Cinema of honest intentions

The crisis and reduced funding have made the organizers to take austerity measures: they reduced the number of the films in the out-of-competition programs and introduced paid accreditation; the festival video picture library didn’t open, Russian producers at the last moment didn’t give their permission to show Yuriy Bykov’s film The Fool; finally, according to investigation, some Nazis-homophobes have burnt down the cinema Zhovten because of screenings of the gay themed films, and later tried to torpedo the screenings in Kinopanorama. Under these circumstances, it is a miracle that the festival has taken place.

Predictably, this year’s festival made the emphasis on Ukrainian cinema (over 40 films have been shown in different programs) and documentaries dedicated to Maidan.

Ukrainian films were competing in all three competition categories. In the student category: “Go, kids of the Fatherland!” Confession (Dir. Halyna Lavrinets), Meeting (Vladyslav Robsky), Faces (Nikon Romanchenko); short-film category: Imagination (Kateryna Chepik), Tribute (Tetiana Voitovych); feature film category: Brothers. The Final Confession by Viktoria Trofymenko. It is worth mentioning the national competition: 30 live action, animation, and documentary films. Moreover, our directors have become so active that Molodist has launched one more section “Ukrainian premieres”: Good bye, cinephiles! (Dir. Stanislav Bitiutsky), Living Fire (Ostap Kostiuk), My dear Ukrainians (Oleksandr Zhovna), Sister ZO (Alisa Kovalenko, Liubov Durakova), It’s me (Anna Akulevych). Of course, far from all these works can be called successful. But at least the number is gratifying: it’s been a long time since we had so many premieres.

By all appearances, Maidan documentaries will soon create a new genre. “Kyiv” Movie Theater showed in particular Black Book of Maidan (authors: students and graduates of cinema department of Karpenko Kary National University: Anastasia Lysenko, Asia Khmeliova, Yurii Katynsky, Anna Holtzberh, Anna Korzh, Anton Siomin, Anna Lysun, Viktoria Zhukova, Aliona Kosinova, Anastasia Krysko, Vladyslav Rohalevsky, Anna Borysova, Alina Chernobai); Russia/Ukraine. Reality on Maidan (Pavel Kostomarov, Aleksandr Rastorguev, Susanna Baranzhieva, Andrey Kiseliov, Maksim Pakhomov, Yelena Khoreva, Beata Bubenets, Anna Dombrovskaya, Artur Moryakov, Tatyana Vikhreva, Evgenia Ostanina) and Kyiv/Moscow by Kyivite Olena Khoriova. The project Reality on Maidan is a brain child of Russian directors Pavel Kostomarov and Aleksandr Rastoguev, known by their skill to organize collective projects. Incidentally, their Term (Pavel Kostomarov, Aleksandr Rastorguev, Alexei Pivovarov) dedicated to protests in Russian in 2012 was shown at Molodist as well.

A common feature of post-Maidan films is their fragmentized structure. They either consist of small independent episodes or are built according to almanac principle, use the footage of different cameramen, and an essential part is dedicated to observation of the events without any commentaries. If the authors focus on specific faces, ordinary protesters become their heroes and commentators.

Of course, it is quite hard to organize a single straight-through plot with such a structure. For the most part, these works are based mostly on the energy of the material and emotional memory of the audience; after all any revolt on the screen always looks effective, no matter how skilful the director is. Black Book like Russia/Ukraine is an exciting chronicle of struggle for freedom, and the authors managed to convey the passion and tragedy of revolutionary battle. Thus, Term makes a greater content contrast. This film is mostly about the leaders of the Bolotnaya protests. The film leaves you surprised: our protests were absolutely different; we didn’t depend on politicians, even opposition leaders, but relied on self-organization and solidarity, which is why we won.

Kyiv/Moscow stands separately. At first, this film was under control of pro-Putin Kyiv publication, which tried to show that Russians and Ukrainians are not so different, and Maidan was senseless. By the efforts of the authors’ group the project broke out of the control of the clients, and the result was a series of colorful sketches from the lives of people of various professions in both capitals. The episodes about actress who found a work of a waitress in Kyiv and Kirghiz waiter in Moscow, as well as poor fellows from Moscow and Kyiv who earn their living by wearing costumes of bears and offering to tourists to have a photo made with them. Unfortunately, the problem is the same: there is no integral plot, so the story is not finished, and inserted episodes with Maidan protests don’t fit in. But the project is a successful collection of documentary portraits.

As for the competitions, the organizers, in spite of the lack of funding, tried to make the main one, feature film competition, as much conceptual and structured as possible, so that the themes and genres gave an echo. For example, the events in the film Corrections Class (Ivan Tverdovsky, Russia-Germany, the winner of the competition) and The Lesson (co-directors: Kristina Grozeva and Petar Valchanov, Bulgaria-Greece, FIPRESCI award) unfold in a school. The common thing of the films Difret (Dir. Zeresenay Berhane Mehari, Ethiopia-US, Ecumenical Jury Award) and Court (Chaitanya Tamhane, India, Special Diploma of the Main Jury) are that these are court dramas with lawyers being the leading characters. Fort Buchanan (Benjamin Crotty, France-Tunis, special award of the competition Sunny Bunny) and Land of Storms (Adam Csaszi, Hungary-Germany) are gay-themed, whereas Viktoria: a Tale of Grace and Greed (Men Lareida, Switzerland-Hungary) and Macondo (Sudabeh Mortezai, Austria) are about the problems of migration. Macondo and Difret feature the Barbarian practice of kidnapping women in        patriarchal communities; I Stay With You (Artemio Narro, Mexico), Viktoria, and Difret show a kind of gender revolt: women in their       opposition to the male world come up to      murder.

Court is a heroic attempt to make a European-style social film amidst an absolutely different film reality. Of course there are no dances or sweet Indian singing, except for protest songs, but the actors are restrained at maximum, they try to convey not the truth of passions, but the social truth of their characters. Neither judge, nor state prosecutor are shown as demons at governmental service: they are ordinary people with average level of life. Unfortunately, the director gets too estranged and as a result creates an immobile monument to his own script, frozen in monotonous dialogs, monotonous performance, and statements of evident things. The same problem refers to Difret, Macondo, and The Lesson. They all are social dramas, but their achievements limit to merely claims to reveal the theme. On the whole, most of the films of Molodist competition represent the cinema of honest intentions, which are not supported by convincing artistic expression.

Fort Buchanan is about the versatility of relations between people: there are homosexuals, heterosexuals, and they all are wives or partners of military servicemen with corresponding consequences. There are many jokes and erotic scenes, too much of open kitsch, but it is not a full-fledged comedy, because the erotic scenes are the most meaningful part of the film. Land of Storms is, vice versa, an extremely serious film about stigmatization of homosexuals, homophobia as reason of the characters’ unhappiness; unfortunately, the director again repeats the apparent things and, as if he didn’t have enough, creates a ridiculously emotional final, which levels the generally balanced film.

Viktoria convincingly shows the nightmare of sex-industry and has a tense plot: it becomes almost a thriller closer to the end, but the straightforwardness is a problem again. The same thing is with Corrections Class. Clearly, the state of disabled people in Russia and former USSR on the whole has been terrible, and the director cares about this (again, honest intentions), but in his intention to show these horrors Tverdovsky exaggerated too much, and took an excess in showing human defects and all-mightiness of evil that at some point ruined the elementary logic of narration and won success of one part of the audience owing to openly melodramatic effects.

Anywhere else by German director Ester Amrami was screened at the very beginning of the feature film competition, and it immediately became clear that it would be nominated for the Grand-Prix (as a result the film also won the special award of the Ecumenical Jury and Audience’s Favorite Prize in feature film competition).

The leading character is a young student of philology Noa who resides in Berlin and is compiling a dictionary of the words that cannot be translated. This is a totally absurd task from the academic point of view, but it is extremely important for understanding the essence of one’s own being. At the same time she is trying to sort out the relations with her boyfriend, a young German musician, and her noisy and not always united Jewish family.

What is Anywhere else about? About the difficulties of translation. Not simply between different languages, but between the language and the reality, the language and the feelings. Noa’s research refers not only to the limits of the language, but also what lies beyond these limits. This eternal “anywhere else” which cannot be conveyed by any words; it may be close to a dream, or to death, or to love, but there are no words to convey it; and probably finding these words means to understand the sense of own life. Of course, this task is not for a scholar, but for an artist, a poet. Anywhere else is a deep, funny, sad, and at the same time light film – like the film about youth and growing up should be.

Presence of Anywhere else in the competition, like some authors’ successes scattered in other pictures, enable us to recognize that this year’s Molodist was successful, in spite of everything.

Probably, next year more art will supplement honest intentions.

The Day’s FACT FILE

Molodist is one of the greatest specialized cinema events in Ukraine and Eastern Europe, according to the International Association of Film Producers (FIAPF). The film festival was founded in 1970 as a two-day screening of student short films of Kyiv State Institute of Theater Art. Since then the local initiative has become internationally popular: since the 1980s Ukrainians have gotten familiarized with the works of debuting directors from other countries. The main task of the festival is helping in development of young professional cinema. Such moviemakers as Fred Kelemen, Tom Tykwer, Francois Ozon, Andras Monory, Alexei Balabanov, Denis Yevstigneev, Stephen Daldry made their first steps in great cinematography with the help of Molodist. At the moment Molodist is the only film festival in Ukraine which has been in FIAPF ranking since 1991. The 44th Molodist lasted October 25 through November 2. The main festival venue was “Kyiv” Movie Theater.