"Eastern Front": a film about Nazi Germany, edited by the Ministry of Culture

"Artdokfest" shows the picture in the original

On December 6, the Artdokfest documentary movie will begin in Moscow, St. Petersburg and Yekaterinburg. The President of the festival Vitaly Mansky represents at Medusa all films participating in the competition program of the festival, as well as several paintings - special consumers. This time, the director talks about two “special shows” - the painting “Eastern Front” by Andrei Osipov and “Stalingrad. Are we still alive or not? " Alexei Yankovsky.

Vitaly Mansky

Director-Documentist

I want to present two films from the category "Special Event". And I have several approaches to the announcement of these paintings - both of them are equivalent in their meaning.

We have filters in Artdoxedia to help in finding a film in different parameters. Including there is a filter by which only those paintings that the Ministry of Culture of the Russian Federation have been cut off. This year, we selected 130 films at Artdokfest-and some need for the selection forced me to put this checkmark, and I found that not a single film of the competitive program was financed by the ministry. In all programs of the festival, only four films are funded by the Ministry of Culture. That is, of all 130 films that fell on Artdokfest, only four films are related to the ministry. This list is the film "Eastern Front", and it noted that the Ministry of Culture of the Russian Federation gave the money to it. And now I want to tell the story of this financing.

We wanted to invite the Eastern Front to the Artdokfest competition, but then it turned out that there were some coming circumstances. They are that the classic of modern documentary cinema, director Andrei Osipov, multiple laureate “Nicky” and “Golden Eagle” - which characterizes him as a man completely flexible, not located in any camp, ”made the film“ Eastern Front ”, which is very important today in modern Russia with its allusions. The film on the German Chronicle of the 30-40-50s shows how German society has changed as it crawled, absorb and immersion in the war on the Eastern Front. From a fairly idle society - ultimately to that Germany that was destroyed and destroyed. Here is such a picture without any announcer text, music and chronicle. A very bright canvas.

But when we had already made an invitation, it turned out that the Ministry of Culture, having seen the film, said approximately the following: “You know, these allusions can be incorrectly interpreted in our society, and we, the Ministry of Culture, are set over unreasonable artists and completely unreasonable spectators so that there are no two interpretations. And in order to establish, so to speak, the process of communication of your work with our population, we will meet you. For this, we have a military-historical society, which is completely free to you, just out of love for you, art and the viewer will write the text that is interpreting all this. You put it on the film, and we will solve it. ”

The author decided here not to enter into a bloody confrontation, he accepted the condition of the ministry. The military-historical society wrote-attention! - 32 sheets of the text, which he put on the film shown at the festival in Yekaterinburg - the main Russian festival, according to the Ministry of Culture, the Union of Cinematographers Mikhalkov and other patriotic organizations. And there it was called "another war."

But “Artdokfest”, because Osipov - he and our colleague, friend and comrade - allowed to show the version that the Ministry of Culture did not adopt. He has the right to do so. We have democracy? And our film is released under the name "Eastern Front". As they say in one commercial: "Feel the difference."

Another film from “Special Star” is a film where the text is completely aware and is an author’s concept, originally laid down on the essence of the story of the story of the Battle of Stalingrad. This picture was made by the associate of Alexander Sokurov Alexei Yankovsky. Their joint with Sokurov’s painting “We need happiness” had previously been at Artdokfest and received a diploma of the jury. The current film is a really large, global work, understanding and determining what happened during the Second World War at this point called Stalingrad. Without the text, this picture is generally impossible to imagine.

We unite these two films with the theme of war, and the topic of understanding the war, and the theme of the author’s message, which can be silent and completely exhaustive or very clearly formulated in the text and even more conceptual. Here is such an event.

PS about the films of the competitive program "Artdokfest - 2017" can be found here .