(THIS ARTICLE IS MACHINE TRANSLATED by Google from Norwegian)
"Of all art forms, the film is the most important to us," Lenin said after the revolution. In the same lanes, Russian filmmaker Alexander Medvedkin thought as he established in 1932 the legendary cinema train, which Chris Marker 40 portrayed years later in his half-hour film Le train and marche. The first five-year plan had just been implemented, agriculture had been forcibly collectivized and production levels had dropped dramatically. However, Medvedkin saw the film as a tool for implementing the five-year plan and laying the foundations for the socialist state. The three carriages that left Moscow in late January consisted of a laboratory, a storage room and a projection room, as well as sleeping space for the total 32 film workers who took part in the project. In the coming 294 days, traveling through the vast Soviet continent, the film team documented both the well-functioning and the non-functioning production collectives, produced the recordings, cut them together and immediately showed them to the implied, so that they could discuss their working methods and understand where it choked. For Medvedkin, the cinema train was the train of revolution, and the film medium was a weapon, which bore the signature not only to the director and the photographer, but also to the people who participated.
A better world. It is this large-scale project Cinetrain: Russian Winter pulls switches on. In January 2013, 21 filmmakers from a total of 14 countries embarked on a 15-kilometer train journey, which was to last a month and take them from Moscow to Murmansk, St. Petersburg, Kotlas, Tomsk and Olknon, an island in Lake Baikal. . From there, the journey went back to Moscow, where their films were to premiere on the day of arrival.
The project was the third in a row and the selection of participants was based on an open call. While the first Cinetrain in 2008 dealt with the imaginary borders between Russia and Europe, and two years later was about the actual borders in the south and east, the task this time was to shed light on the most common Russian stereotypes and to examine what conceptions the Russians have about themselves. It resulted in eight short films, the six of which are presented in Cinetrain: Russian Winter deals with winter, woman, vodka, Lada, bear ... and the Russian soul.
If the framework for the projects at that time and now are the same, namely the train journey, there are also obvious differences. Where Medvedkin had clear political ambitions and viewed the film as a tool in social development, the filmmakers in Cinetrain: Russian Winter to a much greater extent, a viewing role. And where Medvedkin wanted to make people see themselves and use the newly acquired insight to create a better world, self-understanding is the very starting point for the films made in 2013. The directors deliver no political input, nor do they take aim at it to change something – here it is rather the cultural tourist that can unfold. What the projects still have in common is that they allow people who usually do not have a voice in public to speak up. It is also common for the films to be made in fairly tight conditions: While the 1930s filmmakers developed the film rolls on the scene, the directors sat on the train 80 years later cutting the digital recordings, or struggling with equipment that did not work in the extreme cold.
The film deals with winter, the woman, the vodka, the Lada, the bear ... and the Russian soul.
Russian greatness thoughts. Now, few countries are as mythical as Russia. “Russia cannot be seized by the mind or measured by common goals. No, her status is unique
- in Russia you can only believe, "Wrote Russian poet Fjodor Chuchev in 1866. Religious philosopher Nikolai Berdyev, for his part, claimed that there has been, from ancient times, a presumption that Russia is a donkey for something great – a greatness inextricably linked to the belief in the sanctification of the country. through orthodoxy. In addition, Berdyev described his compatriots as apocalyptic or nihilist, who either aspired to a new revelation, a higher spiritual reality, or who went in the opposite direction and became fanatical atheists. And if these thoughts were formulated more than 100 years ago, one can still see the reminiscences of them in the rhetoric of Putin and his power apparatus.
When Hungarian Bernadett Tuza-Ritter in his contribution Just the way it is deals with the Russian soul, however, it is not about collectivism, faith in God or the notion of having a sacred mission, but about the more lifelike considerations of a train hostess on the stretch between Moscow and Tomsk. The slightly older woman once dreamed of becoming a dancer, but instead ended up as a crane driver, until the company she was employed at had to downsize and she gave up the job in favor of a female colleague who needed it more. Tuza-Ritter himself states on Cinetrain's website that this portrait of a fragile and strong Russian woman who "behaves like Dostoevsky's lonely hero" gives an insight into the mysterious Russian soul. However, what the similarities are between this train hostess and Sonja, Alosja or Prince Myshkin, or where the mystery lies, is not obvious. Rather, it seems to be about being a decent person, about doing the right thing, and about taking on the challenges that life offers, with open arms – even if you say you only have half of what it takes to live a good life. However, a sequence in the film is rarely breathtaking, and that is when the train hostess looks out the window and we see still images from a super8 film where private photos are mixed with moments from the glory days of the Soviet era – among these Medvedkin's portraits. The images are displayed in an uneven rhythm, and also a thought too fast, so that the sequence gets something hilarious about it – as if it represents memories that no longer have a real foothold in consciousness. It is really beautifully done.
Vodka and visions. Three of the short films in Cinetrain: Russian Winter has won a number of festival awards, including Locarno and Sundance. One of these is the Swiss director Benny Jabergs The Green Serpent, which addresses an undeniable Russian stereotype, vodka consumption. Where every Norwegian on average drinks five liters of pure liquor a year, the Russians hit us in the boots with their 16 liters. The average life expectancy of Russian men is 64 years, one in four dies before age 55, and every fifth death is believed to be alcohol related. However, it is not this ugly statistic Jaberg devotes to his film, but to the vodka's expanding consciousness, and the fragile transition between inspiration and nightmarish darkness. In the film, the scientist, poet and director speak – a constellation it is impossible not to see as a parallel to the author and scientist in Andrej Tarkovsky's film stalker from 1979, which, as a result of the wizard, moves into the forbidden zone, in search of the space where their innermost desires can be fulfilled.
The scientist, who works at an institute at Lake Baikal, states that their most important area of research is astroparticle physics, and that they study the neutrino in extraterrestrial objects. Accompanied by stunning images of ice blocks, winds swirling snow over the ice, northern lights and lightning, he continues to talk about how the vodka stimulates the imagination and evokes visions – without these visions being attributed to the neutrinos moving through the vodka glass.
The director, for his part, says that drinking vodka means entering a magical state where one develops telepathic abilities and wordlessly understands each other. Even more magical, however, is the next stage, where it is possible to teleport: You start drinking in one place, but end up in another. "This is something all Russians master," he states. No less endearing is the poet who tells how vodka creates a sensitivity to the world, to all living things, as if breathing in humanity. "You feel sorry for every little puppy, for every little bird that freezes. (…) At the same time, you want to wipe out the people with a flame burner, or throw an atomic bomb down on them, "he says, adding that it is in this withdrawn and contradictory state that he is able to write his" anti-fairy tales ". He then embarks on more far-reaching speculations, in which he connects man with what the cosmic scientist is researching. Through the vodka carus, he experiences entering another world, and being united with the forces of the dark matter, which is everywhere, even inside us.
No less beguiling is the poet who tells how the vodka creates a sensitivity to the world, to everything living, as if to breathe humanity.
Speculative science. This somewhat separate link between science and metaphysics has had a good foundation in Russian culture. In the late 1800s, Nikolai Fedorov combined Russian Orthodox Christianity with a radical, futuristic vision and an almost Marxist notion of practically applicable scientific research, in proposing to apply the knowledge of radiation and the vibrations of the molecule to resurrect the dead, giving them eternal life, and transport them to other planets. And contemporary film director Yevgeny Yufit has, in his so-called necrorealistic films, fabricated over the scales of science to realize idealistic, and at the same time absurd, dreams, such as grafting people with trees to give them indestructible strength.
At the same time point The Green Serpent on an aspect that may also be said to be characteristic of Russian culture, namely the acceptance of the imperfect, of the contradictory, of what both destroys and promises – which is supported by a quivering, crackling, rhythmic sound and almost translucent images in black and neon green.
Getting used to reality. Of the six films, there is only one, Fairytale of the Three Bears by Englishman Tristan Daws, who discusses the dramatic upheavals that have taken place in Russia. In 1917, it was the Orthodox religion and the tsarist empire that were thrown on the boat to realize the notion of a classless society. And when the Soviet Union collapsed in the 1990s, it opened up a world of pirate capitalism unparalleled. Within a few years, two percent of the population robbed themselves of 90 percent of the national wealth, while 25 percent ended up below the subsistence level. In Daws' film, the characters do not look completely incomprehensible with a nostalgic look back to Soviet times, when life was connected, and "words like mother, father and heroes of the country" still meant something. "We used to be other people. It is only now that we have developed a capitalist attitude to things, "says an elderly man, who feels that they have fallen into a rift. "Before, you worked from morning to night, and after a public holiday, the holiday feeling lasted for a whole year. Now that feeling is gone. "
But not only has the work ethic changed. Many have also lost their livelihood. A slightly younger man, who lives with his mother in a small hut, says that some people therefore started stealing metal that they could sell. As a result, the electricity lines that had then supplied them with electricity disappeared. "But life is changing," he states laconically. "I'm an optimist."
Describing the others is, as mentioned, a risk sport, especially when you are in a culture you do not know or are completely familiar with. About the directors of Cinetrain: Russian Winter does not use the film in the way Alexander Medvedkin once did, yet they have managed to steer clear of the clichés and give a beautiful and dignified picture of people who are far from Putin's power center, or the nightclubs and bars in Moscow and St. Petersburg. Here are depicted people who have endured the reality to which they have been delivered, and who poetically and vaguely tell of life and time. For example, one worker says in Fairytale of the Three Bears: "My life passed, as if it were an adventure. It went so fast. I blinked, and then it was gone. " Not everyone can talk like that.
See more about the movies here .
