Meaning for personal purposes

Zinaida Pronchenko - about whether it is possible to continue to engage in cultural journalism during the war

After the outbreak of war, the famous film critic and blogger, chief editor of the site of the magazine "Art of Cinema" Zinaida Pronchenko quit from all work and left Russia. Six months later, she reflects on the "cold", as now to write about culture in Russian and whether to write at all.

I would like to start with a disclaimer. Or with an epigraph. In this text, the reader, you will meet too many quotes that separate the allegory (it is even better than silence today) or irony (it is even appropriate today), but rather disgust and nausea. First of all to yourself. The author is sick of his thoughts and words for six months. There is a suspicion that the author is not alone. Only for this reason is this column written.

Before the war, I worked as the chief editor of the “Cinema Arts” website-“The oldest cinema magazine in Europe,” as we loved to emphasize in announcements and at presentations. She only got a job as a constant film recreation at the "Poster". I wrote in a dozen editions. Regularly collected “compliments” in a personal blog . In general, I felt great. At least professionally. Although the conversations that the clouds are thickened, and “Winter is very close”, I led with friends and colleagues almost constantly.

The last such conversation took place on the eve of February 24, at dinner with a beloved man. I remember that he urged not to dramatize, because then everything remained within the framework of the “permissible”: no one believed in the possibility of a real war. I also did not believe, but defiantly went out from the table, repeating: "I hate, hate, I hate." Not a beloved man, of course, but a situation in which spot arrests, awarding the status of a foreign agent, homophobic laws, censorship, and so on were still considered rather statistical errors. I went out, but after 15 minutes I returned back. God forbid, it will cool, and why spoil the mood ...

From the time of amendments to the Constitution, but in fact much earlier, we learned to live, winning anxiety, swallowing indignation, and even a flagrant attempt on Navalny, as well as a subsequent prison sentence, did not heed a “public consensus”: but you can contribute to the education/softening of morals, create a cultural agenda - small but necessary affairs; Anyway - what else do you order, citizen chief, to engage in the so -called intelligentsia?

Of course, there were nuances. For example, I personally believed that much, if not everything in the domestic cultural agenda, is rather rubbish than, on the contrary, saturated with a frank lie. Actually, I owed my mini-quarry in the narrow space of Moscow critical thought to the regular debunking of the “Renaissance” of the serial industry or the conditional victories of the author’s Russian cinema-and in the most derogatory expressions.

Before the war, it seemed to me that the Moscow International Film Festival, for example, is shameful, that the Minister of Culture was not with us, but against us, that the series about the sexual revolution, which the striming platforms stubbornly pretended to be the feminist, - the simulacrum of real changes and generally vulgarity. I was incredibly annoyed by the reigning one - then I thought that for a long time - a stagnant “postmodern” atmosphere, in which Konstantin Bogomolov, liberals with experience forgave quotes from Surkov, and Mikhail Zygarya allowed “Russian Vodianova’s Russian Vodinova’s Rines” , and everyone took money for good targets. What Russian, as they say, did not face the "ambiguity" of evil? There are no such Russians, especially within the garden ring, and you will not be convicted.

After February 24, everything instantly ended. I don’t work anywhere else, except that I work with the magazine " Kommersant Weekend ": I observe rare Western novelties that have reached the Russian rental, but I write more about the cinema of the long time past days. With the outbreak of war, another habit managed to develop - to draw parallels with the old deep, with the echo of that war, with tragic plots, which 80 years ago were resolved "safely", which means that we are shining with justice. Well, or at least flickers, because no one wants to die, especially the hope. As I just joking in the same company of my beloved man: “We write -“ eternity ”, we mean -“ Putin ”, are now such illusions.

“Is everything lost if you can still write about the past? - asks the editor. - Is the past able to replace the present in the absence of the future? It depends on what the conversation is about - about my profession or about everything? ”

Looking around - those who did not leave, did not quit, did not “lower his hands” and actively visited/organized the current MMKF, or on those who were kicked out, fired, but who else breathed, I would like to give a negative answer immediately.

I do not see the point in posthumous existence, because I do not believe in the afterlife. My close friend and former editor -in -chief of the magazine “The Art of Cinema” Anton Dolin often repeated in pre -war reality: “There are no institutions, people are more important than traditions, even the oldest.” “The Art of Cinema” is us, those who write there now. The preservation of dignity is the protection of monuments, that is, a careful attitude towards the inheritance that we have received. Anton also no longer writes to the magazine. Although the magazine endlessly writes about the life and work of director Andrei Konchalovsky, whom, it seems, the remaining editorial members confused with Andrei Tarkovsky. Money was immediately found on this confusion at the magazine, “Eternal Bankrupt”, because Konchalovsky fully supports the policy of the party and government and even said goodbye forever with the Venetian film festival.

However, Konchalovsky’s film “History of Asi Klyachina” did not become worse because of the current war. The MMKF became much worse, but it also shows some kind of movie from the program of distant free-thinking Sandens (the main festival of independent cinema in the USA.-Approx. "Cold") . Moreover, such an important cultural event as the Venetian Film Festival that began a couple of days ago retains the status quo. My colleagues from Moscow went there: only now they delicately call themselves “Russian -speaking”, and not “Russian” journalists. Russians accredit with difficulty. If you are a Russian, then the speech of Vladimir Zelensky, who said at the opening that Russia continues to kill, has a direct relationship to you. From Russia, it means that the writer for the audience, which, most likely, will not see any of the shown in Venice.

I left Moscow, did not reach Venice - not out of principle, for purely personal reasons. But I well remember that in May, at the festival in Cannes, she already represented a “Russian -speaking” Czech publication and signed paper for the filmmaker that I would not cooperate with Russia. I remember that in lines for shows, people in customized jackets with a map of Ukraine on their backs surrounded me. I remember requests in messengers from Ukrainian journalists asking them to inform them which of my colleagues attended a Russian -speaking party after the premiere of the film Kirill Serebrennikov “Tchaikovsky’s wife”, as part of the inevitably coming lustration. I remember that, despite the war, life continues, including the life of culture, but this “life” has the future - and especially for me, like her professional commentator - there is no yet. There are no words that could be characterized as the only true or at least necessary. Everything that is said and done today by me and my colleagues in the framework of a “Russian -speaking” culture, it sounds and is exclusively for myself. It makes sense for personal purposes. Self -preservation or justification. It seems to me that it is important to understand. Although this is a sickening conclusion.

Then, on the eve of the war, I flared up and went out from the table to return soon. Now there is nothing to return. Nothing will "cool down".

The author’s opinion may not coincide with the opinion of the editorial office.