Documentary filmmaker Elena Demidova, who mastered the art of making films “from her own life,” has died

On January 4, the talented documentarian, director, producer, screenwriter and teacher Elena Demidova passed away. She made the films “Lesha”, “Water of Life”, “Ark”, “Cranberry Island”, “From the Parade to the Oscars”. The story of one film”, “The Third Life of Marina Kleshcheva”… Elena was 59 years old.

The tragic news struck my colleagues. So alive, always there where you need to capture something important with a camera in your hands, and suddenly sudden death. Elena hardly talked about her troubles and problems. Many did not know that she was seriously ill. Her daughter Svetlana reported: “On December 30, there was an attack of vasculitis. Mom was worried about the movie; she had no time to be sick.”

Elena Demidova was born in Orenburg, graduated from Moscow Higher Technical School. Bauman, taught computer science, and in the middle of her life, as she herself said, she changed everything. Lena entered the studio of Marina Razbezhkina and began filming. In 2016, she made her feature film debut, co-directing A Touch of the Wind, which premiered at the Cannes Film Market.

In recent years, Elena has been actively teaching and has developed her own online intensive methodology “I-movie: how to make a movie from your own life.” Only recently she conducted laboratories for young directors in Yakutsk and St. Petersburg at the “Message to Man” festival. At the beginning of December in Yekaterinburg, at the Kinotest, I helped those who could not finish their films. And in 2021, she conducted the “I live in Yekaterinburg” laboratory there, where her students talked about life in their hometown and their families. This is how the collective portrait of Yekaterinburg was born.

Under her leadership, ordinary people made films. During the pandemic, the participants in her workshop, living in different countries, made films in a month and a half and became their heroes. I remember “Green Dress” by Yulia Solovyova from Hamburg. It was later shown at film festivals. This is a picture of a family scattered around the world and a dress made of Japanese silk, which was worn on special occasions for decades by the women of this family. The picture became a reflection of the history of the entire country.

Many documentarians have a rule: when you finish making a film, forget about your hero. Elena did not adhere to it. She returned to her heroes and tried to help them.

Elena Demidova filmed Marina Kleshcheva, an actress from the people who has no special education, only prison amateur performances behind her, for four years. I collected money from around the world for the film “The Third Life of Marina Kleshcheva.” Her heroine plays in Theater.doc, starring in the roles of homeless people, drinking heroines, “decent aunts from the Moscow region.” She worked on the films “Summer”, “Petrovs in the Flu”, “The Apprentice” by Kirill Serebrennikov, “The Meek” by Sergei Loznitsa, which premiered at the Cannes Film Festival, where Marina was not invited. And at that time she was looking for accommodation for the night in Moscow. She did not have her own home. The husband was sitting. My son was strangled by a drunken friend at a disco in the village.

In an interview with MK, Elena Demidova said:

– Before our eyes, Marina is trying to change her life and become a theater and film actress. She grows into a completely different circle of people. Marina’s first, ordinary life was cut short at the age of twenty, when she first went to prison. It happened stupidly, almost by accident: while some were fighting and sorting things out, others committed a robbery behind their back. They imprisoned everyone. Then there was a short period of freedom and again prison, this time for a long time. This could have been another story of a broken life, but Marina was lucky. In the Shakhovskaya colony, where she was serving her sentence, people from Theater.doc appeared and staged performances with the prisoners. Participation in prison amateur performances helped her leave the colony early. And then there was Serpukhov, working in the market, until Elena Gremina appeared again and invited me to the theater. Thus began the development of a new profession, the third life of Marina Kleshcheva. I remember how she came to the theater’s birthday wearing rings and sang a song. Closer to summer, I suddenly realized that a person was changing before my eyes, moving from one life to another. “Here is a subject for a movie,” I said to myself, and then turned to Marina: “Let me film about you.” I noticed that life was happening next to me that could become the subject of a movie. We filmed Marina from the very beginning of her new life. She flew on an airplane for the first time, went on tour outside Russia for the first time, and for the first time realized that help can be selfless.

In 2010, when forests were burning throughout the country, Elena and volunteers went to the Ryazan region to save villages. I took my camera with me and shot the film “Lesha”, and then its sequel. It took more than three years. In our interview after the film’s release, Elena said: “Lyosha is no longer a hero. If you go to him, there won’t be a movie. An ordinary life, an ordinary man. It is important to seize the right moment. You can find a lot of interesting things, but there won’t be a movie.”

The film was shown and awarded at many festivals, and Lesha was loved by the audience, especially women. Previously, he lived alone on the edge of the burnt-out village of Kultuki, where three houses survived and three grandmothers remained, whom Lesha brought out of the fire. Elena Demidova filmed young volunteers who saw goats and geese for the first time near Ryazan, but meeting Lesha changed everything. Elena realized that they needed to make a movie about him.

“I myself am the author and hero of the film,” Elena said in our interview. – While houses were being built for the residents, and it was unclear how everything would work out, I continued to go there and film. A close relationship developed between us. At some point, Lesha decided: since a woman drives, it’s probably love. He cooked me otter soup, took the black grouse to listen, but one day it all ended. Lesha said: “Don’t come.” I thought what happened, bought a bottle, and went to my grandmother, who lives nearby. She said that their children live in their city, watch the Internet, and our film is shown everywhere. “You probably earned a lot of money, but you didn’t share it with Lesha,” she said. Lesha stopped answering the phone and did not answer my calls. Then it turned out that Lesha got married.”

Elena Demidova worked on a film about the Turkish writer, poet and playwright Nazim Hikmet for many years, but never completed the film.