Documents were presented in Perm

The Flahertiana Festival handed out awards

The Flahertiana documentary film festival, which ended in Perm on Tuesday, once again showed that non-fiction films can captivate viewers no less than feature films. Another thing is that the line between these concepts is less and less obvious.

The dispute between “purists” and “innovators” became one of the few heated moments during the entire festival. To what extent does the documentary film genre allow elements of staging, casting, and directorial provocation? Is it necessary to warn viewers before the show that what they will be shown is not a reality show or a recording made through a hole in a suitcase, but a product of the author's vision, a work of fiction in which real characters and their real circumstances participate? Festival President Pavel Pechenkin rightly believes that since the Perm film festival is named after Robert Flaherty, there is nothing criminal in following the traditions of the great documentarian. Who, as you know, even in his “Nanuk from the North” did not engage in ethnography, but for his own convenience gathered Eskimos who were strangers to each other, but friendly to the camera, into a generalized “savage” family.

The author of one of the most interesting films in the competition program, Pole Michal Marczak, did something similar. His film “The Edge of Russia” very convincingly shows an ideal, metaphysical Russia, for which the audience gave a long ovation, not even embarrassed by the pathetic ending with the singing of the anthem. The plot of the film is this: a recruit Lekha, who actually wanted to serve, but somewhere further south, is sent to a distant border base, somewhere beyond Naryan-Mar. Five senior border guards, sort of Russian bearded men, teach the young mind - not the way it usually happens, but like a human being. They teach him how to wrap footcloths, chop snow blocks with a shovel, spend the night in an igloo, shoot, and fight. They explain to him the basics of Arctic Slavic yoga, perform a dance with sabers and finally ask: “So, Lekha, what is the meaning of life?” After the session, the director began to answer questions and noticeably disappointed the audience by the fact that, it turns out, he simulated the situation a little. The base is real, like the border, and a thousand kilometers of ice to the horizon, but Marchak collected border guards from all the surrounding outposts. Moreover, by the time of filming, all of them were no longer in the service, which was not even told to poor private Lekha. The machines, of course, were also fake. However, Michal’s colleagues do not see a problem here: “Beautiful? Beautiful. True? Well, since the audience believed it, it means it can be so.”

Otherwise, “Flahertiana” passed more than peacefully: with relatively full halls and absolute agreement of the judges on who should give the Grand Prix - “Big Golden Nanook”. The main prize went to the film “Mugabe and the White African,” which is traditional in terms of the penetration of game elements, directed by Lucy Bailey and Andrew Thompson. This is a very technically and smoothly filmed story of a heroically senseless lawsuit between a white farmer and the Zimbabwean dictator. During several years of Mugabe's rule, his dark-skinned thugs survived the country of white landowners who settled in Africa during colonial times. Whites were dragged from their homes, beaten, taken into the forest and left there to die (the beatings are carefully documented). But they persistently, alternating intensive therapy with court hearings, tried to restore justice. Finally, an international tribunal ordered Mugabe to stop the outrages. General rejoicing? No, the elected president of Zimbabwe (he was the only contender) simply did not care about the court’s decision and threw his winners out of their homes. Now these unfortunate people, instead of going to their relatives in Europe, are filing another lawsuit.

Black Africa looks completely different in “The Kinshasa Symphony” - another favorite of Permians, a film by the Germans Klaus Wischmann and Martin Baer. In this African-style colorful film, we are invited to watch a marvelous diva - the only symphony orchestra in the region. The Flahertiana jury awarded the film a special mention with the wording “for its talented dramatic embodiment of the theme of survival.” The capital of the democratic Congo, Kinshasa, is truly the poorest metropolis in the world, and people here have to kill for every cent. The entire composition of the orchestra in civilian life is engaged in something completely far from playing music, like selling homemade omelettes on the street. With all due respect to the work and problems of black orchestra members, neither Beethoven’s Ninth Symphony nor Carl Orff’s “Carmina Burana” was given to them in full, no matter how much they assured that in the divine Ludwig they heard the pulse of Mother Africa. To a much greater extent they master another art - simple everyday life. Despite the terrible poverty, instability and the need to count coppers, these dark-skinned people - incredibly beautiful and cinematic - retain an ineradicable love of life and the ability to present themselves beautifully. A typical scene from a film: laundry is drying in a very neglected courtyard, children are fussing about, and a tired black beauty, wrapped in an incredibly colorful rag, is playing the saxophone. Not “Ode to Joy” at all, which the orchestra terribly misinterprets, but something elusively sad and at the same time life-affirming.

In addition to competitive, obviously strong films, Perm spectators willingly attended more exotic screenings, many of which were allowed in without paying. Moreover, it was not even the new films from the programs of Russian or Polish documentaries, Dutch films about Russia, or films by respected jury members that earned greater approval from the public. It was surprisingly crowded and fun at the sessions of the Kirill Kobrin retrospective and the showings of the Krasnogorsk archive. Even in comparison with the most powerful films of Flahertiana, the classics not only did not look like dusty old stuff, but also seemed to invite new documentarians to remember the aesthetic side of cinema. Most of today's non-fiction directors, by focusing on the problematic part, have almost completely eliminated the attempt to make a visual masterpiece. And this, it must be admitted, would not hurt many films at all - especially since the funds at the disposal of filmmakers have become immeasurably greater over the century.

Mikhail SHIYANOV