THE LADY CRAB IS WEDDING...

KINOBODKA

Recently, on the screens of the world, there has been an intrusion of documentaries and popular science films into the slender columns of feature films. Michael Moore snatches the Cannes gold, the breathtaking film The Birds continues its invasion on the screens....

Recently, on the screens of the world, there has been an intrusion of documentaries and popular science films into the slender columns of feature films. Michael Moore snatches the "gold" of Cannes, the dizzying film "The Birds" continues its invasion on the screens. And the legendary “Microcosmos” does not get tired of “recruiting” new generations into the ranks of fans.

"Microcosmos", which caused a sensation in the mid-90s, was created by the spouses Claude Nurizani and Marie Perenna. Several awards "Cesar" (French analogue of "Oscar"), demonstration in Cannes...

It turned out that the world of insects is not only diverse and many-sided. He is full of passion, melancholy, tragedy, asceticism. The heroes of ancient legends - titans and monsters - continue to live in it. It was worth looking at a summer downpour from the point of view of an ant, and it suddenly turned into an epic catastrophe, a universal flood.

At the end of January, "Genesis" comes out on our screens. The authors of the film changed their “optics”, preferring the macrocosm to the microcosm. The plot is the formation of life on our planet.

- What made you think of entrusting the story of the evolution of life not to a biologist, but to an African griot storyteller?

Claude: We thought it was important to have a person in the frame. An individual who asks himself questions about the mysteries of life and at the same time represents the whole of humanity, the whole human race. We wanted to give the floor to the bearer of traditional culture. Africa is the cradle of mankind.

But from the lips of the griot, not ancient legends are heard, but modern theories. Nowadays, scientific knowledge has replaced myth.

- Among those who starred in Genesis are fish, toads, spiders, crabs. How did you work with these creatures? After all, they are not actors, you can’t explain the “actor’s task” to them?

MARIE: Of course, animals are not actors. That is why the shooting of the film lasted for three whole years. We work a little differently than most filmmakers who make films about wildlife. Our script was very detailed. The voice-over text and all episodes with animals were written on paper. Then we tried to reproduce these images as accurately as possible. It took about thirty takes to capture the mating games of the crabs exactly as we wanted to present them. In a sense, Genesis is a staged film. We set the scenes ourselves. But you cannot orchestrate the behavior of animals. Every creature behaves as its nature dictates.

- But after all, it was necessary to somehow predict the "acts" of the animal ...

MARIE: We have been doing biology for many years and have a good idea of ​​what happens in nature and how. In "Genesis" there is an episode with love games of spiders. We first saw something like this fifteen years ago. We rested in the village, lay down after dinner and suddenly noticed some movement on the ceiling. For three hours they watched the eight-legged and finally realized that they had witnessed an amusing love story.

But we have not had to deal with the behavior of seahorses or Galapagos iguanas before. In such cases, we consulted with specialists who studied these animals.

There are two pitfalls for nature filmmakers. The first is the excessive humanization of animals. The second is the transformation of a living being into a soulless design element (that a flock of animals, that a car column is all one). How did you get around these traps?

Claude: It's a mistake to make animals look too much like us, but it's just as wrong to say that we have nothing in common.

In Genesis, we sought to demonstrate the deep relationships that exist between man, animals and matter, the cosmos. You can not cut off a person from the world of living beings. Nature is not a zoo, where people are on one side of the protective net, and animals are on the other. Everything is ambiguous.

Chimpanzees, for example, have much more similarities with humans than with ants. That is why, peering into animals, we can find the answer to the question: what is life? It is no coincidence that children are so fascinated by living beings, they see them as brothers who help to understand the world around them.

MARIE: In Genesis, we wanted to show that people are not orphans at all.

- In animals, in my opinion, there is a secret ...

Claude: Yes, there certainly is.

MARIE: But man is no less of a mystery. Sometimes you understand the behavior of the beast better than the actions of someone who thinks differently than you. That is why there are so many difficulties and inconsistencies in the relationship between a man and a woman.

Claude: Our film is not a scientific work. It begins with the phrase: "To live is to exist between two poles: the past, which we do not remember, and the future, which we are not given to know."

— How did you build bridges between “male” and “female”?

MARIE: We met a long time ago, when we were students. Both studied biology.

Claude: But we spent all our free time at the Cinematheque. It was the sixty-eighth year, a special time! (Laughs.)

MARIE: We loved biology, but we felt like strangers in scientific circles. What brought us closer to Claude was that we loved nature and art equally.

Is it hard to work together? How are your responsibilities divided?

Claude: They are not separated in any way. We prefer dialogue, democracy. We write scripts together, we discuss ideas. During filming, we build a frame together. And we work together on the installation.

- Genesis completed. Any ideas for the next movie?

MARIE: There are ideas, but they are still raw. It takes a lot of time to prepare our films. The start of work on Genesis and its premiere are separated by seven years. Claude and I are married, but when we make films, we have to forget about normal family life. We don't see friends and family for a long time. That is why a respite, a pause between projects, is necessary.

Claude: Immersing yourself in a film is like entering a monastery.

MARIE: We, as usual, promised each other that we would try to make the next film faster ...