"Our story is rich."

Leonid Parfenov answers questions from the editorial office of “domestic notes”.

Why did you turn to history? Was an order for this or the initiative belonged to you?

The first real project about the past is “The other day 1961–1991. Our era ” - appeared from the desire to“ inventory ”the experience that formed us all. I have already made “Old Songs of the Main”, the second series of “Old Songs” was already shot - if desired, they can also be considered “historical” television films. There was a quacking of Soviet cinema-archetypes-“Chairman of the collective farm, a woman of a difficult fate”, “Saleshoers from the Selpo, a girlfriend-gear”, “The soldier came to a visit, and the girl did not wait,” etc., first “Stalin's genre”, then “Khrushchevsky romanticism”-“We are not a carpentry”, Shurik (still Demyanenko), “Non-alive) You got a wedge of white light ”,“ Blue light ”with“ And the snow goes ”(Eshpaya music, the words of Yevtushenko). I was just happy to, finally, to work with all this as with a style, to return this wealth to use, modernly “formatting”. Because the word "scoop" went away and people ceased to be ashamed of Soviet origin. Kostya Ernst and I then (in 1995-1997) talked a lot about this. “Order” was one for one thing - “Met the New Year”. Three hours after the battle, the chimes of Berezovsky, at that time, the manager of the 1st channel (ORT), was ready to spend money, other budgets were modest. We wanted to express their mood - and expressed, “Old songs ...” were a huge success and gave rise to a new fashion. But “the other day 1961–1991” (then there was a continuation) I already did as journalism - not “artistic broadcasting”, but documentary. Although the motives are approximately the same and the “order” was more “social” than the “authorities ordered”.

What kind of political thinking is your programs closest?

I hope the liberal - in the broad sense of the word. If possible, I wanted to imagine a free view of things. If this is, of course, a “image of political thinking”. I was often “sewed with politics”. For example, how is the Prague Spring and the appearance of a mini-skirt you get equal to historical events! Firstly, who measured them? Secondly, the installation of "VSTOK" does not mean equality. Thirdly, we are television, not science. But in the history textbook it is more interesting to give the flow of "events, people, phenomena." These disputes caused mortal longing, I then evaded them.

Can politicians appeal to them, use this material as an argument?

Politicians can use everything. About “Old Songs ...” in “New York Times” on the first page (!) There was an article “Russians golden the communist past”, and in Izvestia they wrote that, they say, this is the song support of the Communist Party of the Communist Party in the State Duma elections ...

Have you sought to create a purely entertaining or informative program?

Entertaining and informative, of course, too. Otherwise, the television series will not withstand multiple display. We need saturation - emotional, mounting. High pace. We need a fashionable product - and visual fashion changes quickly. After all, you are responsible for the air on the air, for serious budgets that require repetitions, and even better - repetitions and circulations of VHS and DVD.

Obviously, objectivity is a chimera. In this regard, what principles of selecting historical material (persons, events, documents ...) were you guided? How do you see the role of a person in the stream of history - in particular, such a person who is embodied on the screen in the image of your hero?

There are many principles of selection - I think you can’t imagine how important the “telegrin” is important. For example, manuscripts and engravings on the screen look bad, they do not hold the “picture”. In a row - no more than forty seconds. But the reliefs of the terrain are good - if they are preserved. A strong emanation comes from the battlefields, for example, and the television screen transfers it completely. Under the Czech town of Slavkov, you will lie down, you will direct the camera up, and the second betacam takes off the first vizier of the first through your crown - and please look with the audience to the sky Austerlitz. You can read the whole huge Tolstoy paragraph, and your voice appears appropriate.

What image of Russian history, what stereotypes would you like to destroy?

First of all, boring. Television is specifically - and our textbooks are written very abstractly. They are completely "unlimited." After all, we tried to shoot journalism about the past - with business trips, with information as in a report: who, where, how, how much. I remember well the horror of Pushkin’s 18th anniversary of the 200th anniversary: ​​“There is nothing left left before Alexander Sergeyevich’s birthday.” Well, it was impossible to show a goose feather and a fluctuated flame of a candle on the windowsill. And he is sick and others. In addition, on another channel, as I remember now, the series “Detective of Colombo” was going on at that time. Here is an order-a production necessity: how to celebrate the Pushkin’s anniversary in the world. Our five -series began with Ethiopia - so that it was immediately visible: “The steps were destroyed.” In fact, stereotypes are very taken into account in our business. Their public already knows and is grateful if you-again destroying them-show the “Arapov Peter the Great”, “Tabakerka Zubov” or the border “Pale of Settlement”, beyond which Levitan was sent. These are all historical “brands”, genuine or imaginary, destroyed or confirmed upon closer examination. Signals familiar to the audience, - by mastering attention, can be taken further.

What image of Russian history should remain in the minds of the viewer after your programs?

Rich - first of all. The average Russian knows - not at the level of science, but simply as the sum of names and events - his story is much worse than their Englishman or Frenchman know. And “personally” usually does not represent anything at all - cognitive tourism is almost at zero. People are nowhere to go anywhere, there is usually no local local history either. In what city do you remove - they will definitely do, they will ask: is it you? And what do we have for your filming?

What audience do you focus on, creating your programs on historical topics? Were the sociometric measurements of the audience, do their results coincide with intentions?

As they write on the cassettes: without age limit. I worked only on a commercial channel and only in the prime time (premieres). Someone will attract the topic, someone’s tone of the story, someone will “join” on the machinations-this is such an animation in the “Russian Empire”. Family viewing - for pioneers and pensioners. And how else can Alexander III live on a weekday at 22.30?

Do you see the historical programs going on TV - copyright programs, TV shows, chronicle ... How do you feel about them?

...

Do you think that the average Russian viewer is better to imagine its own past after watching television programs?

I hope it's better. At least we showed a lot - on the TV channel, in our time - for the first time.

Do you think that with your programs you brought the story closer to the modern viewer or, conversely, as if cut with it, were freed from it? In other words, should the viewer, after watching the transfer to some extent, identify himself with the past of the country, fulfill the proud self-confidence in himself and his people, or he distance himself from this (heavy, sometimes terrible) past (= “It is good that I live now, and not then”), feels liberation for a new life in a common-European, omnivorous-family? That is, do you bury the past of our country or revive it?

I hope the viewer will rather want to "to some extent to identify himself with the past of his country." Does “proud confidence” always arise? In the “Russian Empire” I repeated everything that it (our empire) was alive, because for some she is the answer to the question “What to do?”, And for others, the answer to the question “Who is to blame?”. But “identify themselves”, I think, both, albeit with different “proud confidence”. This is all the game in the words - “bury or revive the past” ... as if we are free from him to “free ourselves”. You can not know it, but it still sits in us. I can’t imagine “proud confidence” about collectivization. You can not know about the protocols to the Molotov -Ribbentrop Pact - most Russians already dismissive attitude to the sovereignty of the Baltic countries. And the war with Finland in our textbooks is “aggression” only according to the League of Nations. I repeat, my main mood: our story is rich. True, short-after all, they are perceived as “ours” only for the last three hundred years. And a lot of fanfaronism in relation to the "glorious past." One Solzhenitsyn wrote mercilessly: the XX century we lost. Although some lessons are nevertheless recovered-in my homeland, the Corporate University "Severstal" published the report "Why is Russia not Finland?" For a “new life”, in my opinion, you do not need to “free” yourself from this question or from the answer to it.

In this regard: what role does your screen image of an elegant, cold, ironic, slightly bored, albeit curious gentleman and dandy, quite alien to chronic personnel and so on?

This, of course, is to judge. But more often I heard about my addiction and that it has almost the strongest energy on the Russian air, etc. The irony, in my opinion, is generally the only paint that the journalist has the right to.