№31

DMITRY MAMULIA's opening article Reality Inflation could become a manifesto for new trends in documentary film. A document is witness to a time and place. About which time and space, or in other words about which reality, can we bear witness in our time, when all the reality around us has lost the status of authenticity? What should a director film?

FILMS

This review section addresses the most striking Russian documentary films from the last five years. The reviews cover an extremely broad-ranging selection of documentaries, from the fully traditional (such as Alexander Gutman's Frescoes [Freski]) to those linked to the new Kinoteatr.doc movement, such as Natalia Meshchaninova's Herbarium [Gerbarii]. Andrei Zaitsev's Gleb (EVGENYA LEONOVA); Vivre en Paix by Pavel Kostomarov and Antoine Cattin (VASILY KORETSKY); Alexander Rastorguyev's Mummies [Mamochki] (MARINA DROZDOVA); Herbarium (ANTON KOSTYLEV); the trilogy Legends of the Silver Age [Legendy Serebryanogo veka] by Andrei Osipov and Odelsha Agishev (NIKITA ELISEYEV); Viktor Kosakovsky's Hush [Tishe] (IGOR MANTSOV); Broadway. Black Sea [Brodvei. Chernoe morye] by Vitaly Mansky (MARIA KUVSHINOVA); Yaptik-Hasse by Edgar Bartenev (SERGEI ANASHKIN); Simply Ufe [Prosto zhizn] by Marina Razbezhkina (NATALYA TRAUBERG); Frescoes (ALEXEI VOSTRIKOV); In the Dark [V temnote] by Sergei Dvortsevoy (ELENA FANAILOVA); Flashback by Hertz Frank (NIKITA EUSEYEV); Portrait [Portret] by Sergei Loznitsa (ALEXEI GUSEV).

PLOT "Back to the hero"

This section unites a group ot interviews that are part of a project by Seance to make a film about Russian documentary-makers. KONSTANTIN SHAVLOVSKY talks to directors on camera about the relationship between author and hero in documentary film. The musings of Vitaly Mansky in his interview The Marriage Contract ate mostly of a marital-erotic nature. The relationship between a director and the hero «could be compared to the relationship between a divorced couple. The public showing of the film is the divorce suit. Any genuine, honest film always reveals what, in intimate relations, is generally not be pronounced out loud.» In Mousetrap, the interview with Sergei Dvortsevoy, fascinating moral questions affecting documentary cinema are asked. Dvortsevoy recognized the impossibility on ethical grounds of continuing to make non-fiction, and has made the transition to working with actors. The director believes that the deeper you penetrate into someone else's life, the more likelihood there is of cheating the hero, causing pain, or basically simply ruining his or her life. Furthermore, at the outset of every film, Dvortsevoy sees a dramatic conflict, sometimes a tragedy, on which he builds his narration. The main theme of the interview with Marina Razbezhkina, Story of an Illness, is the negative impact of documentary cinema on reality, both internal and external. To make a film about someone else is to disappoint that person. In the interview with Alexander Rodnyansky Exchange, the issue of manipulation in documentary film is addressed. On the one hand, claims Rodnyansky, documentary cinema reveals more about the author and the author's world view than about the hero. On the other hand, in order to make the film, the author enters the hero's confidence, creates an illusion of profound sympathy with the subject, and in this way exploits human intimacy to create his or her own fairly subjective product. Lie Detector, a conversation with Sergei Miroshnichenko, addresses the manipulative methods employed by a documentary-maker during the filming itself. Miroshnichenko reveals striking secrets about his own tactics. He describes the right way of treating the subjects of a film so that they tell their story. And he sees the main purpose of documentary film in getting a person to tell their story. The interview with Viktor Kosakovsky by LYUBOV ARKUS and KONSTANTIN SHAVLOVSKY is a sharp discourse about how a director «cannot be a good person». According to Kosakovsky, the most important thing for a director is to remain «a decent person». Because a documentary-maker is always stalking the brink of his subject's death, the brink of catastrophe. It seems that for Kosakovsky there is one ethical option encapsulated in Hertz Frank's Flashback - to film oneself, and only oneself, or those who are a part of you, those you love.

CROSSROADS

"Rossia: tochka zrenija" The article by ALYONA SOLNTSEVA, A Hero in a Time without Heroes is an overview of the history of documentary cinema from the late 1980s to the present day. The author examines the evolution of the hero in Russian non-fiction cinema, tracking changes in the reality that surrounds cinema. Blue Flower is an article by BORIS ROGINSKY that analyzes films shown at the Kinoteatr.doc festival. He sees the common weakness of the movement in «deliberate technical carelessness; poorly thought-through composition, from the individual shot to the film as a whole; and a feeble vision by camera and director alike.» Roginsky's highly controversial article was posted on our journal's site so that readers could express their opinions about the Kinoteatr.doc movement. Authors and readers, as well as audiences and participants of the Kinoteatr.doc festival tried, over the space of a month, to come to some sort of agreement about what constitutes «real cinema» and the «language of the 2000's» and the relevance of Kinoteatr.doc. In her article Country.doc, ELENA GREMINA shares her impressions of films by young film-makers which she has been scrutinizing for the last few years in her capacity as jury member for the Kinoteatr.doc festival. "Russia: point of view" The «Russia: Point of view» section on perceptions and representations of Russia by residents of other countries opens with an overview article by ANDREI PLAKHOV, The Country that is No More. The author examines the nature of the interest from western documentalists towards Russia, during the Soviet era and today. It is an interest in the exotic, in authenticity, and the notorious spirituality that is juxtaposed with western pragmatism. The interview with Sergei Maskimishin the celebrated photo-journalist who has worked for many Russian and foreign publications, touches on the topics of truth and falsification in the art of photography in Russia and the West.» «Anthology» is an extensive selection of testimonies by foreigners about Russia, starting with medieval travelers and finishing with modern philosophers and film-makers.

FLASHBACK "Film. Scissors. Author"

The section entitled «Flashback» looks at how contemporary documentary cinema deals with archive footage from the past, and about historical documentary films. The comprehensive review by OLEG KOVALOV [With no Explanation) of Sergei Loznitsa's film Blockade [Blokada] examines the film from the perspective of the director. Kovalov describes almost frame by frame how Loznitsa has treated archive footage of the siege of Leningrad that was never used in documentary films from the Soviet or Perestroika eras. In his article Sequence of Tenses, ALEXEI VOSTRIKOV studies the evolution of the history documentary at the turn of the 21st century, from, as he puts it, the «past indefinite» to the «past perfect». It is chiefly Russian films about the Second World War that he examines, and Vostrikov uses this material to illustrate the development of the historical consciousness of the modern individual, intellectual, artist, viewer. This same theme is addressed by ALEXANDER DERYABIN (Newsreels through the Looking Glass: What Was, What Is, and What Will Be) from the perspective of a film archivist. He follows the route of falsification of documentary film from Soviet times to the present, when the mass media has raised the craft of fabrication to dizzying new heights.