Translated material
War zone
A large-scale film screening is planned for the May holidays in St. Petersburg
From May 2 to 5, the first St. Petersburg Film Forum will be held with heavy tread in the northern capital, timed to coincide with the anniversary date - the 65th anniversary of Victory in the Great Patriotic War. The organizers, not without pathos, promise to unite people of all nationalities with film screenings and raise their already high patriotic spirit. The screening program is appropriate: war films from different years from all over the world. Gala premieres, special screenings, round tables, and presentations have been announced. The film forum will be headed by Alexey Yuryevich German.The film forum was proposed to be held by St. Petersburg filmmakers. Their initiative was taken up by the city governor Valentina Matvienko and, using government money, she assigned the St. Petersburg International Center for Festivals and Celebrations to organize the event. The main venue of the film forum will be the Mikhailovsky Theater, the rest of the films will be shown in the central cinemas of the city (House of Cinema, Rodina, Aurora, Khudozhestvenny, Crystal Palace). Screenings are also planned in open spaces (Palace Square, Alexander Garden, Arts Square). The management of the film forum promised to make all screenings free and accessible to the widest range of viewers.
Andrey Plakhov is responsible for selecting films at the film forum. Over four days, about a hundred paintings from 20 countries will be shown. Almost all Soviet classics were included in the retrospective screenings: “The Cranes Are Flying” by Kalatozov, “Road Check” by German, “In War as in War” by Tregubovich, “They Fought for the Motherland” by Bondarchuk, “The Tale of a Real Man” by Stolper, “My Dear man" by Kheifits, a must-see "The Ascension" by Shepitko and a dozen other good films. Among the domestic novelties of relative freshness, Rogozhkin’s “Peregon” with “Cuckoo” and “Own” by Dmitry Meskhiev deserve reconsideration.
A good half of the films are foreign. Those who still haven’t seen Kathryn Bigelow’s Oscar-winning “The Hurt Locker” will be able to catch up on what they missed on one of the film screening days. This also includes the Russian-Japanese production of the anime “First Squad” by Yoshiharu Ashino and the military blockbuster “Operation Valkyrie” by Bryan Singer. Particularly sensitive people will be able to watch Michael Bay's Pearl Harbor once again. The film forum program also included many new films about the Second World War from Europe, among others - “The Truce” by Lancelot von Nazo, “Winter in Wartime” by Martin Koolhoven, “The Tour” by Goran Markovic and “My Mother” by Klaus Häre. For the first time in St. Petersburg they will show “City of Life and Death” by Chuan Lu, which had a limited release in Moscow this spring.
The film forum will open with a new film by Alexei Uchitel, “The Edge.” This screening can be considered the official Russian premiere of the film - the release is scheduled for the end of September. The plot of the film begins to twist a few months after the end of the war. In the fall of 1945, former tanker Ignat (Vladimir Mashkov) returns from the front to a remote village, where he becomes a train driver and the lover of the first beauty in the village. For this, all the residents of the village will dislike him, which will result in a railroad accident staged out of envy. For the broken train, Ignat faces prison, but on the other side of the river, where no one has lived for a long time, his salvation is located - an old steam locomotive of high-quality German assembly. But he still needs to be taken away from his owner - a feral girl, the daughter of a German engineer who was shot at the beginning of the war.
A special place in the film forum program is occupied by a new documentary film by Alexander Sokurov - “Reading the Siege Book.” The film, shot for European cable television, consists of separate fragments, in each of which different people read the “Siege Book” by Daniil Granin and Ales Adamovich. The project was attended by St. Petersburg theater and film actor Oleg Basilashvili, journalists, schoolchildren, students and blockade survivors.
The organizers strongly emphasize the non-random name of the show. This is precisely the forum - a place where conflicts are resolved. Therefore, within the framework of the film forum, it is planned to gather three round tables: “War and Peace in the Cinema of the 21st Century” (moderated by Andrey Plakhov), “Documentary Siege: Change of Optics” (Konstantin Shavlovsky) and “Cinema of Petrograd - Leningrad - Petersburg "(Lubov Arkus).
The closing of the film forum will be moved to the Great Hall of the St. Petersburg State Philharmonic named after. D.D. Shostakovich. There, under the direction of Yuri Temirkanov, the symphony orchestra will play a concert.
It’s difficult to say what will come of this whole undertaking, but you can already feel the impressive scale of the event and the amount of investment invested in it.