MOSCOW (RIA Novosti commentator Olga Sobolevskaya)
- The XXVII Moscow International Film Festival, which lasted from June 17 to 26, leaned heavily towards the Middle East, West Asian, Balkans and Russian films, choosing 17 of the best they had to offer for the festival program.
Though its slogan was "Cultural Diversity," the Golden St. George went to the Russian film "Dreaming of Space" by Alexei Uchitel (2005), his fourth feature thus far. Other top prizes went to an Iranian and a Bulgarian film.
Uchitel's film seemed to become the jurors' choice immediately. The achievements of Russian filmmaking are obvious. Nikita Mikhalkov, the Oscar-winning film director and president of the MIFF, said at the opening ceremony that ten years ago Russia did not have a single Dolby Stereo movie theatre but had already 1,000 this year. In 1995, movie business returns were barely $8 million, while the imputed figure for next year is $1.5 billion. The Russian films "Us," "Koktebel," "The Driver for Vera" and "The Tuner" were invited to many festivals and have had a good audience abroad.
These achievements of Russian filmmaking are not simply a present prepared for the festival but objective reality that is apparent in any context. Russian films have made a breakthrough to new horizons since last year, when Bekmembetov's blockbuster "The Night Watch" earned $16.8 dollars (no Hollywood film ever scored so much in Russia). It was followed in a quick succession by "The Driver for Vera" (Pavel Chukhrai), "The Turkish Gambit" (Faiziyev), "The State Counselor" (Yankovsky) and other mainstream films that were a box-office success. It is true that these films remind you of graduation works of American master classes and their directors boyishly look up at the Hollywood dream factory, which is a recognized master of quality.
But nobody in the world looks up at Hollywood for contents. Russian filmmaking has always been on the quest for The Truth and a mouthpiece for The Big Ideas. The Russian medium- and senior-generation audiences have grown watching the films by Eisenstein, Bondarchuk, Romm, Grigory Chukhrai, Tarkovsky, Paradzhanov and Mikhalkov and have very high film standards. But today their only hope is for author's films, the arthouse.
Mainstream is clearly designed for young people and does not offer deep intellectual feelings. But arthouse is heir apparent to Soviet film traditions that are valued so highly in the world. Alexei Uchitel's film "Dreaming of Space" is a bright example of arthouse in filmmaking, which should be watched intensively, without slurping Coca-Cola and munching popcorn. It is not a blockbuster, the unquestionable foundation of modern entertainment filmmaking. It is a film that needs the work of the mind and heart.
It is a story of young people of the 1950s, a time shortly before Gagarin became the first man in space, and is styled as a period film. The air smells of change and freedom, and the young people want to expand their world, the Soviet world curtailed by politics and cordoned from other Universes. Playing at good old times, quoting from the past masterpieces and pining for hopes long dead is a recent fashion; Uchitel is simply making use of it. The real charm of his film is that it shows life as it is, bright and dull, with contradictions that make art what it is and not a sermon. Our compliments to Uchitel's scriptwriter, Alexander Mindadze, who can find a metaphysical bottom in any, even the most boring routine.
The Silver George for the best film director went to Thomas Vintenberg, the 36-year-old Danish classic and hero of the Danish Films Today program, for his "Dear Wendy."
Iranian Hamid Farahnejad was voted the best actor for his role in Kazem Maasumi's "Left Foot Forward on the Beat."
The Silver George for the best actress went to Bulgaria's Vesela Kazakova ("Stolen Eyes," Radoslav Spassov).
The special jury prize was granted to Aku Louhimies's "Paha maa/Frozen Land."
During the ten days of the festival, the audiences could see 18 non-competitive films made by young directors and masters of the East and West, both arthouse and mainstream, including "The Last Mitterrand" (retrospective of Robert Guediguian), films by Konrad Wolf timed for the 60th anniversary of VE-Day, and films about the Middle East conflict and Islam. There were 97 Russian non-competitive films.
Foreign stars visited the Moscow festival and we applauded the great masters: Annie Girardot (she brought the "Hidden" by Haneke), Jeanne Moreau (brought to the festival Francois Ozone's "Time to Leave" and received the special prize "I Believe. Konstantin Stanislavsky"), and Isztvan Szabo, who was granted the prize for contribution to the world filmmaking. Other masters were Peter Greenway and the Belgian brothers who swept Cannes, Jean-Pierre and Luc Dardenne.
Nikita Mikhalkov produced a sensation by saying that there would be a new jury soon, to distribute prizes from the spiritual standpoint. The Russian cinema seems to be ready to resume its speculative studies of the human mind, and this vaccination with the quest for meaning would not come amiss.
