On opinions that turn into a verdict Many times I was offered to tell something about the Club of Documentary Film Fans created under the wing of Open Russia, and somehow I did not feel like it. Why publicly comment on the love of views? Answer...

ABOUT

opinions that turn into a verdict Many times I was offered to tell something about the Club of Documentary Film Lovers created under the wing of Open Russia, and somehow I didn’t feel like it. Why publicly comment on the love of views? The answer after reading the article by Alla Bossart, a smart and bright woman, about our viewing of the "Triumph of the Will" was found by itself - in this love, as in any other, it is also obviously necessary to explain.

AND

like this: screenings of the best documentaries in the tiny hall of the YUKOS Reception Houses (it’s kind of embarrassing to remember that there was a district committee, and we all wore Komsomol badges, right?) invented for those who want to watch documentaries, but can’t do. Of course, not for everyone, because this is not a cinema, but a club, and a closed one. Once a month, the best writers of Moscow and their friends gather for screenings, drink red wine, see each other, as they once did, when screenings were rare, and we were young and wanted to know everything.

From my point of view, documentaries are the best food for thought. To see with your own eyes Lenin, Nicholas II, Hitler, the life of a metropolis, a female praying mantis devouring a male after mating, the operation of the world's largest stock exchanges, burning Vietnamese villages, and so on and so forth - this is a luxury for an intellectual overfed with points of view, overripe concepts and other people's ideas -fix.

No raid of special events, clowning, brainwashing. "Look and think!" - in general, this is the slogan we would come up with if we were preoccupied with our own PR issues.

There were a lot of thoughts about the film “Triumph of the Will”, which we watched at the club: Moscow was seething after the screening, popular presenters referred to the film in their live broadcasts, telephone lines were heated, there was an intense exchange of opinions. This seething splashed out on the pages of newspapers, with Alla Bossart, for example, in the article “Mine High”. I agree, the picture puts many people in an ideological dead end, and there is reason to take up the pen.

The famous picture of 1934, filmed on a crazy scale, promoting fascism, brilliant camera work, and so on and so forth. After almost 70 years, a discussion flares up in the hall of the club, which then flares up for a month and, by its intensity, again clearly indicates that we are intellectuals out of time, out of place, out of action. We discuss everything at the same time - ethics and aesthetics, ourselves and others, Hitler and the camera, Nuremberg and Leni Riefenstahl's breast size, not noticing the main thing in this dispute: we are aggressive, intolerant, illegible in terms, we lump everything together - life and art , ethics and aesthetics, news and documents of the era. I was left with a sense of the sinful sin of motley argumentation, pathos and an indispensable desire for an opinion to be a verdict. Like the Politburo. Although not everyone, of course.

“Vulgar agitation,” said Denis Dragunsky. “This is not art,” said Alla Gerber. “Oh, we would have such budgets! In times of totalitarianism, it was good with budgets, ”Shenderovich sighed. “This is not a triumph of Leni Riefenstahl, but of her stupid love for fascism, and we are here, like goats, looking at it, is Nuremberg not enough for us?” - said X, who asked me not to disclose his name to anyone. “Cool cinema,” Igor Svinarenko boomed relish, “there were so many flat and untalented agitators, and what a thing this is! And why did you come to see the picture for the second time, but you yourself hate it, huh? “I have sixteen arguments against Bossart,” Andrei Bilzho admitted, “and I will tell her next time, I can’t do it from an armored personnel carrier.” Someone remarked: “Look, I shot an ode, a great ode, and time passed and it turned out to be a caricature, nowhere does fascism look so caricatured as in this film.”

I am very glad that we, the notorious intellectuals, have started arguing about something, perhaps in the throes of giving birth to a new understanding of things (in the terminology of Alla Bossart: “This is approximately the plane where the bickering and split of the liberal public lie today”). And it’s okay that we get everything “through the lip”, with a deep pathos of denial and a claim to the ultimate truth. For my part, I am sure that the document is valuable as evidence and nothing more. This is not taught except in the Soviet school. Otherwise, showing a film about Stalin's funeral is propaganda of Stalinism, and the publication of the diaries of the famous executioner from the time of the Inquisition is propaganda of a witch hunt. What is important here is not the case, but the principle: condemning anything for the “wrong content”, we, without realizing it, begin to promote violence, lack of freedom, the dictatorship of ideology.

We argued a lot after watching the movie on the sidelines. I was interested in finding out whether art should be moral or optional. “Genius and villainy are two things that obviously go together,” Vladimir Sorokin admitted sadly. But many are still convinced that no, they are incompatible. You immediately think: what a direct path from this belief to what we have already experienced in the 30s, 40s and beyond without a break until the end of the 80s, when the most talented person was first recognized as a villain of one rank or another, and then “chopped off” from art.

Frankly, I can’t read Sorokin’s books, then somehow I can’t sleep and lose my appetite, but I’m glad that he goes to our club and we can sometimes spend time together discussing films. And for me, as the organizer of this club, it is very important that respectable writers do not quarrel, so that aggression from a collision with a different opinion does not overshadow the mind.

And now about the main thing:

1.

I am glad that "the advanced liberal public shows special tolerance towards talent, and the fact of art acquires not only value in itself, but also an end in itself." This means that for the time being, with the unanimous approval of this liberal public, they will not imprison and expel from the country those whom public opinion considers talented, but not morally stable enough.

2.

I think it’s normal to talk about art only from an aesthetic standpoint, and leave the rest to the district committees of one kind or another, I think it’s normal to talk about camera angles and camera work in relation to a documentary about fascism - this is the best prevention of fascism!

3.

I think that the assessment of the picture is, in general, a matter of taste, and arguing about tastes is an empty undertaking. For some, "Triumph of the Will" is a ballet, and for some, a sonnet. For someone - a masterpiece, but for someone chicken offal. The main thing, and I am convinced of this, is to be able to watch and read everything, click the mouse and get on the Internet, and then, and this is the most important thing in all this verbal camarilla, is everyone’s personal business.

Still, an amazing act was made by my wonderful acquaintance, who wrote me a letter, which I quoted at the end of the screening: “Sorry, I really like to watch movies, but I can’t fascist, I have a heart.” A beautiful position, very, very liberal, which is essentially the answer to both me and Alla Bossart: I myself choose what to do (and not to say!).

Taking off my hat.

There are free people among us.