightmarish despair over the institutional realities and the hopes represented in the superb quality of some recent releases which have proved strong enough to return to Russia the hopes of international awards at Cannes and which have marked out this years Kinotavr as one of the best. It seems still too early to completely write off the potential of an unexpected rebirth from the ashes of Russian film.  

Russian Film Figures Reply to their Ukrainian Colleagues

This is a post which relates to the previous post relating to the appeal by people from the Ukrainian film world to their Russian colleagues. As well as a number of individual replies from people such as film director Pavel Bardin who wrote as an 'official statement' on his Facebook page

"Dear Ukranian colleagues!
I am ashamed of the lies and propaganda of the Russian pro-state media, ashamed of those soldiers denying their citizenship (this is a reference to Russian soldiers in Crimea who don't even admit their own nationality to keep up the lie that Russian hasn't sent troops there), ashamed of their leaders disowning their own soldiers, ashamed of those fellow citizens and colleagues who support this war.
I am with you: for peace, for truth and for love! "

After this initial response more members of the Russian film world decided to write a collective reply to the Ukrainian appeal. So far it contains 120 names and among them figure the most important directors and scholars in the film world. Feature film directors such as Andrei Proshkin, Andrei Smirnov, Boris Khlebnikov, Alexei Popogrebsky, Vladimir Kott, Alexander Zeldovich, Vladimir Mirzoev and Andrei Stempkovsky as well as Pavel Bardin himself are amongst the signatories; in the documentary world directors such as Vitaly Mansky, Marina Razbezhkina, Alexander Rastorguev, Elena Demidova have signed as well as the festival selector Victoria Belopolskaya. Gary Bardin the well known animation film-maker and father of Pavel Bardin. Pavel Kostomarov perhaps Russia's leading cameraman also signed. The film critics and film scholars are also very well represented. Here signatories include Andrei Plakhov, Evgeny Margolit, Elena Stishova, Anton Dolin, Nina Tsirkun, Zara Abdullaeva, Andrey Shemyakin, Yuri Gladilshchikov, Elena Plakhova, Yuri Bogolmolov and Pyotr Bagrov. Other significant names include the script writer Pavel Finn and actress Yulia Aug.

Here is the text of the letter signed by the names above and by many others:

Dear friends and colleagues!

It is with great pain that we have read your letter and listened to your video address. You are justly bringing to our attention the unprecedented anti-Ukrainian campaign launched by the Russian mass media, and of the mass people’s uprising against the infamous Yanukovich regime.
We share your contempt as to the lies and distorted coverage of the momentous events in the Ukraine, and all the more so we are against Russian military intervention in the Ukraine. There are so many ties that bind us, so that we cannot fall to the botched propaganda. Therefore our answer is laconic and straightforward: Don’t doubt us. We side with the truth, and we are with you! 



The text and full list of names in Russian can be found in this link: http://www.kinosoyuz.com/news/?pub=2285

Appeal to the Russian Film World from their Ukrainian Colleagues.

Below is an appeal by many well-known Ukrainian film makers, scholars and actors to their Russian colleagues. I believe that this appeal  should receive as much coverage as possible. It is important that people in the Ukranian and Russian film worlds (and other cultural spaces) resist the attempts to sow hatred and enmity between them through the insane project of war that has loomed ever larger in recent days. I'll try to blog on how people in the Russian film world have themselves reacted (there have been important interviews with Sokurov and others). It would be a tragedy if this appeal should fall on deaf ears. It really is time that the voice of Russian cinematographers be heard loud and clear against the idea that problems can be resolved militarily.   I'll be adding updates on the facebook page https://www.facebook.com/GiuVivRussianFilm

WE TOO BELIEVE IN REASON.

Dear friends and colleagues!

For many years, entire decades we were together with you, worked with you creating films in a single cultural and cinematic space.

And now something is happening which until only recently would have been impossible to imagine in our worst nightmares: a Russian army on Ukrainian territory, a war that at any moment can become a reality, a spine chilling reality that we will no longer be able to escape from.  
We wish to tell you, friends: it is not possible to understand and accept the motives which have determined this decision by the leadership of the Russian state. In recent years in Ukraine a regime has been established whose members have been involved in the extortion of our national wealth, the destruction of a legal system, and the undermining of morality itself, as well as a disregard of any individual rights. This has ended in the rebellion of a people, a rebellion which led to the fall of Viktor Janukovich and his subsequent flight from the country.

The Kiev Maidan, being a symbol of transformation, brought under its banner people from different nationalities and beliefs. They are united by a trust in the progress of the country, in democratic values, in high culture. Those images which the Russian press try to stamp on the Maidan, as though it consists only of “fascist  rednecks” and “warring nationalists” is no more than a propagandistic myth. Nationalistic and hateful rhetoric never defined the ideology of the Maidan. And it is a complete untruth the assertion that there has been any derogation of rights or persecution of Russian-speaking people. Difficulties of the coming transitional period undoubtedly exist but they have altogether other features.

It is even more bitter to acknowledge that we are the hostages of the ambitions of politicians following their own aims, so distant from the interests of people.

Can it really be so that we are powerless to stop this power, it is really the case that our fraternity should be subject to destruction? We call on you to say “NO” to those plans to divide our people, to sow hatred which can only catastrophically influence our great and glorious art.

We believe in reason, we believe in the power of truth and memory which unite us with the strongest of bonds. 

In the faith of a better future for our peoples,

Sergei Trimbach. Film critic, chairman of the National Union of Ukrainian Filmmakers.
Larisa Kadochnikova, Peoples Artists of Ukraine and Russia.

Kira Muratova, Film Director, Odessa.
Roman Balayan, Film Director
Raisa Nedaskovskaya, Actress
Yaroslav Lupiy, Film Director, Odessa
Sergei Lisetsky, Cameraman.
Valerii Balayan, Film Director, Crimea.
Yuri Garmash , Cameraman.
Viktor Shkurin, Film Director
Valentina Sloboda, Film scholar, Dnepropetrovsk

Oleg Fialko, Film Director
Bogdan Verzhbitskiy, Cameraman.
Oksana Musienko, Film Scholar.
Vyacheslav Krishtofovich, Director.
Evgeniy Golubenko, artist, Odessa.
Dmitry Tomashpol’skiy, Film Director.
Vladimir Tikhij, Film Director.
Sergei Bordeniuk, Cameraman
Elena Parfeniuk, Film Scholar.

Alyona Demyanenko, Film Director.

Volodymyr Voytenko, Film Critic
Alik Shpiuk, Film Scholar.
Taras Tkachenko, Film Director.
Valentina Slobodyan, Film Scholar.

Sfiorando il Muro: A Russian reading of an Italian film

It's rare that I write about foreign films shown in Russia and their reception here but this time I have decided to make an exception. It was very interesting for me to observe how a Russian audience watching a foreign film (in this case an Italian film by Silvia Giralucci entitled Sfiorando il Muro) reacted to this film. Since I have been at two distinct showings of the film,I think that it is right to point out that the reception of the film was very different at the two showings. The film was first shown at a small festival of Italian cinema (devoted to Italian films shown at the Venice Film Festival) at the Khudozhestvenniy cinema near the Arbat in Moscow. Here the director was present and the question and answer session generated a very lively discussion. This first showing took place last March. Almost a year later Moscow's Museum of Cinema decided to represent this film at the offices of Memorial. This showing led to a very passionate discussion. In many ways the Russian audience highlighted and were curious about certain scenes whose meaning to an Italian might seem obvious. It was also a film that showed how connected Italian events in the 1970s were to events in Russian history as well as to what is now happening in contemporary Russia. But connected in complicated ways.

To give a brief description of the film. It is both an intensely personal film about the tragic death of Silvia Giralucci's father, Graziano, at the hands of the Red Brigades on June 17th 1974. Her father- a militant in the neo-fascist Italian Social Movement- was one of the first victims of the Red Brigades.Yet as well as a reflection on this personal history it is also a film about political violence in Padua in the 1970s. There is a narrative which is focused not so much on the Red Brigades but on the autonomists who were an influential radical force in the Padua of the 1970s. Padua in the 1970s was the epicentre of much political violence on what seemed an almost daily level. The narrative begins with graffiti on the wall and footage of Toni Negri at a meeting. Negri is heard stating that professors at Padua were given a 'few slaps' like in the rest of the world in 1968. (At this point it is important to note that Toni Negri refused to be interviewed or take part in the film as did many others in the Paduan autonomous movement). Then a series of accounts are given by actors in the events. First, one of the Professors attacked, Guido Petter, gives his account and this leads on to other accounts by Antonio Romito (the first person to denounce his former comrades in Autonomia and Potere Operaio) and Pietro Calogero as well as a member of Autonomia, Raul Franceschi, who now lives in France (leaving Padua to escape the wave of arrests ordered by Calogero which broke the back of the autonomia movement). Finally towards the end of the film Stefania Paterno'- a former 'camerata' of Silvia Giralucci's father- gives her account of the 1970s as a time when a brutal game was played which should never happen again. These interviews are interspersed with further scenes. For example, a demonstration in memory of a worker from Genoa, Guido Rossa, who had denounced the Red Brigades cell in his factory and was himself to become a fatal victim of the Red Brigades as a reprisal. Another scene in the film is the final one of Giralucci looking on at young fascist 'camerati' paying 'homage' to her father and the other missino shot in June 1974. She looks alienated from this group of neo-fascists intent on renewing this brutal game.

I hope to write about this film elsewhere though what was interesting was how it was received by those who watched it at the offices of Мемориал (Memorial). Those on the panel were Adriano dell'Asta of the Italian Cultural Institute; Olga Gurievich, a Russian Italianist; Vlad Tupikin, a Russian anti-fascist and libertarian anarchist; and Alexander Cherkasov, the chairman of Memorial. Moreover, there were some others in the room such as Yaroslav Leontiev who made an important contribution to the debate about the film.

The film was introduced by the director of the Italian Cultural Institute, Adriano dell'Asta, who wished to make some introductory remarks. He talked about the biography of the director and the fact that Italy wasn't living through a period of civil war at the time although the amount of violence was unprecedented. He emphasised what in his view was the essential point of the film: that some people looked upon others as non-people.

The discussion brought up a number of themes. A long part of the discussion was devoted to whether the Italian 1970s represented something like the Moscow of today. There has definitely been violence between fascists and anti-fa in Russia. Though in Russia the violence is mainly carried out by one side (that of the neo nazis) though there have been two cases where anti-fa killed, both times it was clear that this was self defence when their own lives were at stake. Of course, there were different emphases on how much this was also an 'ugly game',as Stefania Paterno' described it. Other periods of history were brought up and compared. For Yaroslav Leontiev, the pre-revolutionary period in Russia was of similar ferocity: he recalled the atmosphere that surrounded the assassination during the time of Nikolay Bauman.
Olga Gurievich, an Italianist, attempted to explain to the audience the historical context of the film. She tried to explain the paradox of how these events could happen between Italians who she characterised as a completely non-belligerent people. She drew attention to the hidden civil war of the 1940s  and how the wounds of this civil war always smouldered and then exploded once again during the 1970s. She talks about the symbolism of the final scene where the neo-fascists meet to honour their dead shouting out "Presente" at the names of Graziano Giralucci and Giuseppe Mazzola. This fascist ceremony was indicative, for Gurievich, about the significance of memory and how to construct a memory in which the wounds and traumas can be healed and not renewed with a new spiral of violence. Interestingly she quoted Silvia Giralucci about how in Padua 'everyone in our city see themselves as victims' contrasting it to Russia where "we all see ourselves as victors." Adding the question: "Which is worse?". Here, I think, Gurievich's paradoxical assertion is important in realizing how this film for a Russian audience is both close to, and yet distant from, their own experience.

Adriano del Asta emphasised how for an Italian to watch such a film is a painful experience for an Italian. He stated that this is not a political film and if we watch this film as a political film we understood almost nothing about the film. The film tries to answer a personal question for the director: what does this murder, what does this violence mean for me. Del Asta then talked about the moment when Silvia Giralucci asks herself the question: what would have happened if they hadn't killed my father. Who would my father have become? So for Del Asta the central axis of the film is not about comparing the situation in Italy in the 1970s to other situations but to answer the question: "What would I have done myself in such a situation?". For this reason the film touches such a sensitive point.

During the discussion among members of the audience the final scene was discussed a lot. For the first speaker this scene didn't bring out the same feelings of revulsion that Gurievich spoke out. All members of the panel explained in their own way why this scene did produce revulsion. Cherkasov stated that the final scene was about a ceremony in which neo-fascists mobilized their forces and Tupikin contrasted the scene with the demonstrations in memory of Stas Markelov and Nastya Baburova which take place every January 19th in which there are no militarized gestures. Yaroslav Leontiev in a long replica tried to find more exact comparisons with the film. He also remembered the young children of Stas Markelov and how their perspective (as probably the true victims of Markelov's assassination) differed from his own (Leontiev was a friend of the murdered Markelov's: they volunteered together, for example, for the Voloshin Medical Brigade which saved the lives of people on both sides of the clashes in October 1993). Alexander Cherkasov mentioned that there is a novel which gives some idea of the clashes between fascists and anti-fa in Russia in recent years. This novel by 'DJ Stalingrad' (now a political exile) has,in fact, been translated into Italian by Enzo Striano under the title Esodo (Exodus). Alexander Cherkasov then went on to contrast the role of the state in Russia and Italy. For Cherkasov the state in Russia is a strong one whereas in the Padua of the 1970s it was a weak one in which two opposing groups could literally control sectors of a city. Instead in Russia there is a strong state which in many ways uses Neo-Nazi groups to establish greater control over the territory. Again he emphasizes how nationalist groups have two types of groups - illegal groups carrying out terror and legal groups infiltrating opposition centres and mentalities. In this sense it is the Russian nationalists who replace the Red Brigades and ultra leftists of autonomia that Giralucci's film talks about.

Gurievich didn't accept the historical parallels stating that if there are to be comparisons with Italian history then Russia is now living in a period of 'developed fascism' where squadristi etc are used by power to attack the state's enemeies. For Gurievich there was another point regarding how the years of lead (or blood as she put it) turned in to the years of mud in the 1980s. She emphasized the role of the trade unions and others on the Left in revolting against the terror of the Red Brigades. For Gurievich there is almost no hope that even this will happen in Russia. Adriano del Asta emphasized the repulsion that most Italians would have about the final scene (but he compared the torches of the neo-fascists as symbolic equivalents to the so-called Stalin bars described in the film).

The discussion moved on to people involved in these groups. Why asked one were they depicted as pure fanatics and monsters (was this a reference to Toni Negri? it seemed to me that Raul Franceschi in the film at least showed some attempt to avoid this). This led to a discussion of terrorist in pre -revolutionary times. Cherkasov stating that films in Russia do take a tack of completely demonising those involved in the terror campaigns. It is necessary to read the literature, though, to get a better picture.

Olga Gurievich then fixed people's attention to the plaque and how there was resistance for many years to the idea that such a plaque in memory of these victims of terror could be placed on the wall of the apartment. Gurievich stated that for Giralucci this was a moment when she could become reconciled with her own city. Gurievich talked about how there is a certain parallel with the campaign by the Memorial to put up plaques in Russia to all the victims of political terror and repression (even for those executioners who then fell victim to the same terror). Another questioner wondered where 'civil society' was in all this and why there was no real civil society which reacted. (Again in the film there are scenes of demonstrations against the assassination of Guido Rossa, and Olga Gurievich mentioned the case of someone like Romito who denounced the violence of his former comrades to Calogero).

My own concern regarded what I would say was the fact that the state itself in the 1970s didn't play a neutral role. The role of figures like Calogero weren't not undisputed at the time and arguably overplayed their hand (and I think here the film watched by an Italian and a Russian audience differs precisely because there are different levels of background knowledge making this lack of background problematic for a reading of the political context of the film). The facts of Brescia were, of course, mentioned in passing in the film but these allusions would not have meant much to a Russian audience (whereas to an educated Italian audience they would already be part of their historical memory). The film had, I thought, much to offer a Russian regarding the personal story of Silvia Giralucci and her reaction as a victim of the history of political violence. As to the history of Italian in the 1970s, the political context and so on the film would perhaps give a Russian unacquainted with the Italian 70s a reading of the political situation which also needed some more contextualisation.

There was another discussion as to why a democratic government put up with this violence and that a democratic government has the right to repress such violence (he gave further examples of Northern Ireland and the hard stance of Thatcher against Irish hunger strikers which he thought justified. Alexander Cherkasov explained the origin of western democracies after the second world war and how, while there was a kind of democratic superstructure, the elites had remained the same as they were during periods of fascist and authoritarian rule and that this was very important to take into account. So that there was a similar situation here with Russia where Russia had turned from Soviet to Post Soviet -the elites had not changed and one could see that transformations and transitions were not as real as they appeared. Cherkasov in a wonderful way of characterizing this film talked of how the film had not only sound and visuals but also a smell of its own. Just as according to Cherkasov there is an unbearable reek in contemporary Russia, there was some similar reek to the whole social order of 1970s Padua.

Yaroslav Leontiev returned to the question of the difference in the typology of terror. Stating that there are surely differences between the assassination of Aldo Moro and the placing of the bomb in Bologna stationand how certain terrorists in pre-revolutionary Russia avoided throwing bombs if women and children were nearby or more recent examples in the 1990s when bombs at symbolic objects and buildings were detonated with the 'terrorists' making sure that there would be no human victims.  

Another intervention from the floor regarded the kind of role that the state had in all this. For example, the woman in question explained how in the case of Germany the origin of Left radicals who would then become part of the Rote Armee Fraktion. It was in many ways through government repression (the assassination of a peaceful demonstrator) and the prevalence of violence in international politics (the speaker spoke of the fact that the Vietnam War played a large part in forming the mentality of left terror groups) which must be seen as the context for the emergence of such groups (but obviously not to justify them). She saw far Right terror emerging in a different optic in which whole groups of categories of citizens are excluded whereas Left terror groups are an answer to the frustrations and blocking of collective action.

After a polemic regarding an intervention from a woman who said that she didn't understand any positions or any differences between left and right (who led to Vlad Tupikin suggesting that people who didn't think or remember anything were the reason why people end up killing each other), Alexander Cherkasov explained that Russians, perhaps, see the film from different perspectives from Italians because of their own history as a nation. Russians with their history of the 20th century where state terror in the name of social justice left millions of victims and then many more millions lost their lives in an invasion by those with an opposite ideology (one could also add the Russian experience of World War One which arguably set off the tragic concatenation of events in 20th century Russia) meant that is truly difficult for Russians to grasp the political facts and context in the film. Apologizing for the fact that people on the whole wanted to speak about Russian history and Russian contemporary reality, he said that, at least, it showed how the film conjured up for Russians such passionate emotions.

This discussion, and the reaction to the film, demonstrated the multiple readings and misreadings that a film may have in it coming to another country. It is certainly the case that Russians (and this was also the case in the discussion generated at the first showing of the film in Moscow last year) felt this to be a film that spoke directly to them. What it said, of course, was complex. Certain scenes (and especially the final one) were read in diametrically opposed ways among different people in the audience. Many of the more political moments were emphasized over the more personal ones (although some interventions did emphasize these aspects too). The roles played by Left and Right in Russia were in very many ways subtly and not subtly different to those played in Italy, at least in recent times (where right wing, neo Nazi terror is, along with Chechen groups, the single most important threat today). The role of the state once more, like in Italy in the 60s and 70s complicates things - playing not a neutral role of judgement but often making situations grow more radicalised and even conniving in terror (a factor that was long argued over in 1970s Italy). 

It is harder to gauge the personal reaction to the film. I believe that many had their beliefs challenged in some ways. For me I'd add that it was indeed in many ways a film I am still in dialogue with. Not having lived in 1970s Italy it was, however, a strong part of my political imagination. My previous reading of the situation of autonomia, the April 7th case and even the role of Toni Negri etc didn't fit with those of the film (and so I felt a certain resistance at some of the historical judgments) but I'd argue that whatever one's political judgment of the 1970s, the kind of journey in self-understanding as well as the ethical rigour of the director full of doubt and lacking rancour point to one of the very rare films in which politics is overcome by a deep personal reflection. 

My final consideration here is the strange absence of any reference to a period in Russian history which, I personally, feel left has a similar wound on the Russian political psyche. This is the mini Civil War in Moscow in October 1993. While the clashes were much more restricted in time (and they were clashes between Red-Brown demonstrators supporting the legislative power and, mainly, organs of the Presidential executive power), the trauma of the many hundreds of deaths was never really felt in the body politic. A similar silence has fallen over these events (and the rather bloody decade of the 1990s while often referred to as a trauma to escape from discussion is all too often replaced by dogma). Maybe this film also was a contribution to an unconscious reflection on this period too.    

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c4m5re4QJqQ&feature=youtu.be

Repression & the Russian Film World.

The film director Pavel Bardin arrested at a demonstration outside the court of where the verdict of the Bolotnaya Case was being read out.

It seems rather difficult to talk or even think about Russian cinema in the past few days. Writing becomes a hopeless task before the spectacle of the tsuanmi of the present moment. Thoughts have been on the events in Ukraine and now the verdict of the Bolotnaya Case, but thoughts don't seem able to turn into the clarity of language. Here in Russia, adding up all the arrests at the court and in further actions in downtown Moscow and St Petersburg maybe we'll arrive at the figure of about a thousand. I was standing on Friday outside the courthouse for the Bolotnaya verdict and the spectacle of arrests- most of the time completely random in which stormtroopers often broke into some part of the rather amorphous crowd picking someone standing at the back playing no active part- was one clearly designed to strike a certain fear in people.

Russia with this verdict (and with the Ukrainian events) seems to be on the brink once again. How this will effect culture as a whole (and cinema in particular) is unclear. Yet the photo above of the well-known film director, Pavel Bardin, being dragged away by two riot police seems to point to the fact that culture and politics are likely to be inextricably linked in the near future in Russia. The policing of film and theatre are no longer a mere metaphor. Along with respected mathematicians, well-known journalists and artists, history professors, the Russian автозак (police wagon) now is a temporary home for film directors too.

As John Freedman has pointed out in a post about recent events in Russia, not all representatives of culture are necessarily on the same side and the film world has never lacked its yes men. Yet it seems that the conclusion at the end of Freemdan's article is looking increasingly accurate in a foreboding way:

We find ourselves once again standing with Nikolai Gogol who, in his great novel 'Dead Souls' asked "Rus, whither do you race?"
I hesitate to do it, but as the biographer of Nikolai Erdman, I cannot fail to add the answer that Erdman provided to Gogol's question in his classic tragicomedy 'The Suicide'
In that play the revolutionary writer Viktor Viktorovich quotes Gogol's famous query and recieves an immediate response from a mailman named Yegor: "Straight to the police, mark my word." Yegor snaps.

The police have already shown little compunction in who it arrests (and given the completely random methods it uses ) who knows how many more figures like Bardin will end up in the avtozak). It seems that as one of those on trial for Bolotnaya put it, Russia is looking increasingly similar to the Gianni Rodari story Cipollino (here adapted in animated version):

Sokurov's Open Letter to Putin.

Away from the highlight of Sochi where foreign correspondents appear to spend their time checking out their toilet facilities or harassing the local gay community, the situation in Russia as a whole can't be said to be a very rosy one. Clouds do seem to be gathering and what seems to be a landmark moment- the judgment on the Bolotnaya Case- seems to be coming soon. Moreover while the Winter Olympics took place there was the absurd spectacle of people being arrested for opening their umbrellas in the centre of Moscow. Another group of demonstrators who sang the Russian hymn in Red Square (with rainbow flags) were also arrested and reportedly beaten and humiliated at the police station. It is facts like these as well as a ratcheting up of the aggressive rhetoric by the, at times, hysterical mouthpieces of the regime on state television which lead Sokurov to write an open letter to President Putin.

The letter centres around the closure of the liberal television station Дождь (meaning Rain, hence people demonstratively opening their umbrellas in the centre of Moscow and being bundled into police vans for the temerity) but sets it in the context of a general situation of rapid degeneration into a search for internal enemies and an increasingly aggressive atmosphere. He talks about the despair that grips one when one watches TV channels stating that

"Establishment figures have called for people to be burned, discriminated against, expelled, killed. Diversity is officially deemed a crime. In the words and faces of our politicians there is a war-like madness".

He then goes on to talk about the younger generation excluded from a creative life and in the grips of either a sense of bewildered powerlessness and disorientation, or worse, of some holding the kind of Nazi ideology fighting against which a previous generation had lost their lives, or others who have thrown themselves into an active struggle against the powers that be. Sokurov suggests there is a need to grow wiser.

He then goes on to tell Putin that the wiser ones in the past were the dissidents who stood up to the deceit of power and for human rights while millions were silent.

It is at this point where Sokurov launches into his attack on those who have closed the Liberal television 'Rain'. Characterising those who have served in the state run media as little more than lackeys, Sokurov suggests that they should be 'given a tongue lashing'.

"Each day for decades now they assiduously translate vulgarity, deliver violence to the screens of millions as well as the crushing of those who think differently." These television bureaucrats, Sokurov calls them cynics with 'small eyes and large ears'.

He then goes on to describe the television channel 'Rain' stating that they have the right to make mistakes- that it is a channel searching its own language and strongly in touch with the society of the new Russia. He talks of a meeting with the Culture channel where he couldn't be assured that his own words wouldn't be subject to censorship. Sokurov then went on to ask what it was coming to when an apolitical person like himself is subject to censorship.

In a way this is a traditional ploy of complaining to the 'tsar' about the bad decisions made by his subordinates. Maybe Sokurov genuinely believes that he has the ear of Putin (he did receive funding for his film Faust after a meeting with Putin). This is Sokurov's own account of his meeting and his relation to Putin in an interview with a Guardian journalist:

He was preparing Faust, his most expensive film, just when the economic downturn struck, and couldn't find funding. But a surprise saviour stepped in: Vladimir Putin. Sokurov met Putin at the Russian PM's country residence. "I told him, if I don't have this opportunity to make this film, it will never happen. A few days later, I was told that the amount I needed was going to be allocated. How and why it happened I don't know. Maybe because he has a very clear idea of German culture and history. I don't think it was because of me. I've never demonstrated my loyalty to his party."

Wouldn't Putin himself make a good subject? "I'll never make films about people like Putin because they're not of interest to me." Does his association with Putin compromise him? "When I met him recently, he asked if I was going to dub Faust into Russian. Reading between the lines, you could see these words as a sort of order. But I wasn't afraid to say no to him. The money allocated by him was the state's, not his own. I don't know whether he has any money. According to his official salary, he shouldn't have any money. I can only be responsible to my audience, that's all."   

It will be interesting to see if this letter does have some effect. Will it change the vector of discourse in an increasingly repressive Russia. Sokurov, after all, is a figure of some cultural stature in Russia.Yet it is hard to see any sea change. There are few signs that the Bolotnaya prisoners are about to be released and that, in many ways, is the litmus test. Repression will only necessitate the Mamontovs and Kiselevs to continue their hysterical transmissions. Mobilization in society against repression is at a very low ebb. Will Sokurov's words gain nothing more than a murmur of approval or will be they be a spur to a more active resistance to the trends that Sokurov pinpoints is a matter for some debate.

In many ways perhaps it will be in the reaction (or lack of reaction) to this open letter that one will be able to view how much the intellighentsia still counts as a check on the state's overbearing role.

Here is the link to the original article written in Russian : http://www.snob.ru/profile/26455/blog/71687
Interestingly in a blog for the radio station Ekho Moskvy where he calls the surpression of the Rain Tv channel 'outrageous', Sokurov stated that he was hoping to print the article in a state-run newspaper (probably the Rossiskaya Gazeta). Instead it was published by Snob.
.

Musei Kino: The Latest Deception

The increasingly depressing saga of the Cinema Museum seems set to continue. Late last December there seemed to be a breakthrough with an agreement regarding a building that would temporarily house the Museum. Indeed it was bureaucrats from the Ministry of Culture who insisted that Naum Kleiman and his team should agree to use this building telling Kleiman in person (according to his interview in gazeta.ru) "stop 'playing up', and accept this building as this is your last chance". It was then revealed on January 13th, the same Minister of Culture, has since decided that the building that they previously insisted on, is totally unsuitable. 


For those who have followed the story of the Cinema Museum it is clear that this pattern of deception and false hopes has been going on for a whole decade and looks like a  slow, tormenting wilfull destruction of cinematic memory. The recent round of news about the Cinema Museum started off with the 13th January Press Conference where the Culture Minister stated that not only was the Cinematic Scientific Research Institute (NIKFI)  unsuitable for housing the Cinema Museum temporarily for five years, but also the proposed permanent site proposed for the Cinema Museum was not acceptable to the Ministry of Culture. Naum Kleiman, as he stated in his interview in the government-owned 'Rossiskaya Gazeta", was not informed at all of the fact that Medinsky had decided against both projects. Medinsky stated at the press conference that the current film theatre Illuzion would be a good alternative. Yet this suggestion seems to be an absurd suggestion. Illuzion has only one screen and this would mean that the Museum's massive archive would still not have any suitable and permanent location. As Kleiman notes in this interview if this were a "shopping centre" a location would have been found. The situation with the huge and priceless archive is, of course, ever more tragic as this sorry saga continues. 

Should it prove that there was never any real political will to create this Museum, then it will become clear that the destruction of historical and cultural memory that the likes of Medinsky and his cabal ended up perpetrating, and the way in which they have gone about this, can only be justifiably be described as cultural vandalism of the most obscene order. Upon first hearing of the Ministry of Culture's new rejection, Naum Kleiman stated: "I am personally ashamed that we have such a Minister (of Culture). Now nothing else has been proposed so the question of discussing a Cinema Museum is off the agenda" and that the events have shown yet again that the people who believe that they run culture are complete incompetents. This will surely be Medinsky's epitaph in years to come- as one of the most shamefully destructive cultural bureaucrats that Russia has known- if the archive is laid to waste and no Museum is built. 


The latest facts- including Medinsky's arrogance in scuppering all agreements reached last December without even informing the most interested parties-  are yet another low and mean attempt at humiliating of one of most respected figures in the Russian film world. It feels watching this saga unfold that the Ministry of Culture is launching a war on culture, and a vicious, grotesque assault on cultural memory. Observing Russian cultural bureaucrats hacking away and destroying any hope of parading the very best of its prized cinematic heritage while at the same time promoting an ersatz national pride based on myths and xenophobic hysteria, with a parade of cheap blockbusters and nationalist costume dramas is a truly ugly and unbearable spectacle. To which there seems little end. One feels that even if Kleiman was slightly more upbeat in the Gazeta interview (and reported by Kinote) one has been here before.