Seal life. Julia Vishnevetskaya - about the fate of "Artdokfest"

This year, the Film Festival of Documentary Cinema began with the closure: in St. Petersburg, the police and Roskomnadzor sealed the halls of the Cinema House after the first show. According to the police, this was done because of the activist Timur Bulatov, who wrote a complaint that the festival allegedly promotes LGBTs and violates coronaviral restrictions. At the second site of Artdokfest, the Landok film studio, they came with inspections the next day, and the cinema announced the cancellation of all shows of Artdokfest "" in order to avoid provocations and the closure of our cultural center. " It was not possible to find a new site for the festival in a short time - film director Alexander Sokurov addressed such a request to Lenfilm, but was refused.

Moscow Cinema “Karo Film“ October ”, where the main program“ Artdokfest ”is being held, constantly faces threats and attacks, shows are canceled every day. Last Sunday, a certain Suliman from Chechnya demanded to remove the movie“ Quiet Voice ”from the program , because“ there are no gays in Chechnya ”, earlier due to threats of SERB activists. The film, in which there were the words "occupied Crimea".

It would seem that all this can be experienced - the festival is looking for options for replacements, transfers shows to its resource artdoc.media . In general, it is clear that in the era of streaming platforms and online cinemas, any gross censorship is meaningless, it is impossible to prohibit a person to find out or see anything. Of course, law enforcement officers and aggressive defenders of traditional values understand this. Nevertheless, "Artdokfest" is attacked from year to year, from day to day, and the pressure is enhanced.

The meaning of this pressure, first of all, is symbolic. "Artdokfest" in spirit and content is very different from most film festivals, and the point here is not in gays and not in Ukraine. The best festivals of Russia and the world resemble a well -furnished designer apartment, where everything is selected carefully and with taste, everything is in place, everything is in the same style, there is nothing superfluous, each film in the program is an element of a slender idea. You feel comfortable and secure there, and strangers will not get there.

It’s easy to get to Artdokfest. I was always delighted with breadth and even, I would say, the omnivorousness with which the director of the festival Vitaly Mansky selects the film, as if without analysis and without a system, and not even guided by some political or aesthetic addictions. He just takes everything that is at least curious. I don’t even know how many young documentaries owed to Artdokfest that they generally had shows in the cinema, including my debut film in 2016, which, to put it mildly, was far from perfect, was shot in a week and mounted on the knee. This impulse of the show in the real cinema gave me the strength and motivation to work further.

"Artdokfest" is always a scandal, a drama and a delightful feeling of a living "here and now"

"Artdokfest" is not an apartment, but a street. Or the market area on which there is a place for everyone - here they shout, bazaar, cry, scold, ridicule each other, trade for millions and for a penny. This year, on the first day of Artdokfest in Moscow, 30 premieres took place. The scatter of plots and aesthetic approaches is incredible: the Slavophiles and Westerners, sophisticated aesthetes and rude realists, the patriarchs of the Soviet era and yesterday's teenagers who shoot movies with smartphones and cameras of GOUP. The stories of gopniks, priests, artists, gays, athletes, housewives, migrant workers - polyphony and cacophony of their votes surprises and overturning, disturbing and exciting. Someone will definitely call one and the same film a masterpiece, and someone will accuse of lies and staging, and will say in person, and well, if it does not reach a fight.

"Artdokfest" is always a scandal, a drama and a delightful feeling of a living "here and now." And this is exactly the air that is missing in our media space, sufficiently divided into ideological and aesthetic closers. It is impossible to watch and control all the films "Artdokfest" purely physically, it is hundreds of hours of documented life - which, most likely, causes the authorities to do all about the greatest alertness. And what is happening now with the festival is not just censorship and political pressure, but a threat to seal life itself.

Julia Vishnevetskaya-Journalist of Radio Liberty, documentary director

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