“Cinema Night” can be held in the company of Alexander Lazarev to the music from the films of Mark Zakharov

Focus on Latin America

The city-wide event “Cinema Night”, which has already become traditional, will begin on August 26, on the eve of the Day of Russian Cinema, which falls on August 27. It will run from noon to midnight and cover 180 sites and locations.

Its main event will be the film concert “An Unusual Miracle” in the oldest Moscow cinema “Khudozhestvenny”, which will be dedicated to the 90th anniversary of the birth of director Mark Zakharov. The evening will be hosted by Lenkom actor Alexander Lazarev and his daughter and actress Polina Lazareva. Songs from the films of Mark Zakharov will be performed by Leonid Yarmolnik, Alexander Oleshko, Daria Moroz, Andrey Chernyshov. Anticipating the event, Alexander Lazarev recalled how powerful, impetuous and harsh, but at the same time with a fantastic sense of humor, Mark Zakharov was, to the theater to which he came at the age of 20. Great directors, according to Alexander Lazarev, are always difficult people, this is not bread and butter for you. He remembered the lesson that Mark Anatolyevich once taught him and his daughter Alexandra Zakharova. That evening they played the play “Crazy Day, or The Marriage of Figaro”, allowed themselves some liberties and hooliganism. At that moment, Zakharov appeared. During the intermission, he was ferocious, such as he had never seen before. Zakharov reprimanded the artists, threatened that if this happens again, then “we will part.” “Remember that I have nothing more valuable than the theater,” he said the phrase that Alexander Lazarev and Alexandra Zakharova remembered for the rest of their lives.

The movies will be shown, as stated, in non-standard places, but they are not so non-standard. In response to calls to organize performances in the metro and on river buses, the head of the Moscow Department of Culture, Alexander Kibovsky, replied that the boats and trailers were not very interesting, they were more like a lure, a performance. The directors, according to him, made films not for plasma, but for the big screen, so we will respect them. The originality of Film Night will be associated with three screenings dedicated to composers. Films featuring their music will be shown from 35mm film. In honor of Eduard Artemyev, the Zaryadye open-air venue will host a screening of Nikita Mikhalkov’s film “Friend among Strangers, Stranger Among Friends”. In the courtyard of the Museum of Moscow, Sergei Kuryokhin will be remembered at a session of Oleg Teptsov’s Master Decorator. Soyuzmultfilm will present the animation work of the now living Alexander Zatsepin, who wrote the music for the cartoons The Secret of the Third Planet by Roman Kachanov and Film, Film, Film! Fedor Khitruk.

Since we live in the conditions of sanctions, new directions appear. Movies from Panama, Mexico, Nicaragua, Argentina will be shown. The focus is mainly on the countries of Latin America, feature and documentary films that won national festivals there, leaders of regional distribution. The retrospective will be opened by the film “Towards” about the preservation of the culture of one of the ethnic groups of Nicaragua. Anticipating the film action, Alexander Kibovsky recalled how in 1984 he visited the pioneer camp “Artek”, where he made friends with peers from Nicaragua. So for him this is not some abstract country.

In the program “Don’t Miss” you will be able to see film versions of opera performances, in particular “Tosca”, gala concerts of “Helikon-Opera”. There will be a marathon of serials on the big screen, excursions to the Khudozhestvenny cinema, which was revived several years ago, and the former bakery, where a new cultural space has now appeared, the opportunity to watch movies and performances. The documentary program will show several films, including “The Great Patriotic War in the TASS photo chronicle”, which viewers will see through the cameras of photographers of that time, and find out why many pictures were not published. On Strastnoy Boulevard, in honor of the 100th anniversary of Leonid Gaidai, an exhibition will open in the presence of his relatives, which will tell about the youth of the director of “The Diamond Hand” and “Prisoner of the Caucasus”, his front-line life (he was a scout) and other stages.