In search of a woman

Film from the program "Year of literature: in exile" on "Artdokfest"

On December 8, the Artdokfest documentary festival was opened in Moscow and St. Petersburg, which will last until the 16th. The President of the festival Vitaly Mansky tells at Medusa about all the paintings participating in the competition, as well as the most interesting films from parallel programs. This time, the director represents the painting “In Search of the Babel” by David Novak from the program “Year of literature: in exile”.

In the Russian Federation, 2015 was declared the year of literature. Like everything that is done by the Ministry of Culture, this bright holiday went into the sand - and attention to world literature, and the attitude of the ministry itself to the concepts of “freedom of artistic creativity” and “human rights to say”. The apogee of the Year of Literature in his official version was the Dovlatov-Fest with the governor Turchak in the form of a patroning body. I think that Dovlatov himself turned over in his coffin several times. We decided at Artdokfest that the year of literature for our country is also a whole galaxy of names poured out and thrown out of Russia throughout its long and glorious history. It so happened that this year the films about writers were filmed in different countries of the world in different countries of the world. Of course, not about everyone, because their list is too great, but about many, and sometimes about the iconic - this is Vail, Brodsky, and Gorenstein, and Dovlatov itself.

We begin this program with the American picture “In Search of the Babel” - this film can be called documentary blockbuster. It was made according to American laws of large budget cinema and is addressed, first of all, the American demanding, sufficiently refined, elite audience. The picture is very important for us, although, maybe, it repeats some things that we have already passed. But as life shows, we quite badly learned the lessons of our long -standing and even more recent past. In the film “In Search of the Babel,” the story of a sincere and some idealistic writer who tried to accept, understand and believe the Soviet government was presented and even began to sing it-at least in “Konarmia” it sounds sure. And completely naturally it turned out to be one of its first victims. He graduated from his days, like all his associates, colleagues and like -minded people, inhuman, cruelly, but remained in the history of literature with this bright spot.

In the search for Babel, his grandson sets off in the modern world, they also take place in Ukraine, Russia and America. There are people who knew Babel and loved it, there are stars - for example, Marina Vladi, who is very touching about Babel and is very different from the bewildered Marina Vladi, who answers questions with addiction, where you spend money from the sale of personal belongings of Vladimir Vysotsky.

The Russian premiere of the film will be held at Artdokfest in the presence of director David Novak.

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