The disappearing movie

The first show in Moscow by Pavel Bardin “Russia 88” was held: the picture was presented as part of the “spring euphoria” mini-festival in the Roland cinema. The film, which mobilized the army of influential opponents, was the first in the post -Soviet time (except for the “4” Ilya Khrzhanovsky) claimed the dissident laurels and the “longitude” fate.

The permit was received, but which of the distributors will decide to release a black and white ribbon on the screens, shot by a twitching manual camera full of non-normative vocabulary and showing a rampant of skinheads and neo-fascists in our megacities as an almost routine phenomenon? Even despite the halo of the scandal, promising a certain commercial perspective, the owners of the film, weighing all the pros and cons of, most likely will be caution. And they will receive silent approval from above. After all, there is no rental - there is no film. There is no film - there is no problem. And the viewer is not so torn to problem films, he managed to get used to entertaining cinema with a share of primitive patriotism.

With the rental of foreign cinema at first glance, everything is in perfect order. In the past, there remained ideological and moral censorship that blocked the path to the Soviet screen not only for films about the Vietnamese hero Rambo and the murder of Trotsky, but also the masterpieces of Pazolini and Bertolucci, Bunuel and Coppoles, finally, Jean-Luke Godard, guilty of two articles at once: “political extremism” and “sexual revolution”. Although we scold Americans, we still willingly buy and roll their films regardless of ideological filling: there would be a cash desk. With European arthouse, cinema is worse, but still there is a niche for it, so with the work of Almodovar, von Trier or Hanek our viewers are very familiar.

But here appears the "Katyn" of Andrzej Vaida. It was a year ago, at the penultimate Berlin festival. The premiere took place with pomp, with the participation of European top politicians. Then, after a couple of months, the film was shown in the Moscow House of Cinema, and this was also a noticeable event, although after watching, some of our filmmakers complained depressedly why they were entrusted to the “anti -Soviet film”. The further story of its drama resembles the plot of the same film: it is difficult to get to the truth hidden under the oppression of manipulation. As the Soviet intelligence services and Nazi propaganda dumped a crime on each other in Katyn (destroying the Polish officers), this is the need to establish where the film went and why did not get into Russian rental. Either the unprofessionalism of Polish producers is the cause, or the fear of Russian distributors. The most incredible, but all the more plausible version is that one Ukrainian company specially acquired the rights to the film, then to block its promotion in Russian rental. One way or another, the “Katyn” disappeared.

An example of a different kind is “Harvey Milk” Gas Van Sent, a movie border of a gay activist from San Francisco, the first politician who openly declared his non-traditional orientation and made his program the struggle for minority rights. The life paid for this, Milk became the banner of “another America”, and Sean Penn received for this role his second “Oscar”. And from the Oscar films "Harvey Milk" the longest time goes to our screens. The leaders of the company Paradis said that they were postponing his representation “Due to the Great Lent”; A copy of the announced film was not received at the closure of the “Spring Euphoria” mini-festival. What is this a technical delay or a concession to the pressure of the Orthodox Church? In post -Soviet history, there was already a case of clerical censorship: recall the scandal with the televisionocate of the film “The Last Temptation of Christ” ...