This is what intelligence looks like

Kinoved Kirill Pralogov died. He was a contradictory person who influenced the entire Russian cinema

The Russian cinema, a culturologist, critic and TV presenter Kirill Razlogov died at the age of 75 from heart failure. Distresses were the president of the guild of film science and film critics in Russia and the program director of the Moscow International Film Festival for 22 years. Since the beginning of the 1990s, the crafts have been conducting the author’s programs about the cinema, and has been the host of the Cultural Cult program on the Culture TV channel. He released about 20 books and almost 600 scientific works on the history of art and cinema. At the request of Medusa, Kinoeda recalls the journalist and film critic Ekaterina Barabash.

- Cyril died? It's a joke?

How to live life so that they do not believe in the news of your death? What faith in vitality, vitality, frantic energy should live in the heads of friends, acquaintances and colleagues, so that even in your 75 no one believes that you left?

“I can’t talk about this person in the past tense” in this case is not a figure of speech. It’s just Kirill of Droglov - the personality is so ubiquitous and indispensable that it is difficult to reconcile with his departure. Huge gap. You don’t even have a gap-it is always possible to catch it, patch it up, the abyss, where a huge part of what else the domestic film critic rested on the rampant, collapsed.

Distresses are a level, brilliance and magnitude. He really was a measure of taste and abyss knowledge. I can’t calculate how many times in thirty years of acquaintance he helped me out with a word and erudition. An urgent is a comment on the scandal at the Cannes festival (or the competition of organists, or Kant's Heritage, or the last research in the field of cave painting), but no one agrees? “Call Razlogov,” they demanded in the editorial offices.

- Hello! He shouted into the phone. Usually, against the background of some unimaginable noise (it is not known whether he was at home at all, in silence, without a crowd, company, interlocutors)-I hope you called to invite me on a date!

- Cyril, you need help urgently, the issue of life and death!

He instantly became serious, harsh, his voice lost a playful tone, but acquired a metal one. A minted, brilliantly formulated, as if prepared in advance phrases about a scandal at the Cannes festival (or the organists' competition, or the last research in the field of rock painting) came from the telephone tube.

It seems he knew everything. And if he did not know something, then the scale of his erudition allowed him every time instantly analyze the situation, summarize and apply his knowledge at the same second aimed precisely. This is erudition, so intelligence looks like.

Everything that has happened in the past few decades in Russian cinema - including scandals in the Union of Cinematographers, anxiety in the film critical environment, ups and dumps for the film industry - was directly related to all this. Everything happened with his participation, under his supervision and under his critical arrows. They were sharp, but painless. He knew how to scold without destroying. Disassemble without breaking. To criticize without crushing. Refuse without offending.

Under Razdogov, the Moscow International Film Festival, whose program director he has been the last 22 years, became an event of an internal scale. Without complaints about worldwide recognition, without universal ambitions, but a powerful film holiday for their own. The raggers were smart and did not live in the world of empty ambitions.

He was so smart that from where he was now, he would certainly would not rejoice at the necrogue-deifirambu. I was not a rally with a paw or a darling. A person is intellectually ambitious, he could not always abandon attractive offers. He had enough, say, flexible ideas about ethics, often - alas - coinciding with the ideas of those who made him these proposals.

About the story with his presidency in the guild of film experts and film critics, you can write a fascinating epic novel. Whether he himself came up with a split in the guild to get rid of the part of the unit not loyal to the leadership, we do not know. But he became an energetic conductor of this venture. And so easily, so elegantly, he achieved his own that it is time to reflect - the hell, or maybe everything went to that, since it was played, and Cyril only accelerated the natural process?

But even here, breaking the community of film critics into “correct” and “wrong”, from the point of view of the leadership of the Union of Cinematographers, he ultimately did a good deed. Independent film critics who are not obliged to follow the cautious and cautious course of Nikita Mikhalkov, will be able to unite.

Razlogov could be said in the eye - he was never offended even at the most angry attacks in his address. It was possible to argue with him, risking to lose his temper, but it was impossible to move him on a quarrel. Cyril has never quarreled with anyone. He even slightly flaunted his ability to adapt, and on reproaches - "Well, you are a cynic!" - answered with his characteristic ragged fractional laugh.

Like any large -scale personality, he was contradictory. He was a walking paradox: a cynic and a delicate soul, a man of exceptional freedom and a consistent, a brilliant critic, and sometimes an unexpected adept of a mass film, a womanizer in words and a touchingly devoted husband and father.

There are no angels among us. But there are non-Angels: a trifle with small virtues and vices and titans-with huge virtues and vices that seem insignificant against the background of their virtues. Who listened to the lectures of Kirill Razlogov in the highest courses about foreign cinema, who participated in discussions with him, who wrote work under his leadership or simply had the opportunity to stay nearby, chat, laugh-he will confirm that it is still impossible to imagine the intellectual and creative Moscow environment without him.

We will get used to, of course, but now the whole environment we went down the step below.

Ekaterina Barabash