Air around your head

Laura Guerra will come to Moscow in April when the presentation of the Bella Russian-Italian Prize will be held. One of the nominations of the award bears the name of the Italian screenwriter, writer, poet and artist Tonino Guerra and is called "Optimism - the aroma of life." Once it was Bella Akhmadulina who first translated into Russian the poetry of Tonino Guerra. Five years ago, the Bella Award was founded by the husband of Akhmadulina, artist Boris Messerer.

“Last year in Italy, I was in the jury of this award,” says Laura Guerra. - This year I will try on Tonino Guerra in March to take events in our Pennabilli. In addition, we are now preparing for a trip to Rome, this is due to the work of our association and what I did for three months in Moscow-this is the Amarkord festival, which should be dedicated to the 100th anniversary of Federico Fellini and Tonino Guerrah in 2020. This should become a worthy action so that people recall the two great maestro.

“You said that the name Tonino Guerra is the association.” Isn't this a fund?

- We are now working to ensure that an association, which has been working without Tonino for 5 years, turns into a fund. It was created in 2005 during the life of Tonino Guerra. He was very worried and said: “Why is this association?! Why?! For the first time in my life, I hear that his fund or association be created during a person’s lifetime. When I die, please do what you want,” Tonino said. I insisted on the appearance of this association, because Toninochka was getting older. Somehow, passing by the old neglected church, we saw stone blocks. Tonino insisted that all this be restored, Pesaro and Rimini, the provinces of Pesaro and Rimini joined this work. It turned out a wonderful two -story room, where we settled down.

Kinoderma and artist Tonino Guerra with his wife Laura

In this Association every winter, scenario skills were held every winter. Often this was combined with the arrival of our students from Moscow, from the highest directorial courses. Together with Tonino, George Danelia, Andrei Khrzhanovsky, and Irakli Kvirikadze and other directors who came to Italy were taught here. It was a kind of gathering friends who talked about cinema to Italian students. Tonino held the latest lectures in October 2011 for students of the highest directorial courses. I have never heard anything more beautiful in my life. We can say that it was Tonino's will. Fortunately, these lectures are recorded, and now I will try to publish them in Russian and Italian.

All this was thrown out into the street, but I refused to take it - I did not want to touch it anymore

- Maestro Guerra was a screenwriter, an artist, and a poet. And, apparently, the multiple of his talent is reflected in the activities of the association ...

- Certainly! In our Pennabilli, we have a created Tonino, along with one gardener, the first garden of forgotten fruits in Italy, where unique trees are collected. At first there were 47 of them, now already 63 ... These are those apples, pears, Bericoccolo, which no one knows about today. They had to be sought through the forests and hills of Italy. The gardeners obsessed with this idea came to Tonino and said: what to do, maestro? "The garden of forgotten fruits is urgently!" The city hall was allocated by the house of the earth, and the whole town was planted trees. Now there are also monuments to Andrei Tarkovsky, Juliet Mazin and Federico Fellini, and the sunny clock, and Tonino phrases ... there even planted his Dalai Lama tree, which was guest twice.

- I know that you are a philologist by education, how did you end up in the cinema?

- In the cinema, I began to work in the Council of People's Commissars. We prepared subtitles for films that went abroad. And then my German played a role ... These are stories from my other life, also full of miracles and achievements, acquaintances with people and first acquaintances with cinema.

When Andrey and Tonino simply talked about the fog over the river, Tarkovsky previously closed all the phones with pillows

“But when you met Maestro Guerro, you worked at Mosfilm?”

-Yes, I was an editor in the experimental association of Grigory Naumovich Chukhrai, one of the organizers of which was the father of Vladimir Pozner just arrived from abroad. This association was called experimental, because we had to produce films that would pay off from the viewer, and with this money we had to shoot other paintings. One of the first films of the experimental association was the film "The White Sun of the Desert", but I did not work there.

And I got to Mosfilm thanks to my first husband Alexander Efremovich Yablochkin , who worked as the director of the films - today he would be called a producer. Sasha Yablochkin was a completely amazing person. At the age of 19, he was the director of the painting "Bogdan Khmelnitsky" with Igor Savchenko. Then he called him to his theater Mikhoels. In 1948, Mikhoels was killed, the whole theater went to Vorkuta. And Sasha served his 5 years in Vorkuta. He miraculously survived, and when he returned, he began to work at Mosfilm.

The director of the MURS association invited many to shoot a picture begun by Khamdamov, but everyone refused solidarity with Rustam

-And after some time you came to work on Mosfilm and you ...

- For me, this, in fact, was not a job. These were some meetings, dating. It was the happiness of meeting people, to help those who, as it seemed to you, need to help! There I first met with my friend and absolute genius Rustam Hamdamov. He was younger than me, and at first I took care of him, then at Mosfilm he took the first steps. Rustam was a student of the head of the association Grigory Chuhrai. And then the film "Unexpected Joy, or Slave of Love" was conceived. But we in the association perfectly understood that the scenario that Hamdamov proposed would never be held in Goskino. Therefore, we decided on such a trick: we asked Konchalovsky to give his name, and someone would write a script close in the topic and in the era to what Rustam came up with. So it was done. Konchalovsky gave his name, and the script based on Rustam was written by a very talented person Friedrich Gorenstein. The script passed, it was launched. And here Konchalovsky came up and asked: "Do you like the script?" I replied: "No." And he told me: "Well, then you are just a reader." In response, I said: "And you are the author of the title sheet." And since then our relations have deteriorated in some way. But back to the Rustam film. He went on an expedition to Lviv, already began to shoot a picture - and there were denunciations that Khamdamov was not filming the script. He was called to Moscow. And so we look at the captured material at Sizov, who was then the director of Mosfilm. Rustam did not come. They ask: "Where is the director?" I say: "sick." He says: "Well, so young, but already sick. And I have 72 films." And after watching the material, we must pay tribute to Sizov, he said: "We will not close this film. It can be seen that he is a festival. Only the director must send me explication. I would see what he wants to shoot, and then we would launch the picture." I came running to Rustam (we have been to “you” all my life and still), enthusiastically told him: “Rustamchik, cheers, you won a trip to the festival. You will write only explication.” And then he said to me for the first and last time in his life: "What are you, Laura, a fool!" I was taken aback. He never contacted me like that. "You don’t understand. I'm tired of all this. I will leave." And he went to Tashkent. He was deprived of the film for this. The director of the association Leonid Mursa invited many to shoot a picture launched by Khamdamov, but everyone refused solidarity with Rustam. And only one person agreed - it was Nikita Mikhalkov ... There were many such stories at the Mosfilm.

- That is, you understood in which country you live. Acquaintance, and then marriage with Tonino Guerro, somehow reflected in your work? Relations with foreigners in the 70s in the USSR were without such terrible consequences as in Stalin's times, but nevertheless they were.

- Certainly! I was immediately transferred to the archive. I was no longer any editor, and my salary was reduced by half. Well, of course, people followed all the time. Even when we returned home late in the evening, they stood and looked. In winter, Tonino told them: "Come, cold. Drink a glass of vodka, warm!"

- Have you come in?

- No, what are you! And when Andrei and Tonino simply talked about stones in the garden or fog above the river, Tarkovsky previously closed all the phones with pillows. Or they went out into the street to speak. Many years later, one of my friends called me and said: “Laura, Goskino throws all the documents. There was the first script that Tonino wrote for Bondarchuk about Moscow, and all the reports of these very spies that wrote reports in Goskino, about where you went, what did you do ...” that is, all this surveillance was recorded and then thrown out into the street! And in stupidity, I refused to take it all. Just because I didn’t want to touch it anymore.

- Creative cuisine is always interesting. Two great maestro - Fellini and Guerra. How did they work? How were movie masterpieces born?

- They knew each other since childhood. And their friendship is not only the films that we know: “Amarkord”, and “Ginger and Fred”, and “and the ship floats”, and “The rehearsal of the orchestra”. How they had fun, how they loved each other, how remarkably they were friends, with what love and Petit treated each other, what marvelous letters at a time when Tonino had not yet happened in my life, Fellini wrote! The Boslen Publishing House published a book to leave how to come. " For the first time, letters of Federico Fellini and the letters of Andrei Tarkovsky to Tonino were published there ...

Tonino Guerra and Federico Fellini

-Did they have any specific time of day allotted for work?

- Fellini usually came to Tonino at 7:30 in the morning. They were both morning. Prior to this, over the course of those 8 or 9 years that we lived in Rome, he called Tonino at about 7 in the morning and told his dreams. It was so wonderful for me. I was lying nearby in bed with Tonino, holding my breath, and on the answers I caught and guessed Fellinian questions. This story about dreams, it was an awakening that is not granted to everyone in life. Sometimes they worked in the studio with Federico, sometimes at our house - this is very rare, but it happened. And I witnessed their work. It happened like this. Once Federico came and asked Tonino: "What are you working on now?" And Tonino says: “I am now collecting materials about the great funerals that shocked the imagination of mankind. For example, the funeral of dictators, Stalin, Naser or stars of silent cinema Rudolfo Valentino. Valentino - handsome Italian in Hollywood - died at the age of 29. The women sobbed. There was an open coffin. It was carried through the square.” And then Tonino said: "When everyone has already dispersed, the square was strewn with torn sleeves." Fellini asked: "Why?" - "Well, what about?! Everyone who stood behind everyone wanted to see. The ladies clung to the sleeves of the jackets of men and torn them off. And then these sleeves remained in the square." Whether it was really or it came up with Tonino, but the image for the cinema was wonderful. Then he told Fellini about how she was dying and asked to dispel her ashes Maria Callas near her Greek island. "Imagine, we will shoot this film!" - said Fellini. And before that, he told Tonino that he wanted to make a film about carabiners. "How about carbines?" - "You imagine, Tonino, a parade of carbines! They will jump in horses on horses ... Everyone gathers ... ladies in hats ... And suddenly the first horse stumbles on the parade. The officers are stuck ... In general, everything turns into a landfill." Fellini described this in colors. Both laughed. And in general, I often heard when they worked, how they laugh, inventing something. Sometimes they shouted to me from the room where they worked: "Laura, Laura, look!" And they told what they came up with. For example, about the rhino in the film "and the ship floats", which has a stomach disorder. He is lifted over the deck, he pames all of those who are there ... Tonino and Fellini seemed very funny, they called me, and I laughed with them. That's how they worked. The script "and the ship is floating" was written in 11 days.

Tonino Guerra, Andrey Tarkovsky and Laura Guerra

- Tonino Guerra author of the script of the film Tarkovsky "Nostalgia". The name of the picture published in the West is written precisely in Russian transliteration. Whose idea was it?

- Andrei insisted, because nostalgia is a Russian feeling that he was talking about. This is what is characteristic of Russia. But Tonino considered this picture to Andrei not the most successful, because he hoped that this film was supposed to be transition to what Andrei could do in the West. It was the first film made by Tarkovsky in a foreign country. But it was a picture of precisely about the Soviet nostalgia, about the inability to return, about the impossibility of exploding. And "nostalgia" is a kind of monument to that era. Remember, when in the finale of the paintings on the ruins of the Church of Galgano sits a dying hero and the snow begins to go amazingly ... The ingenious end of "nostalgia"!

- 30 years ago, at the Moscow Film Festival, I interviewed Tonino Guerra. With the translation, a colleague from the Italian edition of foreign studies helped. But, when you came up, maestro asked you to follow the accuracy of the translation. Did your husband speak some special dialect?

- Tonino composed his first verses in the Romanol dialect. Because in 1946, immediately after the war, both he and Pazolini began to write in the area of Italy in which he grew up to give the language of the people a new sound. As if they began to play Gershvin in Mandolin. Pazolini wrote on Friulsky, and Tonino in the Romanol dialect - in Italy there are a huge amount, this is the language of flesh and blood. As Tonino said, New York was built with dialects. That is, ordinary people who spoke only in the dialect went to New York in emigration. Tonino spoke his special language, and since he knew that I was translating for sure, I would not allow himself to be inventions, interpretations or combing, that translators usually do, he asked to follow the accuracy of the translation. Tonino wanted his thought to be transmitted correctly.

- People live in memory of dear and close people. But, judging by the fact that you are talking almost all the time about your husband in the present tense, for you Tonino is alive ...

- Absolutely! For me, the most important thing is love. You understand that love never dies. A person is simply in another vibration, in another dimension. And after the departure of my mother, and after the departure of the dad, and in general, after the departure of my loved ones, I always felt grief. Naturally, after the departure of Tonino too. But he is the only one as a maestro that there is no death. This is just a transition to something that we do not know. I have repeatedly said that when Tonino left, in the last days, I tried to be nearby all the time and said: "Toninochka, I loved you all my life! Even when I did not know you." He looked at me like that and said: "And I love you now." And I screamed again: "And now I, Tonino, well, of course!" Then he looked at me again and said: "And then too." And this "and then too" - it lasts now. Because it is like a covenant for me. Tonino has such a poem:

"Air is a distant thing that is around your head.
And it becomes lighter when you laugh. "

Recently, I had wonderful guys from Moscow, Tanya and Maxim. And having listened to this poem, Tanya said: "You know, Laura, now the air around your head is protection and love Tonino." And this is true.