On the eve of farewell to Gorbachev, late Soviet cinema was shown in Venice

The 79th Venice Film Festival, which opened with a film adaptation of the novel White Noise by Don Deliro, is celebrating its 90th anniversary this year. It was founded in 1932 by the decision of Mussolini, but due to various historical circumstances, it was not held every year. Hence the discrepancy between numbers.

The novel “White Noise”, written in 1985, was approached by the American director Noah Baumbach for several years. He invited Adam Driver, who played the leading expert on Hitler, Jack Gladney, to play the main role. The actor, who unexpectedly became the flagship of his generation, had to put on extra weight for such an offer. His colleague, who is fascinated by the work of Elvis Presley, another idol of the era, is trying to compete with the researcher of the figure of the Fuhrer. The authors of the film were interested in the nature of mass hypnosis, periodically covering millions of people who are ready to blindly follow their idols.

The festival showed a five-hour series “Kingdom” by Lars von Trier, but without the presence of the director himself. He has always had aerophobia, due to which he rarely flew. Now Parkinson’s disease has been added to it, which Trier openly told reporters in zoom. He was always gloomy, and the new misfortune exacerbated his anxious mood. Trier is horrified by the situation in the world and the fact that the current generations will not leave anything good to posterity. He recalled his two grandchildren, whose fate is preoccupied, as the world flies into the abyss. In addition to the difficult political situation, the global climate problem remains unresolved. It is likely that the third season of “Kingdom” Trier say goodbye to the cinema. He began working on it more than 25 years ago, at the dawn of his film career. Some of his actors are no longer alive, who had to be replaced with new ones, but the iconic figures for Trier – Willem Defoe in the guise of Satan and Udo Kier – remained.

A landing of stars arrives in Venice every day. Visited Lido Island and Hillary Clinton, about whom a film was made. In the first days of the festival, Catherine Deneuve, who received the honorary Golden Lion for her brilliant film career, graced it with her visit. Isabelle Huppert presented the film Syndicalist by Jean-Paul Salome in the Horizons program, where her heroine, who has a high social status, is constantly subjected to either imaginary or real attacks. It is as if she attracts all conceivable and unthinkable misfortunes – fire, fall, broken arm … Even a knife will somehow end up in her vagina, and all of France will discuss this incredible incident. But after The Pianist by Michael Haneke, Huppert is difficult to embarrass with something. Unfortunately, her stay on the screen testifies to one thing – the pursuit of youth and beauty becomes the most important thing. Next to other actors who are younger than Huppert, she looks unacceptably young, thereby only exacerbating the doomed attempts to remain forever young.

The greatest excitement was caused by the appearance at the premiere of the film “Entirely and Completely” by Luca Guadaninho Timothy Chalome, who played a cannibal. What is Brad Pitt when there is a new idol that has pretty much squeezed out his older comrades. One can only wonder why exactly the tender-young Chalome makes such a hypnotic impression on the audience, who roared with happiness during his passage along the starry path in a silk red jumpsuit with an open back to the base.

The day before the farewell to Mikhail Gorbachev, the program “Venetian Classics” showed the film “Bro”, filmed at the end of the USSR by VGIK student Bakhtiyor Khudoynazarov. The audience knows him well from the films “Moon Dad”, “Kosh ba kosh”, “Chic”, “Waiting for the Sea”. In 2015, he died in Berlin at the age of 49 after a long illness. German director Veit Helmer, known for the films “Tuvalu” and “Baikonur”, was a friend of Bakhtiyor Khudoynazarov for 15 years and now restored the film, which will be presented not only in Venice, but throughout the world, since the rights to show it were acquired by Wild Bunch.

Bekhtiyor’s entire career is connected with Italy. His “Bro” won the Grand Prix at the Turin Film Festival at the time when it was directed by the current director of the Venice Film Festival, Alberto Barbera. And his last feature film “Waiting for the Sea” participated in the Rome Film Festival. Now Bakhtiyor seems to have returned to Italy after death. At the screening of “Bro” were present – film critic, program director of “Kinotavr” and at the time of the film’s creation the wife of Khudoynazarov Sitora Alieva and Alena Shumakova, who did a lot to promote Russian cinema in Italy and the world, worked as a selector at the Venice and Cannes Film Festivals. She also made excellent subtitles for Bro.

The main character – a seven-year-old boy Azamat – loves to eat, so his name is Donut. It seems that this touching child, played by young Timur Tursunov, looks like young Bakhtiyor. But his image is written off from the director’s brother, who died early. Donut eats even the earth, and the elder brother Farukh cannot wean him from this in any way. Boys live without parents with their grandmother. Mom is gone, and my father works in the city as a doctor and is not particularly interested in children. The picture looks great, and for the most part, modern foreign viewers no longer remember what the USSR is, they are surprised by the magnificent Tajik mountain landscapes, among which a strange train of three cars and a tank rushes, and it is driven by the driver Nabi in a skullcap. So much sadness and stingy joy in this magnificent picture, her outgoing nature. It’s amazing how a student did such a mature job. It was his thesis Khudoynazarov at VGIK.

Rustam Akhadov worked as a sound engineer at Bro. The sound score there is amazing, as is the music written by Akhmad Bakaev.

Here is what Rustam Akhadov, perhaps the only representative of this picture, told MK – someone died, and someone left Tajikistan in difficult times and disappeared into the vastness of the world. :

– It was 1989-1990s. I was practically not on the set, because I worked on a large documentary project and connected only towards the end in post-production. Although I occasionally went to the shooting, because my friends worked there. How without them? It was Bakhtik’s debut, so everything was difficult. The picture was shot for a long time, because it is complex and connected with the train. Bakhtiyor and cameraman Georgy Dzolaev decided for a long time how to shoot. It was hard work. Bakhtiyor had just come to Tajikfilm. It was his diploma. He defended them at VGIK. The State Radio and Television got money for it. Bakhtik experimented a lot there. He filmed the shot with the bat, God knows how long, and then edited it for the same amount.

For a long time there was talk about how this film should be put in order, cleaned. They wanted to show him even before the pandemic at the Berlin Film Festival, somewhere in the fourth or fifth year after his death. I even tried to find out some things in Gosfilmofond for this. But since this is a television picture, nothing has been preserved. It was also made by order of the State Radio and Television. Then three VGIK students came – Bakhtiyor Khudoynazarov, Farhat Abdullaev, Mumin Shakirov – all from the workshop of Igor Talankin. They needed something to keep them busy. Senior comrades ran, they were able to break through the money on television. So Bakhtik withdrew his diploma. Then I was on his side. We took a copy and gave it to VGIK. It’s a monograph. I wonder what it sounds like now. So much has been thought of in terms of sound. We can say that Bakhtiyor and I spent the night at Mosfilm while we were working on it.

A classmate of Bakhtiyor Khudoynazarov at VGIK, Mikhail Kosyrev-Nesterov, shared his memories with MK.

– I had a wonderful classmate and friend Bakhtik Khudoynazarov. We studied together with Talankin in his last workshop. I shot a short film with Margarita Terekhova, and Bakhtik did a diploma. We had huge problems with the film. We were allocated substandard from the Shostka factory. Both he and I got married. As a result, he could not make a film, he tried to defend himself with fragments. We shoot and shoot, and everything goes to the basket. A Moscow journalist came to our shooting, and Terekhova told her about this horror. An article has been released. We didn’t have any video equipment to shoot, so everything was made from scraps. Bakhtik went to Tajikistan and shot there a wonderful film “Bro”, which I adore. I know that the film will be shown in Venice. Bakhtiyor is gone, and the joy for him is great. I’m happy”.