Shahrin, why did you choose us?

In November 2011, documentaryist Yevgeny Grigoryev and operator Artem Anisimov went from Moscow to Yekaterinburg to the casting of future heroes of their film about the new Ural rock. Cinema is being started about who the generation of twenty -year -olds choose the heroes, but veterans are selected: Alexander Pantikin from Urfina Jus, the frontman of “Semloret Hallucinations” Sergey Bobunets, Mikhail Simakov from the “April Marsh” (he created and leads Rock Arsenal today), the program director of our Radio Aleksey Glazitov, at the end The ends, Vladimir Shahrin. “I want to be judged by the film about this time, and not by the release of television programs,” says the leader of the Chaif.

The “assers”, “ends”, “ten days a week”, “ear rejoices” and several dozen Ural groups enter the stage. As a result, three of them - “Joe for itself”, with Osmic Latte and the “City of Chekists” - receive the cell and go to shoot themselves day after day. And Grigoryev himself goes to look for funding for a full meter.

Happy groups are the same in the same way (albums-concerts-festivals-rotation), and everyone is unhappy in their own way-and the musicians document in their own way how desires, rage, and strength are fading away in them.

Nikita Bobrov from "Joe for himself" takes off the plot "Gulliver in captivity by the Liliputs." He marries (“I married music”), he will get divorced soon (the spouse loves music and knitting, but does not love poetry). The instrumental project begins (“I sewed my mouth”), but the matter does not glue. He wants to “return to poetic creativity”, but his new girlfriend is also against poetry. Then Bobrov collects a new group; By the time the film was released, it also breaks up.

Ilya and Anna Kuzminykh from C OSMIC LATTE show how experienced producers lead them to the glory - and they are not sure if they want; Ilya has not yet decided whether he is a musician or an artist. After the failure of with Osmic Latte on Dobrafest, their producer Oleg Genenfeld laments: "The current people do not know how to cooperate ... They are inflexible ... Life for them is a picture." And it prints: "The time has come that killed the heroes."

The City of the Chekists removes the endless alcoholic of four ironic intellectuals. We will not know anything about them, except that they include the DOS of Passos and Jig Vertov, rhyme wine with wine and record the album of two years. In the media text of the Yekaterinburg Gallery of Street Art “sweater” one of their songs is exhibited. They themselves are surprised by this fact, because the heroes did not mark. "Shahrin, why did you choose us?!" - shouts into the camera of the frontman Vyacheslav Soldatov. “Zhenya Grigoryev, everything is fine with us. We drink low -alcohol drinks. ” “Zhenya Grigoryev, everything is bad with us. We drink alcoholic beverages. " "One alcohol!" - Grigoryev reports them. “People who could not cope. We got into a minus wave, ”explains Pantykin, watching their drift in life. “I am not so busy with music to throw it,” retorts Soldatov.

Grigoryev removes reality from an exemplary zero position-does not seek confirmation of his ideas, is in no hurry with generalizations. He is a documentary-but he is an active citizen who believes that the necessary things should be done with his own hands (for example, Grigoryev is one of the founders of the Guild of Non-Great Cinema and Television; she appeared when documentary cinema in the zero-tens developed violently and the question arose about his niche in production and rental).

So, “About Rock” was created by a documentary and at the same time an activist who wants to change reality. His film, in theory, was supposed to serve as a magic pendel for young Ural musicians. But, like his heroes, Grigoryev suffers defeat. He brings into a picture of the upsday and turns of its creation. Among the musicians, euphoria is replaced by despair, despair - apathy. Grigoryev has an energetic, cheerful director - a similar story. Funding of the film freezes, meanwhile, his other work “In anticipation of the barbarians” comes out - at the premiere in Yekaterinburg, the old women who filled the hall peck with their noses, and the dead of the disappointed author after the banquet dragged into the elevator.

In a word, the author of “About Rock” admits that he is one of those who “could not cope”.

Under the curtain, Grigoryev invites musicians to be removed by clip - that is, to visualize the image of his team. Those are reluctant to get down to business. Nikita “Joe for Himself” in its video changes the larvae and ironizes its basic need - to impress girls. Tearing strings in the middle of a frozen field, he sees himself as a girl in a white dress, then the prime minister on the opera stage.

In the clip C Osmic Latte, two inhibited travelers rave the swamps: “Bittering on the lips, bitterness in words, I am wormwood-grass.”

The glory of the soldiers calmly keeps silent in the middle of the irrevocably frozen river. “I will draw the curtains, I don’t dream about anything, the shooter is a full circle, then I sleep.” Around him, sneakers, fish, glasses, cassettes are smoking. "Everything could be different - no winter, no winter."

“If people knew where they were going, they would go faster,” the Pantykin’s “Grandfather of the Ural Rock,” summarizes. “If”, “when” - a narrative that begins so energetically, so fun, gets away in a hopeless subjunctive mood. It is unlikely that Grigoryev planned this, but the film created between the past and future elections was released by the chronicle of the five -year plan. What is there - he came out of the forecast. In the town of Chekists, there is a future as it were - but it is, as it were, it is not.