Cinema for the enemy

The time chosen by Georgy Vanyan, an Armenian publicist and human rights activist, may not have been the most successful - shortly before the Day of Remembrance of the Victims of the Genocide. What Vanyan tries to do year after year, he himself calls a film festival of Azerbaijani films. Modestly, one might say, in one’s own circle, and from year to year everything begins approximately the same, and ends just as equally. An unpretentious announcement: if it’s Yerevan or Gyumri, then somewhere on the outskirts, if it’s a smaller city, like Vanadzor, then again something narrowly specialized, like a journalist’s club. Three or four short films filmed on the other side of the front line - about things that have nothing to do with front-line history, no jury and no prizes, with the exception of one and only one - the audience award. In Armenia. For an Azerbaijani film. As if, in fact, on the other side of the front line, ordinary people are making ordinary films as if there is no front line.

If Vanyan with his idea reconciled anyone, at least temporarily, it was the Armenian government and the Armenian opposition. “A certain Georgy Vanyan, after the failure in Yerevan and Gyumri, intending to implement a grant received from certain Western centers, chose, as it seems to him, Vanadzor as a convenient place to achieve his treacherous goals...” This joint statement with a call to stand up in the face of national betrayal was signed, it seems, by representatives of every shade of the Armenian political spectrum, including the most supposedly liberal and Westernized. There are elections in May.

But if it was just about the elections. And in time, either chosen or chosen...

The first attempt to acquaint the Armenian audience with Azerbaijani cinema was preceded by a similar experience with Turkish cinema, and in general, Vanyan considered the film festival a logical continuation of the Days of Azerbaijan he organized in the Armenian school. Even if the whole undertaking was limited to an announcement, it would seem that one could talk about a revolution. But things went a little further, although the consciousness of the enemy peoples was by no means turned upside down.

The enmity is so structured that there is nothing special to turn around.

On the one hand, for example, in the regions bordering Azerbaijan, this device looks like this. Here the border in some places is a narrow road, which ceased to serve as a rural street, but never became the front line. At first, they answer the question about neighborly communication here evasively, but as the acquaintance deepens, they declare with all the peasant frankness: “Of course, we communicate. And in general, if they hadn’t come in large numbers from Yerevan when the war began, the Azerbaijanis and I would have been on our own.” neighbors sorted everything out...” By the way, Vanyan himself notes that in the outback his undertakings are understood much better.

And in the Azerbaijani outback, during your initial acquaintance, they will definitely and convincingly tell you about 20 percent of the territory and a million refugees and Yerevan, which is not Yerevan, but the Erevan Fortress, a masterpiece of Azerbaijani, naturally, architecture. And all this is a continuous stream of speech without punctuation marks, because the text is not meant to convince, but simply breathes. And then, taking a breath: you visit Armenia - how do they really live there? Are they really dying of hunger, as they say on TV? And, shaking his head with satisfaction: I thought that they live much like us - why would they live differently? And in Georgia, local Azerbaijanis living near the Armenian border go to Armenia every day en masse, where goods are waiting for them at the market, delivered through the efforts of a joint Armenian-Azerbaijani business from Istanbul or Shanghai, first to Yerevan, and then here, to the border area. And in Baku, the best gift is still Armenian cognac, and in Karabakh, shuttle traders sell Azerbaijani tea, which Karabakh cannot live without even a generation later.

Gasoline in Armenia is also mostly Azerbaijani, and it is easy to guess that Armenian businessmen do not buy it from their Georgian colleagues either. And everyone knows it. And in the days of Azerbaijan in Armenia, essays were written about Azerbaijan in the Yerevan school. Some are in full accordance with the established tradition: “In my opinion, Azerbaijan is a dirty, slovenly country of fools...”. But quite representative were also those who, albeit not without some pathos, deduce the future from a soberly assessed present: “...Let’s forget about what happened in our countries in the past. For we are not obliged to be drafted into the war of our grandfathers”...

In general, the idea of ​​Azerbaijani cinema in Yerevan failed – both a year ago and now. Which, again, did not surprise anyone, and the position of a blogger with the nickname Crazy Patriot sounded completely organic, formulated, as they say, in very good Armenian: “I’m surprised why we are making a fuss about the festival of one scumbag and giving him meaningless PR. Several Once you catch him on the street, break his head, keep him hungry in the basement for several days, and everything will become like silk...” Vanyan’s like-minded person, living on the other side of the front line, Zardusht Alizadeh, notes: the Azerbaijanis again won a historical competition against the Armenians. “We have hundreds of people who are ready to communicate with the enemy and are not susceptible to propaganda, but in Armenia there are many such people.”

Our Armenian colleagues will probably dispute this assertion with all the right reasons. And Alizadeh is unlikely to persist. Once at the origins of the Popular Front of Azerbaijan, who later created the Social Democratic Party of Azerbaijan, he proceeds from the conviction that the average person on both sides of the border recognizes only those whom he considers one of his own. “But how are a lot of things similar between you?” – I somehow allowed myself to notice, looking around the table of Azerbaijani friends. The owners looked coolly into my eyes, and then relaxed and laughed: who else should we be like if not each other? Zardusht Alizadeh remembers "Mimino". “If we had an equally talented director who wanted to make a movie about an Armenian and an Azerbaijani, it would turn out even funnier. Despite all the antagonism, there is much more similarity between us...”

Historical enmity is as clear as poisoned air. Everyone got used to it. We adapted and developed immunity. You can live in it, and every air always and everywhere has its own characteristics, sometimes causing mutations. Somewhere they hate, secretly or openly, everyone around and even inside. Somewhere there are only enemy neighbors. Immunity is when you can no longer ask questions. In South Ossetia, say, to suggest out loud that the Tskhinvali people have always been mentally closer to the Georgians than to their northern brothers may be more risky than noticing the Armenian-Azerbaijani similarities. Although in the 90s this topic was discussed calmly, albeit with some emphasis on the fact that Georgia owes all the best in its history, including football player Vladimir Gutsaev, to the Ossetians. Tbilisi still remained closer to Vladikavkaz, not only in a geographical sense. And the road that ran here, connecting the entire South Caucasus with all of Russia, and the markets located on this road, reconciled everyone in a completely offshore manner. And when war almost broke out in 2005, both sides of the border lamented how easy it turns out to be to destroy what the objective and calm nature of things patiently arranges. Timur Tskhovrebov, a respected South Ossetian field commander, who after the war took up a joint business with Nugzar Gogorishvili, an authoritative commander among the Georgians, somehow immediately began to arouse suspicion among his compatriots. What the Crazy Patriot in Yerevan only dreams of, young people with bats in their hands did with Timur, despite his military glory. In August 2008, Timur again took up arms, gathering those who survived in ’92. And again, as soon as it was all over, he went back to his old ways. Timur is fully aware that if he decides to organize a Georgian film festival in Tskhinvali, some may understand, but a new attack with bats cannot be avoided. “But I would have taken it anyway...” In 1992, Timur took Nugzar at gunpoint, and even remembers where it was. “He once recently showed me a pillar on the border, under which it was only by some miracle that he didn’t shoot me…” Nugzar recalls today. A weight is lifted from my soul - finally, I can admit that I have known this story for a long time - from Timur himself, who told it to me back in 2005. “Does Nugzaru already know about this pillar?” - I asked Timur then. “No,” Timur shook his head, “It’s too early...”

At the same time, both understand perfectly well that there are issues on which they cannot agree. They don't even try, however. The formula for the future world order is not at all of interest to those who consider peacekeeping a personal matter. “Of course, we have completely different views on the situation with South Ossetia,” Nugzar gently reminds. But it is quite enough for him that his Tbilisi neighbors, having learned that an Ossetian friend had come to see him, were at first somewhat surprised, then sat down at the table, and then completely took Timur to their place.

This is the effect of average public opinion. Everyone who compiles it, with the exception of especially convinced, injured or simply not entirely healthy people, will not consider sharing drinking with someone who came from there a betrayal. But when the time comes to answer the question about the fate of the homeland, it turns out that it is very important to consider the enmity as primordial and necessarily historical. It turns out that it is completely unburdensome in everyday life, and certainly more comfortable than the idea that a movie filmed on the other side of the front line does not have to have a direct relationship to this line. Although the other side also has its own ideas about comfort and national honor, and one of the Azerbaijani directors, whose film was planned to participate in the festival, also reminded the Armenians of history, just in case. And therefore, the formulation of the Armenian political scientist Alexander Iskandaryan, who considers initiatives like Vanyan’s undertakings to be marginal, is by no means only relevant to Armenia: “In Armenian society there is a consensus regarding reconciliation with Azerbaijan - this is a consensus of non-reconciliation.”

And time, contrary to the common misconception, does not cure anyone or anything. Quite the contrary. According to Iskandaryan, over the past two or three years, public confidence that there is nothing to talk about with Azerbaijan has only grown stronger. This is the nature of the status quo: passions have subsided, hatred has subsided, an enemy somewhere may even be of neighborly interest - what kind of movie are they watching and who did a classmate from Baku marry, which she had to leave once, and which she still dreams about ? And they get used to the status quo - calmly, and who might people who propose changing something look like?

Time preserves. Those who are considered winners have a victory complex, while those who are considered losers have a defeat complex. And, as Azerbaijani political scientist and publicist Togrul Juvarly believes, it is still unknown what is more dangerous: “The melancholy of the losers goes into the subconscious, and it is unregulated. And the militaristic slogans that we hear can be perceived much more radically than the authorities expect.”

Those who do not want to see the front lines are still ready to be peacemakers, eccentrics and traitors at the same time for their compatriots. Or launderers of Western grants. They are sometimes defiantly naive, sometimes they play on the verge of an aesthetic foul, planning to stage “Romeo and Juliet” in the Georgian village of Tekali, next to which Armenia and Azerbaijan meet. They don't have a lot of room to improvise for everyone. Togrul Juvarly seems to have found the formula: “In the end, foreign people must become closer to their own power.” The formula is almost absolute. It is also about reconciliation – including the reconciliation of the two halves of the warring consciousness. And about why it is impossible.