“Горький фест” in Nizhny Novgorod will conclude tomorrow. The festival features a special competition where full-length feature films compete with short films and documentaries. The enlightening program of the Nizhny Novgorod cinema festival this year is dedicated to the avant-garde, which today finds it difficult to break through the long-standing guardian of Soviet culture: “traditional values.” However, once all those whom we now proudly admire – Eisenstein, Pudovkin, Barnet, Dovzhenko – revolutionized the art, opened new paths, and were counted among the avant-garde… for which they paid in the 1930s. Naum Kleiman, Vsevolod Korshunov, Natalia Ryabchikova, and others talked about this. The program of this year, curated by Andrey Apostolov, was controversial, provocative, with many experimental works that agitated some and interested others.
Will the Ministry of Safety accept the film? The most interesting among them is “Shadows of Moscow” by Valery Pereverzev. Before the screening, the director, resembling Karabas-Barabas, said that something inadequate awaits us. And that today the cinema will watch us. It watches. At first, confusion with words: “propaedeutics”, “shot”, “cinema” – the search for definitions. The search for language. The search for cinema as an elusive substance. The distributor is reflected in the mirror, breaks the frame during filming. Who will remove the distributor? The director demands: remove! The heroine of the film, Emma (Yulia Pereverzeva), takes care of the very elderly lady Lyudmila Ivanovna (Elena Koreneva). The lady speaks in metaphors: “My curtains are like a camera diaphragm. When the curtains open, a cinematic image is born.” The lady categorically objects to the multiplex screen – following Tarkovsky. But Emma, who helps the grandmother (not for free), does not know who Tarkovsky is. She is in love with Moscow, she wanders (floats) through the city in search of the elusive Moscow. Who creates who? Emma – composing her city-mosaic? Or does the city create the girl? Or the film’s author Pereverzev?
In this city, the old dreams of the Electronic brothers meet in the metro at Revolution Square. Orlova flies to the Kremlin. And two stewardesses cosplay different characters from different times. Casting freaks for roles… freaks. Snow in summer. And the screen shattered into individual frames. Sentences like: “Television does not influence, it simply satisfies demand.” So said Steve Jobs. But who is Steve Jobs, grandmother no longer knows. The film is like a dispute about cinema, its essence. About the familiar, killing search. But the dispute is too dry. Absurd rules here. However, where exactly? In this cinema… or in the permits for cinema? And the filmmakers in the film do not know until the end whether the Ministry of Safety will accept their film? Interestingly, Pererverzev’s insane film received a distribution certificate in real life without any scandal. “Will the songs be good?” ask the producers. Oh yes. The soundtrack is outstanding. So it’s a musical-poetic absurdity. The critic reproaches the author – where is the dramaturgy, the depth of the characters’ emotions in his incoherent cinema. And in the end, “what is your film about in the end?”
The artistic director is also against the film: this avant-garde director will never understand that cinema is about money. Who cares about experiments? And the director creates his film against all rules, genres, established traditions. Merchandising (demanding to “insert” vodka and beer into the frame). The heroine aims at us, thinking we are aliens. Most likely, she is wrong. Out of habit, you decide what this bold, uninhibited avant-garde comedy resembles. It’s madness (quite captivating) beyond any conventions. Comparable to late Godard’s cinema? No. It’s more like the early cinema of Pereverzev, who made the scandalous film “Brother 3”. And the new film will surely have its admirers. Like me.
P.S. The promised Alexander Revva, who everyone is eagerly awaiting, will finally appear. And that’s a spoiler. P.P.S. Blatant injustice. The brilliant Elena Koreneva was marked with a bold white cross. I honestly thought there were some problems with the actress. But no, most likely it was the director’s decision. And perhaps this madness is not justified, unforgivable.
Good night to everyone! It’s the End of the World! The second experimental film “The End of the End” by Anton Bilzho and Alfiya Khabibullina. About the apocalypse, which is already happening. Collective cinema. Movie-by-committee, similar to free jazz, where one musician’s melody is picked up and developed by another. Here it’s young “shooters.” Cinema in the spirit of experiments and laboratories of Andrey Silvestrov or the searches of Rastorguev and Kostomarov, who during the filming of the movie “I Love You” handed out cameras to their characters. And they filmed themselves. Among the participants-characters is also the film’s producer Maxim Dobromyslov.
Anton Bilzho himself, who edited the film, had experience in such searches – “I. Fear. Claustrophobia”. So, directors, actors, cameramen, artists, sound engineers, musicians, one producer, and just friends. They decided to play “Melancholy.” The theme is relevant. A film-fantasy on how we will face the end of the world. Each has their own micro-plot within the apocalypse caused by an unknown virus. The narrative fragments were brought together in the editing into a whole. Everyone created a character for themselves, a little destiny, different stories intersect.
Who plays whom and who films whom, the authors turn into characters and vice versa. They are already cut off from the “former” world. The forest – the last refuge, and from the signs of the fallen civilization – a television set, transmitting amid interference: “Good night to everyone! It’s the end of the world.” …Entrepreneur Petr searches for his missing hiker wife in the gloomy woods. The girl is lost in an imaginary romance with a revolver and is ready to go to the end. The deceiver robs the bandit. Anna feels like Ophelia after the death of her lover. Lisa engages in her spiritual development. Margo will find the guilty one in all troubles – the television set – and will try to kill it. IT inventor Pavel, wrapped in foil, decides to escape through a portal to another dimension with the help of a bicycle connected to a satellite dish. The finale will be a memorial feast, where the heroes will finally unite with their characters. And there are also songs on the walkie-talkie, anxious dusty mushrooms, dawn delirium. And a lot of foil.
The marginal film is an attempt to find a way out of the deadlock. Cinema today is indeed very expensive. And the state mostly supports “state films.” What should the author do? Following in the footsteps of Rousseau: “Back to nature?” But the viewer has already bought popcorn and settled comfortably in the seat. Will he follow the mavericks with their author’s vision into the woods?
Alexey German noted at one of the discussions: “It’s great that they started making sci-fi and creating worlds. Let’s not fool ourselves: 80% will be copy-paste. But it’s a necessary stage in the industry, waiting for dreamers who will create their own fantastic unique worlds. The problem is that ideas come from producers, but they should come from authors. We need our own ‘Star Wars,’ where music, costumes, visual images play a huge role. Gradually, such authors will be found… Let all flowers bloom.”
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