“Sea on fire”: migrants in Europe

Alexander Genis: In the midst of the emigration crisis, initiated by the new administration in Washington, the documentary “Sea in Fire” became extremely relevant. We are talking about this picture with the host of the Ach Films, the director of documentary cinema Andrei Zadansky.

Andrei Zagdansky: Among the paintings nominated in the category the best documentary film, this year a picture, which, in my opinion, occupies a completely special place. I admit, I personally think this is a masterpiece. This is a very political film and at the same time - pure poetry, poetry of the unprofitable. The special poetry of documentary cinema, where there are no catchy visual effects, there are no cinema metaphors, but there is a subtle plexus of reality, parallel installation, accumulation of parts that translate the film a different plane and give it different - non -verbal - meaning. The author of the film does not condemn anyone and does not stigmatize anyone, there are no good and no bad ones, there are just people here. And this makes the film Gianfranco Rosie on my, excuse me, a completely experienced look, a masterpiece.

A boy named Samuel lives on the island of Lampeduza. This is a tiny island in the Mediterranean Sea, 200 miles from Italy. Samuel in the eyes of 10-11 years, he has his own completely intense life of a boy of this age. For example, cut a slingshot and shoot at the thorny ears of cacti, or go out with a father on a fishing boat at sea and try not to get a sea disease, which Samuel, by the way, does not work very much. Even Samuel mows one eye. And an ophthalmologist or, more precisely, a doctor on all hands, because the island is tiny, writes special glasses with a small overlap on one healthy eye to Samuel so that the second, oblique, is accustomed to working and not lazy.

But besides Samuel, his family and many other ordinary Italians living on the island, the Italian coast guard is also located here. The daily reality of the coast guard is the second narrative line of the film. These people pick up boats, ships with refugees, sometimes dozens, sometimes hundreds of people. As a rule, these are exhausted, frozen people, black Africans, sometimes refugees from the Middle East who pushed, someone speaks a little in English. Refugees camp, dozens, hundreds of men, women with children. Sometimes they play football - international matches, Syria, for example, against Eritrea, if I am not mistaken.

Alexander Genis: A non -accident detail. The director of the film Gianfranco Rosie was born in Asmar. Asmara is the capital of a small and very poor African country in Eritrea. I have never been there, but our common friend, American diplomat Ilya Levin worked in Asmara for several years. He showed photos of a marvelous city. This is a colonial city built in the 1930s, Ar-Deco was preserved there in the best samples, a sort of oasis of Ar-deco in Africa. The town forgotten by God, but architecture is magnificent, imperial, as it was in fascist Italy. From there, our Gianfranko Rosie comes from there, who knows about Africa firsthand.

Andrei Zadansky: Indeed, he probably has some special contact, special penetration into this world. But this is also felt in other films by Gianfranco Rosie, for example, in where it is about the most ordinary Italians - in the "Ring Road".

Alexander Genis: We talked about this film in Ach.

Andrey Zadansky: Rosie has a gift to make contact with people. And this communication is indirectly through the camera, this is a fairly rare gift even among large documentary cinema masters.

Returning to the film: episodes with refugees - part of a parallel narrative about the adventures of our little charming Samuel, which hones his skill skating from a slingshot. And the viewer, I, is waiting for a conflict, is waiting for a collision of two plot lines. You know, this is how two trains go towards each other, and you understand that the clash is inevitable. But it does not occur in the film - the crash occurs in our minds. In the penultimate episode of the film, Samuel comes out at night with a lantern and goes somewhere, either to the garden, or to the forest, and whistles, imitating the bird. The bird responds. Samuel illuminates a tree branch with a lantern where this small bird sits, the size of a sparrow, whistles again, and the bird whistles in response to it. For this night episode of the interaction of a boy with a bird, I would give Gianfranko an Oscar right away. And then a nightmare takes place: the coastal guard unloads the bodies from the next vessel, clogged to capacity with refugees. A giant boat, more like a barge, where there is nothing but people. They drain patients who are still moving. The coast guard stuffs its boat with people who move at the bottom of the boat, like a fish caught. A terrible sight. And then the hold of the ship, littered with the bodies of the dead. So, probably, there were dead in Treblink, in Auschwitz, anywhere. Trains collide, but not on the screen, as I said, but in our minds, two worlds come into conflict and a crash occurs.

We begin to think about how to be, is it possible to live with this further, can Western civilization accept all these people who are looking for salvation from Eritrea, from Somalia, from wherever you? Or we must close the border, stop these people, prevent them from escaping either to Europe or America, not to let them in, having lost the status of humane Western civilization. To lose ourselves, to lose our humanistic consciousness, which we have extracted for millennia.

The most amazing thing that happens in the film is a collision collapses on us, how a sudden truth collapses, like a Buddhist koan. We understand that this is inevitable, we do not know the decision, but we must think about it, we cannot turn away from this.

Alexander Genis: This is the most terrible, because there is no solution. Lampeduza, as you said, is a small island, there are six and a half thousand permanent inhabitants, this is a place forgotten by God, even there is not even fresh water there. Everything was quiet and good until this migration crisis began. From 15 to 17 thousand people died in the vicinity of the lampsausa - these are people who could not get to land. The Pope came to Lampeduz in 2013 and said that we should help these people. Lampeduza is a pain point in Western civilization.

Of course, the easiest way to say that we love everyone, we will let everyone go and so on. But all this is by no means so easy to do. I often go to Europe, I love it very much, and I see that Europe is changing its appearance before my eyes. Recently, I read a gloomy phrase: the former Europe remained only in the village, the cities have already changed their appearance. Not so long ago I came to Rotterdam, where more than 60% of Muslims. Of course, something happens wrong here, the world changes and we do not know how to answer a new challenge.

However, I think that for us, for immigrants from Russia, this issue is especially acute. During the crisis caused by the ban on Trump for emigration from several Muslim countries, I meet a “deep sense of approval” among our compatriots in America. But we are just the same refugees who came here thanks to the hospitality of America, which let us in. In this case, we should at least be silent or to be on the side of refugees, as the most worthy representatives of our emigration do. I myself saw Sergei Brin with the poster "I am a refugee." And this, of course, is noble on his part.

Andrei Zadansky: Not only Sergey Brin, many of mine and your friends went to pickets at Kennedy Airport, to other places. People are included in this process of demonstrations.

Alexander Genis: This film has already become famous, he received the Berlin festival award, and many others, criticism accepts it very warmly. One observer said that “fire at sea” - a subtle combination of tragedy and poetry, life and drama, called the picture - the pieta of migrants.

Andrey Zadansky: A wonderful definition. This drama, which Rosie puts on us, opens his eyes, but does not show the way out. This is a painful state with which you leave the cinema.

Alexander Genis: Now, on the eve of Oscar, they say that this film turned out to be so relevant in view of all the contradictions related to the decisions of the new President Trump that this film cannot but get Oscar. Do you agree with this?

Andrei Zadansky: I would agree with this, if not for a number of other competitors in the category of “Best Documentary Film”. It is generally accepted that Oscars in this nomination receives a film that has more political relevance or, say, conjunction.

Alexander Genis: That is, this is not a place for pure art?

Andrey Zadansky: That's right. There are other paintings. One - “13” - tells about African Americans who make up the vast majority of American prisons, and this is a huge, giant, social problem, a very sharp picture. Another film about O`jaz Simpson, about this American tragedy of the famous football player who was not convicted of murder, but was convicted of another crime. This picture has a huge resonance in the USA. Therefore, it is difficult to say whether the picture of Gianfranco Rosie is a leader in this race. From my personal point of view, this is a film of the highest caliber. It is made not only by a great master, but also by a large person.