Our thrush!

2016 declared the year of Cinema in Russia, but what cultural policy this year will differ from the past, it is not entirely clear: the final list of all initiatives and events invented in the Ministry of Culture can still not assure and announce (although it is already clear that the mage studios will be given even more money, and even less for conditional arthouse and animation). But the first and the main - that is, symbolic - the gesture has already been made: in Russia they have decided on which great films are great than others. Who decided it, why, why and whether there is any meaning here, explains Maxim Semenov.

At the end of December, the magazine "Session" submitted documents for the inclusion of 15 Soviet films in the UNESCO program "Memory of the World". The final list was compiled in conjunction with the State Film Fund according to the results of two-stage elections: 12 experts compiled a long list of 50 paintings, from which 70 Russian filmmakers chose the necessary fifteen. The resulting list should correct a historical mistake: back in 1995, within the framework of the “Memory of the World”, a program of national cinema heritage was created, 49 countries selected 15 films significant for their culture, but the Russian Federation then ignored the selection.

And now, 20 years later, the error will be corrected, and in the year of Russian cinema there is more one filming. All this has not yet been agreed, but we can hope that the bureaucrats from UNESCO will be quite satisfied with the films and the voting procedure. As for the very list, it is already well known. All 15 selected films were shot during the Soviet era. The earliest was released in 1925, the latest in 1989. In addition, Eisenstein, Tarkovsky and Herman had two films. The result was something like this:

• “The battleship“ Potemkin ”” and “Ivan the Terrible” by Sergey Eisenstein;

• “Andrei Rublev” and “Mirror” by Andrei Tarkovsky;

• “My friend Ivan Lapshin” and “20 days without a war” by Alexei German;

• "The outskirts" of Boris Barnet;

• "Cranes fly" Mikhail Kalatozov;

• "Fate of man" by Sergei Bondarchuk;

• "Ballad of a soldier" Grigory Chukhrai;

• "Ilyich's outpost" Marlene Khutsiev;

• "Beginning" Gleb Panfilov;

• “The Singing Drozd” Otar Ioseliani lived;

• "Unfinished play for the mechanical piano" by Nikita Mikhalkov;

• "Asthenic syndrome" of Kira Muratova.

It looks solid. Each selected film is either an unconditional masterpiece, or a sign for a cinema picture. But it’s worth looking, and questions arise. Who, in fact, does this list represent? What is "domestic cinema"? Is this cinema of the Russian Federation? Or the Soviet Union? Or the Russian Empire? Or films shot in Russia?

Anything can be hidden behind the wording of “domestic cinema”. If this is a list of a movie that has been filming in the territory that the Russian Federation now occupies, then Evgeny Bauer and Yakov Protazanov from pre -revolutionary cinema are not enough in it. If this is a list of Russian classics, then the absence, for example, Balabanov and Konchalovsky, confuses. If, finally, this is a gold collection of Soviet classics, then, firstly, the list does not have the Soviet classics: “New Babylon”, “Earth”, “Third Meshchanskaya”, “Happiness”, “Club of the Empire”, “According to the law”, “Mother”, “Bottis in life”, “Mashenka” or “Chapaev” should have taken honorary places in the Soviet list. In our list, in addition to the obligatory Eisenstein, the accidentally clogged “outskirts” of Barneta looks almost smuggled.

Secondly, it is confused by the almost complete absence of republican cinema. There are Joseliani and Muratov. But since they turned them on, where is Abuladze, Narliev, Zhalakyavichyus or Ishmukhamedov? It turns out that this list cannot be called Soviet, although it is compiled from Soviet films.

Comic detail. “Earth” Dovzhenko did not fall on the list only because she, like “a person with a film apparatus” of Vertov, was served from Ukraine. It is seductive to think that, having chosen Joseliani and Muratov, we recouped for Vertov with his constant Moscow views. Although Vertov does not belong to anyone: he is the property of the Soviet past, to which we all have a very indirect attitude. So the inhabitants of the barbaric kingdoms could share the cultural heritage of Rome. Seneca was born in Spain, therefore, he is a Spanish writer, his place next to Cervantes and Calderon. And the Blessed Augustine with his Hippon Region will be the writer of Algerian, like Henri Alleg or Ben Badis, famous for the aphorism "Communism-yeast of popular consciousness."

And again I will make a reservation. All 15 films included - either unconditional masterpieces, or the paintings are incredibly significant. But, compiled together, they turn into a sort of ... a school set of classics. Conservative, impressive and not meaningful. Too late, too moderate to be Soviet. Too textbook to be Russian. Almost nothing of anything about the past or the present, it looks like a monument to a recession of a late -Soviet person. Putting him, as if we are trying to hide from ourselves, hiding among something familiar and safe, well known since childhood (and the stylistically painful sensation of the 70s and 80s, which account for a significant part of the paintings from the list, are closer to us than the hot faith of the first half of the century).

It is hardly possible to suspect a session magazine or the State Film Fund, which took up all organizational issues to create this list in an attempt to hide from today. The films were selected by a completely democratic vote held among 70 filmmakers. But, probably, the very thought of the facelessness of our era is worn somewhere in the air-so that the best port of time is a list, which, not really nothing, can say everything about us.