Alexander KHVAN

Film director Khvan Alexander Fedorovich (“Dominicus”, “Dyuba-Dyuba”, “Good Rubbish, Bad Rubbish”, “It's Easy to Die”) is distinguished by sociability and openness. And with the help of the screen, he wants to talk to as many viewers as possible...

You once said that one of the first films that really hit you was Bless the Children and the Beasts by Stanley Kramer. How do you like Tarantino Stone's assessment: "This is the same Kramer, only with style." Did you mean that Stone, like Kramer, looks back at the audience?

- Kramer, probably, they have some kind of a byword: an example of a condo medium direction, nevertheless, which is very popular. So, after watching Bless the Children and Beasts when I was twelve or thirteen, I suddenly noticed that the film was divided into montage pieces. I saw the gluing, I understood that it was done. Cinema for me has ceased to be a kind of entertainment that you watch and watch.

- That is, you saw that it was made of parts, which means that it can be taken apart. And since it can be taken apart, it can also be synthesized. Was it your little childhood discovery?

“A little childish personal discovery, quite right. And I suddenly realized that this is a kind of power over people. Emotional. What if you combine the knowledge of this technology with a certain pathos, it turns out that you can convey your feelings. A teenager has a complex of incomprehensibility: I have strong feelings, but no one, no one understands them. It seems that a wall separates you from the world. If someone shares your emotions, then this is happiness. And here, it turns out, I can force millions to separate them.

What can new technologies bring to cinema?

- First, they can bring some new theme, which, in fact, has already happened. The appearance of computers in everyday life gave rise to such a significant trend as "cyberpunk", which is now gradually, as it seems to me, is beginning to be exhausted, because its masterpieces are behind us.

- I saw two films that are classified as this trend, but I could not define for myself what “cyberpunk” is.

Cyberpunk is when complex technology, a new field of thinking, robotics are combined with mass culture and fused together. The fruit of advanced technical thought and comic material. I think the use of computer technology for special effects that amaze the imagination - this direction will soon dry up, the attractions will be exhausted. There is a much wider scope of manifestation, the so-called "imperceptible special effects", when a realistic effect is achieved. I'll use Forrest Gump as an example. Commander Forest Gump's leglessness is computer generated.

- How do you evaluate Lutsik's film "Outskirts"? (Pyotr Lutsik and the late Alexei Samoryadov wrote the script for Khwang's most famous film, Dyuba-Dyuba. - Yu.S.)

“Just wonderful, in my opinion. Opposes with another, also recently appeared. With "Voroshilovsky shooter". They are born from the same message, the impulse that exists in society...

- All to the nail?

“Society wants these forces to finally rage. Petya's film has an absolutely amazing combination of irony and pathos. And the pathos is genuine, not banter.

- In one of the interviews, you said that you periodically find yourself in extreme situations. The last thing that happened to you like this?

- The last thing is that they just hit me on the head, I didn’t even participate in this situation. I went to visit my operator in a dark courtyard, it was quite recently, in November. Obviously, some people thought that they had something to take from me. An interesting experience: to walk and walk, and then suddenly wake up, in mud, blood, without documents and money.

Have you lost a lot?

- Something about a thousand rubles. The biggest loss was not money, but a passport. Earnest request: if someone found it, contact me through the newspaper.

- A question for you as a director who has directed two thrillers ("Good Rubbish, Bad Rubbish" and "It's Easy to Die"): what are the strongest thrillers, in your opinion?

The thriller genre is much broader than it usually seems. The first and best thriller I consider the film "Bicycle Thieves" ...

- Well, it starts.

- This is not a show off. It really is. If you look at the picture now, with an open mind, it is made according to all the principles of Hitchcock.

- May I interrupt you? I've been thinking about this movie recently. I don't understand why people still watch it. After all, a newspaper, completely unpretentious story, more ordinary and smaller than which, at first glance, it is impossible to come up with.

- You are very mistaken: they watch because of the film language. As you know, "Bicycle Thieves" is the main film of neorealism. non-professional artists. Life by surprise, almost documentary filming - a perfectly adjusted mood, rhythmically built, with an amazingly developed scenario, action, with prepared climaxes ... And if you call more traditional thrillers, then, probably, after all, "The French Connection" and "Elevator to the scaffold ".

— About neorealism. Recently, among filmmakers, one can hear talk that neorealism is an experience that can help Russian cinema rise. Our situation now is very reminiscent of the situation in post-war Italy: lack of money, you can only withdraw with copper money. And in the sphere of audience expectations, they say, there is a certain niche, unfilled, - human stories about the problems of ordinary people.

I agree with this, but with some reservations. Cinema initially developed as a medal with two sides: on the one hand, it is an attraction, a farce, special effects, on the other, a sophisticated plot, its more and more careful development towards artistry. The only thing that a neorealist film can draw out (since it avoids attractions on principle) is the power of ideas, first dramaturgical, then directorial. Cinematic ideas. Thinking can replace any computer graphics. I am sure about that.