Brezhnev’s kisses with African leaders were remembered at the Docker festival
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The Russian-Portuguese film “Red Africa” by Alexander Markov in Moscow for the eighth time opened the international festival of documentary films “Docker”. On the eve, everyone together recalled the graffiti “Brotherly Kiss” by Brezhnev and the head of the GDR, Erich Honecker, in connection with the death of the artist Dmitry Vrubel. Now we have seen no less fiery embraces of the Secretary General with the leaders of African countries.
Still young Leonid Ilyich receives representatives of African countries in the Kremlin, he himself goes to the Black Continent. His embrace with black leaders is no less passionate than with Honecker. Today it is impossible to imagine anything like this. God knows what right away. But Leonid Ilyich was free in this sense.
“Red Africa” tells about the thirty-year friendship of the USSR with the Black Continent, about how in the 1960s the Soviet Union provided comprehensive technical and humanitarian assistance to newly independent African states.
The film by Alexander Markov has a minimum of words. They are not needed, and without that everything is obvious. But what a rich polyphony of sound – from the creaking of shoes to the horns of motor ships and the rumble of the crowd. Lines of dark-skinned soldiers in shorts go to the gangway of the plane. The audience is given a signal – you can rejoice and greet the guests. This is where the film begins, based on unique footage shot by Soviet and African cameramen from 1957 to 1991.
Leonid Ilyich Brezhnev arrives in an African country, which one, often cannot be distinguished. He is greeted with local color, songs and dances. The voice-over announcer reports that Africa is gold, uranium, diamonds, discovered and undiscovered riches. Before us is a map of the Black Continent, on which 35 countries are already free. Everything there is unusual. A young African climbs a palm tree with lightning speed, and a coconut flies down like a stone. A monkey in a white hat is looking at the Soviet General Secretary from a tree. Leonid Ilyich is amazed, points his finger somewhere. Like a real grain grower, he rubs the seeds in his palms, sniffs. Then he goes through banana plantations, marvels at a pineapple, strokes the bark of a tree …
In Africa, during the days of an official visit, an exhibition of achievements opens, where the Soviet space satellite, the Volga car, bicycles, cameras and watches made in the USSR are presented. Locals storm the fences to see it all with their own eyes. A puffy African woman throws a fur coat over her shoulders. A dark-skinned musician is sitting at the piano “Belarus”. Soviet experts demonstrate the work of machines. Visitors flip through the books of Pushkin and Lenin. What amazing faces – the African aristocracy and ordinary people. All this looks like something unreal, a distant fairy-tale life in which love and brotherhood triumph.
Experienced Soviet geologists are sent to Africa to help “comrades force nature to give up its riches.” Treasures of the bowels of the local population are mined with hoes. The fishermen of Ghana, reminiscent of athletes, catch fish in an equally homegrown way. One daredevil, not afraid of the shark, as the announcer reports, drives the fish into the net. Soviet fishermen will teach him a new type of fishing. A well-established saw in Siberia destroys giant trees in Africa. And a physical education teacher from Yaroslavl, Elza Vlasova, is engaged in physical training of local teenagers on a huge area.
The Angolan leader and poet Agostinho Neto, the leaders of Algeria and Guinea are coming to the USSR on a return visit. Some of them are present at Baikonur at the launch of the first cosmonaut. Moscow is decorated with “iconostases” with portraits of Khrushchev, Brezhnev and one of their African colleagues. Banners on the streets: “Welcome, dear Mozambican friends!” Workers take to the streets with flowers. The schoolgirl is holding an African doll in her hands. Dear guests will certainly ride in the metro, take them to Leningrad and Tashkent, show them factories and mines, present the achievements of Soviet culture, for example, a performance by the Tbilisi Opera and Ballet Theater, where Vakhtang Chebukiani performs the part of Othello. Well, an indispensable part of the program is a visit to the Mausoleum and a meeting with the pioneers.
The black-and-white chronicle recalls how people took to the streets of the world’s cities, outraged by the “mockery” of African freedom fighter Patrice Lumumba. Demonstrations of workers also took place in the USSR. Another manifestation of Soviet solidarity is the education of African youth in Moscow. Many still remember those days with gratitude. One Egyptian director who graduated from VGIK, with whom he had a chance to work on the jury, had a joke: “What is the best pearl in the world? Correctly. Toothpaste “Pearl”. And in “Red Africa” the mother collects her son to Moscow. Soon he will study at the Peoples’ Friendship University. Patrice Lumumba. And there – snowy winter, skiing and skating, student evenings. “Aren’t you cold in Moscow?” – relatives ask about this in letters. Everyone understands that in order to build socialism, specialists are needed, and the Soviet Union will help to learn them.
But everything in this world of course. People and their ideas are leaving. Brezhnev is dying, and the leaders of the states come to say goodbye. Very soon, all those who froze at the TV screens during the broadcast of the Secretary General’s funeral will take to the streets with the slogans of freedom and democracy. Gorbachev and Yeltsin will appear on the screen. The mighty monument to Dzerzhinsky will collapse from the pedestal, and another era will come.
Alexander Markov’s film has already been shown in Switzerland, Portugal and Senegal. During the festival in Moscow, you can see films from different countries – from Germany to Peru, which have already received awards at IDFA in Amsterdam and at Hot Docs in Toronto. The international jury of the full-length Docker competition was headed by film director Sergei Dvortsevoi, and Zoe Schmederer from Germany and Ammar Aziz from Pakistan will work with him on the same team.
Newspaper headline:
How Brezhnev embraced Africa
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