Return to Marx

Cinema stands up for the rights of the working class again

Film by Svetlana Baskova "For Marx" in the "Forum" of the Berlin Film Festival. The previous brutal video opuses of the "parallel" art director were shown mainly at underground film festivals. But the history of workers' self-determination went beyond it. Soon the picture will be seen by a wide audience

Film by Svetlana Baskova "For Marx" in the "Forum" of the Berlin Film Festival. The previous brutal video opuses of the "parallel" art director were shown mainly at underground film festivals. But the history of workers' self-determination went beyond it. Soon the picture will be able to see a wide audience.

• You travel around the country with a picture, how does the audience perceive it?

• Yes, I have been to Novosibirsk, Lipetsk, Kazan, Chelyabinsk, Ivanovo. Immediately after Kinotavr I went to Vologda. I wanted to know if the workers would say: “Yes, it’s true, this is how we live.” Or “It was there in Moscow that you came up with. You're mocking us." And I was encouraged by the positive feedback. Many perceive the characters of the film as their own. They think it's a documentary. Discussions after the film last for two hours. People ask: “What will we have next?”

• And what do you answer?

• I'm not Wang. Most of all we talked about independent trade unions. In Moscow, 90% of people do not know what it is. There is only the Federation of Independent Trade Unions (FNPR), led by Shmakov.

When you sign an application for a job, in small letters on the form it says: "I also join the FNPR." And in order to create an independent trade union, a person must write a statement to the plant administration about leaving the FNPR. This is a serious act. The administration of the plant begins to suspect you of unreliability. At a large factory with up to 50,000 workers, you create a trade union with 3 people and say: “Guys, let's join us!” This is a heroic gesture. During a crisis, you are the first candidate for dismissal. If you were in an independent trade union and were fired from your job, you are blacklisted. You won't get a job anywhere in the city. And that means that a person with his family must take his belongings and leave.

• What attracts an art director to the social aspects of life?

At a rally in Tutaev, I spoke with people facing a choice: pay for housing or buy food. Is it possible to pass by without sympathy? But I have made socially directed films before. In Soviet times, we were taught that capitalism is humiliating for a person. Once in a capitalist society, I see that many of those horror stories are real.

- But the euphoria of that time went away pretty quickly. Of the democratic acquisitions, freedom of speech lasted the longest. But she, too, was "lost".

• It's just that people naively believed the words, and a real democratic society has the independence of the courts, the legislative and executive authorities. I am surprised that the opposition does not demand these rights. They only talk about elections. And one trade union activist from Lipetsk, when asked how protest movements are treated in the provinces, replied: “We don’t care who the president is, it’s important for us what reforms.”

- Aren't all claims to power - general and specific - connected with each other?

• We do not have a real opposition party with a clear program that could formulate demands. I am for the opposition. But she, unfortunately, is slurred, not self-determined. It has no political institutions. Exclusive hobby groups. And independent trade unions and their leaders inspire respect. They defend their own dignity; their programs announced at the rallies are intelligible. Yes, they are primarily occupied with the economic form of struggle...

• But politics and economics are inseparable, and the independent trade union movement, although still weak, is already becoming almost the only coherent political force, once justified by the teachings of Marx, which the workers discuss in your picture.

• I totally agree. When I saw these people, I believed them. It would be right if we had a workers' party. In the legislature there would be representation of working people. The fact that the workers are completely uneducated, primitive is a myth. I spoke with many. They read books, they know languages, they are well versed in reality. There are people during the years of crisis thrown out into the street from various research institutes. The institutes where they developed precision instruments closed down. They managed to survive this time, change their lives, protect their families from ruin.

Frame from the film "For Marx"

• Your workers quote Pokrovsky, Godard, Belinsky...

• Not workers, but activists of an independent trade union. I repeat: this is the intellectual elite, they studied the laws and read Marx's Capital. They quote Gogol and Tolstoy. In their cinema clubs they watch good movies and discuss them. Go to the MPRA website, you will see ads: English for beginners. For advanced. Organizing, consultations, training seminars, psychological and legal support. First of all, pressure is put on these people. In Kaluga, we walked with the guys to the column of demonstrators. And so they show: “Do you see two people peeking out from behind the house?” Fighters against extremism from Center "E" are constantly "leading" us. So the state thinks that independent trade unions are dangerous?

• Therefore, before a sanctioned rally, there is an extremely clear briefing. They agree in advance how exactly they will take the provocateurs out of the cordon and hand them over to the police. All appeals to the authorities are verified. This is solidarity - an important item left to us from the vocabulary of the Soviet era. Small independent trade unions support each other, during the crisis, when the pressure was especially strong, they managed to survive. Gradually they grow.

• We remember the time when the workers were the main characters in the movies, on the stage. After the death of the USSR, they simply disappeared from the field of view of artists.

• Let's separate Moscow and the country. I would venture to suggest that in Moscow people who make films are primarily looking for money. And who will give money for films about workers? Let's say I came to a rich man: "I want to make a film about trade unions." He immediately says to me: "Let's go without these civil sorrows." Why does a banker need unions? They are antagonists.

• Is that why artists don't make films about workers?

• First of all, because it is shameful to be a worker lately. The problem is that we have no respect for the working man at all. My compatriots do not read the labor code, which Prokhorov wanted to "change". Remember his proposal to increase working hours without changing wages? And also introduce hired labor, which cancels social guarantees. I think that we should take to the streets, protecting the interests of the working man.

• The main deficiency of the cinema of the last twenty years is the civic position of the director. We didn't know: who is the hero? Why does he have such mansions? What does he do? Why does he have so much free time? No social ties. And how to empathize with this Gollum?

• Your film is about the time of the great break of epochs. But the feeling that the "break" is not experienced, it continues ....

• Yes, I wanted to show the transition from the 90s to the 2000s. When the “new quiet ones” came, they seized everything without noise and shooting: oil, factories, and levers of power. Today, more complex schemes for the redistribution of funds. Therefore, our hero, the owner of the plant going ahead, had to die - he could not rebuild from the 90s.

• People still live unbearably. In dilapidated housing in some kind of ghetto. How many people have lost the meaning of life, unable to survive this "transition", even if they physically survived. A guy from a northern monotown told me: when the mines were closed, some people were able to leave. And his unemployed father began to leave almost every day, wandering aimlessly through the fields: there is a lot of space, but nowhere to run.

• The film talks about the celebration of Unity Day on November 4, for your heroes it is a reminder of the centuries-old civil war that continues today. More than half of Russians, according to the VTsIOM conclusion, do not consider themselves to be a single nation. This rift is more dangerous than damage from foreign invaders. What feeds the energy of hostility?

• There is European capitalism and peripheral capitalism. European has institutions that keep society within the law. We have a peripheral one: everything is decided by the will of specific rulers. If the state could make contact with trade union leaders, this would be an opportunity to establish a dialogue with its people.

• Sveta, you are an infantile utopian!

• But everything is changing! Innovative technologies are developing. Increased responsibility for one's own life. The man understands that he will die. Despite all the capital Although I am convinced that people in politics are not quite people.

• Do you doubt? One of the characters in your film falls into zugzwang, a situation from which there is no way out. It seems to me that quite a large number of people got into zugzwang. Come out with protests? You will lose your job. Sit quietly? You will lose face.

• I urge people to take their lives into their own hands, realizing how they live, why. If we personally cultivate a civil position in ourselves, we will not be easily manipulated. Just every person should ask himself the question: who is he? And be responsible for your own life.

• What is the essence of the position of "independent director"?

• I have always made films for which no one would give money. But I only took pictures of what I felt was necessary to shoot. It's harder and easier. You do what you think is right. But the responsibility to oneself increases. I was lucky that there were producers in the person of "Cinephantom". Their strong mighty four hands (Silvesters and Aleinikovs) supported me, giving me complete freedom.