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Russian directors reinvent themselves during confinement

2020-05-08T05:21:38.251Z


Videos of confined people and actors, documentaries and fictions on small screens ... The filmmakers compete in imagination to continue shooting.


Take your smartphones and film your new habits, your favorite corner at home or a work videoconference. And we will make movies of it! Confined, the Russian directors compete in imagination to continue filming.

Every week since the end of March, Andreï Kontchalovski sits on his sofa and asks his 418,000 Facebook subscribers a series of questions. They answer it on video, from their home, for a project called Russian Quarantine .

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" They take a shot from their bedroom, a decrepit window sill or the old armchair they adore ", explains to the AFP the 82-year-old director, several times awarded in Cannes and Venice. Sometimes the contributors recite a text or share a reflection on the behavior of Russians in the face of quarantine. There are also scenes where Russians drink vodka on a table between two balconies or go by bike to their next door neighbor.

Since the start of confinement, imposed in late March in Moscow and then on the Russian regions, Kontchalovski's team has sorted thousands of videos and photos to find those that will be included in his film.

"Among the Russians, feelings dominate reason and they have a historically very particular attitude to the laws"

Andreï Kontchalovski

" Each nation has its own way of approaching the crisis, and our film will show a mosaic of the Russian character ," explains the filmmaker, who passed through Hollywood, and who became known for his films on the Russian countryside.

Among the Russians, " the feelings dominate the reason and they have a historically very particular attitude with the laws ", estimates the scenario writer, son of the poet Sergei Mikhalkov, author of the words of the hymn of the USSR. However, the director refuses to reveal the content of future sequences.

A new language

Andreï Kontchalovski is not the only Russian director to seek inspiration under the constraint of confinement. Timour Bekmambetov, author of two cult feature films in the mid-2000s, La Ronde de nuit and La Ronde de jour , wants to create a series of short fiction and documentary videos in " screenlife ", a process during which the film takes place through a computer or phone screen.

Read also: Russian cinema sets fire to screens

" Today we live more on our screens than in real life: this is where we fall in love, we get angry, we find a job, we lose it and we understand who we are ", says the director and producer , whose project is entitled: Quales de la Quarantaine .

The first episode, Telework , tells of confined videoconferencing with professional actors. " Confinement accelerates the use of a new audiovisual language ", maintains the director: " Traditional cinema, suspended by the crisis, is outdated: we no longer want films on bank robberies in the era of electronic payment nor declarations of love under a balcony at the time of social networks. "

Online platforms

In 2020, Russian producers are expected to lose nearly 60% in revenue from pre-epidemic forecasts, according to estimates by the Ministry of Culture published last week by the daily Vedomosti .

Remain online platforms to allow directors to continue to create. This is the path taken by Galia Fatkhoutdinova, author of several award-winning short films.

The 35-year-old woman was teaching drama lessons in China when the epidemic broke out. Stuck in quarantine, she had decided to launch a series of short films on containment upon her return to Russia. Now confined to Moscow, she called on her artist friends, all unemployed, to help her film.

"Les Isolés talks about everything that happens in confinement: love, betrayal, politics" , tells the filmmaker to AFP. She is now looking to sell her series to an online platform, the only distribution network, with YouTube, which stays in the movies to survive.

Source: lefigaro

All life articles on 2020-05-08

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