Artdokfest. Salamanka

The film of Russian documentaryists, reminiscent of the "white tape" Haneke

The Artdokfest documentary festival in December 2015 will be held in Moscow and St. Petersburg. Three times a week, the President of the festival Vitaly Mansky tells at Medusa about the paintings participating in the competition. This time, the director represents the film "Salamanka" Alexandra Kulak and Ruslan Fedotov (Russia, 2015).

Going into the ArtdoxFest competition is not an easy task. All the more valuable when the debutant solves this problem, and in this case a student. By the way, we have two paintings in the competition of this year. But when I watched the "salaman", for a long time I could not believe what I see. Because I see not a Russian film that was shot in a completely non -Russian cinematic tradition, in an unknown language - a certain language that translates the voice. In the world unknown to me, in the reality of which I do not believe to this day. Even after watching the film to the end, I still have doubts about whether the European arthouse blockbuster is this? With a completely fantastic filigree work of the operator, artist, costume artist, makeup. And the only thing that helped me believe that it was a documentary film is that sometimes, in the general plan, people closed their face with their hands.

This, generally speaking, is the “white tape” of Hanke, only the events and texture that is present in the Haneke - as you know, this is a deep past. And the documentary film is always inherently - this is the absolute present, if, of course, it is made not from archival materials. In this case, we are dealing with lively shooting. And then - you just have to go and see this picture.

The program director of Artdokfest Victoria Belopolskaya is part -time curator in Russia of the Amsterdam festival, the main documentary film festival (IDFA). She recommended this film to them, but the selectors either overshadowed, or the picture came across to someone not enough qualified, but a refusal was received. Then Victoria once again wrote the festival to the leadership of the festival, asking whether they saw this film, and an hour later received the answer: “Oh, Lord, of course, we take it into the competition.” But the paradox is that during this time he was taken into the program of the Rotterdam festival and NEON festival. As a result, the film still got into the IDFA contest, and we consider this partly our curatorial merit.

The film is really one of the most visually and aesthetically interesting of those that I have seen in recent years. And the fact that it is made by Russian young authors truly instills hope.

All films from the "Artdokfest" can be seen here here .

PS Festival "Artdokfest" will be held in Moscow and St. Petersburg December 8–16, 2015. Some of the films were shown in Riga as part of the International Riga Film Festival.