GORKY FILM STUDIOS: 90TH JUBILEE
L.Lobanova
On September 16th the Gorky Film Studios in Moscow marked its 90th
jubilee. The Gorky Film Studios are associated with impressive achievements
of the national film industry.
The future film industry giant developed from the small studio "Rus"
that was founded by merchant Mikhail Trofimov in 1915. The company's first
productions were the screen versions of Russian classics with the participation
of celebrated actors of the Moscow Art Theatre. The studios were renamed
several times over the years. In the mid 1930s it concentrated on children's
films mostly. In 1948 it was named after Maxim Gorky, who wrote the novel
"Mother" and the autobiographies "My Childhood", "In
the World" and "My Universities" that were successfully
filmed at the studios. Along with productions for children that educated
several generations of Soviet people the studios catered for all tastes.
A host of celebrated directors, including Yakov Protazanov, Sergei Gerasimov,
Lev Kulidjanov, Marlen Khutsiev and Vasily Shukshin made films that won
nationwide acclaim in the Soviet Union and earned recognition abroad. Some
of the most popular are "Quiet Flows the Don", "The Commissar",
"Three Poplar Trees on Plyushchikha Street", "The Dawns
Are Quiet Here". All in all, the Gorky Studios have shot about 1000
films. As a leader in experimenting with new technologies it was the first
to impress the country with a sound, colour and stereo film.
Today
the Gorky Film Studios is a giant film industry equipped under the last
word in technology. It produces films, offers services and generates ideas.
The General Director, Stanislav Yershov, told us about the Studios' major
guidelines.
"For today our target is cheap but quality films on the one hand,
and promotion of debutants on the other. Two of the four productions that
came out last year were debuts. And this year too two of the three pictures
we are launching for public view are the work of young directors. It is
a risk of course but it makes the Studios' tradition. The All-Russian Institute
of Cinematography is just round the corner from us, so we are always there
to hunt for new talent. And we are also aiming at the so-called project
or "festival" productions".
Among the Studios' director projects is "Remote Access" by
Svetlana Proskurina, which was on view at international festivals including
the Venice Festival in 2004 and has all sorts of prizes. Shortly before
the jubilee the Studios' leadership was notified that the film had grabbed
two main prizes at the Russian International Film Festival "Meridians
of the Pacific".
Foreign cinema lovers will soon be able to see the film too. Negotiations
are currently underway to distribute it in France, Germany and Spain. In
addition to distribution projects the Studios' cooperate with foreign partners
in filming too. It recently produced the film "Arie" in cooperation
with Israel. Arie is the last name of the main character, a Moscow surgeon.
The film also stars the Polish film classic Yeszi Shtur and actress number
1 in Israel Sandra Sade. Another international project to run on the screens
soon was shot jointly with Greece. The film, "Greek Holidays"
by Russian director Vera Storozheva, tells the story of Daphnis and Chloe
from the present-day perspective. Starring in the picture are prominent
Russian actors Chulpan Khamatova and Yuri Kolokolnikov and the Greek film
star Adonis Kafedzopulos.
Of the debut projects the chances for success are with "Extra
Time" by Alexander Brunkovsky. A lyrical comedy, "Extra Time"
features the favourite of Russian public Oleg Tabakov in the company of
his equally popular colleagues from the Moscow Art Theatre.
These and other productions, so varied in subject matter and genre,
are evidence of the never-ending creative searches going on at the Gorky
Studios. In a congratulatory telegram President Putin has sent to the Studios
the president describes it as being in the vanguard of Russian film production
industry.
LAUREATES OF YELENA OBRAZTSOVA INTERNATIONAL COMPETITION
OF YOUNG OPERA SINGERS
L.Roshchina
The Fourth International Competition of Young Opera Singers named after
Yelena Obraztsova has come to a close in St. Petersburg. The prestigious
stage of the Grand Hall of St. Petersburg Philharmonic Society played host
to contestants from Russia, Ukaine, Belorussia, Australia, Norway, China
and Tajikistan. Of 143 performers only 16 made it to the finals and 7 got
main prizes.
Third Prize was given to 27-year lead singer from the Minsk Opera and
Ballet Theatre Alexei Tanovitski (Belorussia), Yelena Gorshunova (Russia)
and Abdumalik Abdukayumov (Uzbekistan).
Second Prize went to Russian singer Lyudmila Dudinova and Australian
tenor Andrew Goodwin. Six years ago on his teacher's recommendations Andrew
Frank Goodwin left Sydney, where he was learning to play the piano and
organ and sang in a church choir. Since then he has been studying at St.Petersburg
Conservatory in the class of Professor Lev Morozov.
The special prizes of the competition included the Prize for Best Performance
of 20th Century Opera Aria, which went to singer Larisa Yudina. The Prize
for Best French Romance was conferred on Vadim Kravets. The Prize for Best
Performance of Tchaikovsky was grabbed by Abdumalik Abdukayumov (Uzbekistan)
and the Prize for Best Performance of German LID went to Andrew Goodwin.
The best concert master prizes went to Alexander Modina and the Uzbek singer
Kamila Akhmedzhakova.
As of next year the Yelena Obraztsova International Competition of
Young Opera Singers will be held annually either in Moscow (2006) or in
St.Petersburg (2007).
"The program of the next competition will be more complicated,
because it will require a more diversified approach in assessing the young
singers, - Yelena Obraztsova said. - The jury will be a representative
one consisting of Juan Sazerland, Peter Dvorsky, Renata Scotto and Christa
Ludwig. In addition to the voice, the jury will have to take into consideration
how the singer feels on stage, how he or she moves and how artistic he
or she is. I'm so happy that my colleagues, who worked side by side with
me for years, treat this event with respect and readily participate in
it".
Of the previous laureates Yelena Obraztsova is planning to build a
young jury. She believes that the young generation has a new vision and
perception of music. Many of the managers from France, the United States,
Germany and Italy, who attended the last round of the competition, spotted
good talents and offered them contracts. The invitation to cooperation
was received by First Prize Laureate - 27-year-old Russian baritone Alexei
Markov.
EXHIBITION "RUSSIAN POP ART"
T.Zavialova
The Moscow Tretiakov Gallery is hosting an extensive exposition of
Russian pop art. For the first in museum history an exhibition traces down
the origin and the subsequent development of pop art in Russia in the second
half of the 20th century.
"Early 20th century Russia abounded in all sorts of art schools,
they were nearly as many as artists, - the Exhibition's curator Andrei
Yerofeev said. - But in the second half of the century, after the Second
World War, there were none and it seemed that art could only exist in two
modifications: official and unofficial. But regardless of the social and
political background at the time the Soviet Union remained part of the
world, and in the first place, European culture. Problems tearing at European
and American culture in the second half of the 20th century got reflected
in Russia too. And pop art was no exception. It got established in Russia
eventually. And the exposition shows more than 70 pop art artists and 400
works".
Pop art as a notion was coined in 1956 by the American critic Lawrence
Alloway for an exhibition of young artists, also known as "new realists".
Representatives of the school insisted on the aesthetic value of the most
banal of objects. Pop art painters borrowed extensively from advertising
and mass media by using methods such as circulation, wild bright color
gamut, exaggeration in size and reconciling the irreconcilable. And since
there was no advertising business in the Soviet Union Russian pop art appeared
out of protest against the polished and ideologically tainted art, which
served to perpetuate the grandeur and power of the Soviet state.
The first section of "Russian Pop Art" presents works of
the 1960s. Mikhail Roginski with his pictures of the gloomy paraphernalia
of Soviet households: "A Saucepan on a Stool" depicts a huge
dark green saucepan for pickling cucumbers on a roughly patched up wooden
stool; "Still life" - on the brown surface of a kitchen table
that has seen no painting for years lie at random matchboxes, lids and
knives of every imaginable caliber. Roginski's "Red Door" is
considered a Russian pop art manifesto. The full-size wooden door is painted
an extremely bright shade of red. But the doorknob is old and colouless
from time, just as in most Soviet flats. The so-called "ensemblages"
by Anatoly Brusilovski are volume-full compositions of furniture fragments,
metallic parts, bits of fabric and cardboard etc. And all this spills into
expressive panel-type installations. But Anatoly Brusilovski's subjects
go beyond the bounds of pop art: "The Conqueror", "Eros",
"The Inspiration".
The second section tells of the pop art of the 1970s- 80s. During this
period the subject range expands dramatically to embrace whatever comes
handy: genuine zinc buckets and brooms, children's plastic cubes and thick
ropes, spades and construction barrows, pieces of rough boards and fiberboard.
Making their appearance are huge doorknobs and cut out of wood and excessively
big window bars, gigantic matchboxes with all sorts of labels attached,
monumental triangle packets of milk and so on and so forth.
Some of the pop art works of the day made it into the Tretiakov Gallery.
The most conspicuous of them are three sculpture objects by Dmitry Prigov:
"The Foot" - a bare foot painted all over with newspaper headlines
and dotted with tiny nails; "The Shoe" depicting a shoe with
holes everywhere to a point where it is on the brink of falling apart;
"The Hand" - a cast of an adult's wrist with a wound dressed
in bandage gauze.
The Russian pop art of the 1990s and early this century lives in a
different environment. The collapse of the Soviet Union led to a powerful
influx of every kind of information setting the artist free to choose what
to do and how. The advertising though timid at first has now become aggressive
to a point where it has penetrated everywhere. It looks like pop art in
the West has long surrendered to the reality and sunk into oblivion, whereas
in Russia it is booming. The Russian pop art is ironical and funny, unpredictable
and paradoxical. In the huge canvases by the Vinogradov-Dubossarsky duet
the authors present an unconventional vision on the juxtaposition of objects
by bringing into one composition such seemingly incompatible objects as
a skillfully painted goldfish from the aquarium, a huge one at that, and
a sad winter landscape in a Russian province. Yet more impressive is the
multi-layered cake adorned with fruit that is painted along with a beaten
hardly passable road with trucks on it caught during a winter thaw. The
Exhibition "Russian Pop Art" will be on at the Treatiakov until
November 13th.
WRITERS AT MOSCOW INTERNATIONAL BOOK FAIR
Y. Karpova, O. Bugrova
The 18th International Moscow Book Fair has become one the major cultural
highlights of early autumn in Russia this year. At the core of the exhibition
are both books and their authors.
Mikhail Shishkin has written three novels, which have become popular
both among the Russian and foreign readers. He belongs to the generation
of forty-year-olds and lives in Switzerland. His top novel is "The
Capture of Ismail", for which he got the Russian Literary Prize "Booker".
But what made him the number 1 hero at the Moscow Fair is his new book
- "Venus's Hair", an acknowledged national bestseller of the
year. The author looks at one of the most
complicated chapters of Christian teachings which prophesy the coming resurrection
of all people that ever lived on the Earth. The novel combines layers of
true-to-life subjects with intricate metaphorical plans and the present
day with other ages and dimensions of life.
"This book is all about overcoming death by word and love, - Mikhail
Shishkin said. - "Venus's Hair" is a plant like fern which grows
as a weed in Rome, where the action in my book comes to a close. But in
Russia Venus's Hair is a home plant that dies without human warmth, care
and love. In the novel Venus's Hair is the divine symbol of life that was
before Eternal City and will be after it".
Poland attended the fair as a guest of honor. Polish literature has
always attracted considerable interest in Russia. Moscow has been visited
by young but already popular in Russia Polish authors Yezhi Sosnovsky and
Voiceh Kuchok, whose books have been translated into Russia.
Yezhi Sosnovsky broke into literature several years ago by publishing
a collection of stories and the novel "Apokrif Aglai" in 2001.
"Apokrif" made him a namein Russia. The spy fiction has a Russian
subject line, so it was the "Apokrif" that Sosnovsky was signing
for his Russian admirers in Moscow. Yezhi Sosnovsky has a particularly
respectful attitude to the Russian literary tradition.
"It might
sound banal, - Yezhi Sosnovsky said, - but I believe that "Idiot"
and "Karamazov Brothers" by Fedor Dostoevsky occupy a special
place in literature. - And my dream is that one day I'll be able to call
myself a disciple to the great Dostoevsky. I particularly love his later
novels that pave the way for God-searching attitudes in Russian art. The
tradition formed philosophers Vladimir Soloviev and Nikolai Berdiaev, film
director Andrei Tarkovsky. It's a whole trend in Russian culture I'm so
fascinated with".
Yezhi Sosnovsky's fellow countryman Voiceh Kuchok is 33 and the author
of numerous stories and novels. One of his biggest works, a novel, won
the Nike Literary Prize in Poland. The Moscow Book Fair featured the Russian
edition of the novel, called "Gnoi" or "Drianie" in
Russian. Before the presentation of the book the visitors saw a film made
after the novel.
The next Moscow Book Fair will take place in a year.
