Posters in plain sight – Kommersant

Launched a few years ago by the BBC to showcase the best documentaries from around the world, Storyville launched Depeche Mode (Our Hobby) (originally titled Posters That Came Off the Walls). The film tells about the fans of the English band in different countries, from Iran to Mexico, but Igor Gavrilov I was most interested in footage shot in the former USSR.

Depeche Mode is Our Hobby by video artist Jeremy Deller and music video director Nick Abrahams. For Jeremy Deller, this is perhaps the only coherent film work in his career, all his other works belong to the field of contemporary art. Nick Abrahams worked with Alan Vega, Sigur Ros, Manic Street Preachers and others. They decided to make a film about Depeche Mode fans when the record label Mute Records, with which the group collaborates, was about to release the collection “The Best Of, Vol.1” ( 2006). The main source of inspiration for the co-authors were almost mythical stories about Depeche Mode fans in Eastern Europe.

The popularity of Depeche Mode in our area really approaches the degree of ecstasy of a religious sect, especially against the background of the fact that in the hometown of Basildon, Essex, there is no cult of the group. Peter Burton, a friend of the band in its early years, tells about this at the beginning of the film. In the late 1970s, Basildon was a rather tense city in the criminal sense, a guy could snatch off the punks on the street for wearing makeup in the 1970s and 2000s. But the main thing is the complete absence of the Depeche Mode brand in the mythology of the city.

Today is no exception. If in Liverpool you feel the presence of The Beatles every second, and in London punks have become a strong tourist accent, then in Basildon’s various online lists of attractions you will not find the houses of Martin Gore and Dave Gun today. In the city there is not even the most overwhelming monument to any of the musicians.

The way Depeche Mode is honored in the former USSR lies in some completely different plane than standard tourist entertainment. Even such a well-known fact as the tradition of celebrating Dave Gan’s birthday on Mayakovsky Square on May 9, in the context of the film, looks something otherworldly to a mass international audience. Real veterans (in 2006, some of them were still able to go outside) and next to it is a column of fans singing Depeche Mode songs. Today, when Victory Day is perhaps the main national bond, these shots are shocking.

Love for Depeche Mode lies somewhere deep in the Russian subconscious. Of course, this is not a mass phenomenon, like football fanaticism. But some of the characters that Deller and Abrahams have found are amazing.

Here is Masha, she created a portrait of Dave Gan from beads. Gun turned out not very similar to the original. Machine mom says: “She loves him, pitying him. When he felt bad, she went to church, defended the service. I even wore a skirt instead of trousers. She said: “Mom, why did they go to the second round? He needs to take care of his health, he has a daughter!” Masha shows a notebook drawn with a ballpoint pen – comics of her own authorship, the heroes of which are the band’s musicians, members of their families, as well as Masha and her friends.

And here is Franziska Furtai, an art historian and researcher of Freemasonry. In 2006, she sits in her kitchen with a bag of “Ya” juice and cookies and argues: “The mysticism and spiritualism of Depeche Mode cannot but echo in the transcendence of the Russian soul.” Franziska reads her translation of the Depeche Mode song “Higher Love” The viewer begins to understand that only by some unfair coincidence, Martin Gore and Dave Gan were born in England, and not in the homeland of Vyazemsky and Baratynsky. “You Englishmen are incapable of understanding the enormity of Depeche Mode,” an art critic tells the filmmakers, and the British must be ashamed.

This uplifting episode is immediately followed by an interview with Nine Inch Nails frontman Trent Reznor, who has equally important things to say. About, for example, what it meant during his American youth to be a fan of Depeche Mode: “There is a cult of sports in American culture, and if you love music, no matter what – country, rock, jazz – or you play in an orchestra, you are by definition goof.”

Depeche Mode’s Our Hobby features some truly powerful fan portraits from Iran, Romania, East Germany, Brazil, Canada, and Mexico, as well as a well-documented history of the riots that 50,000 Depeche Mode fans staged in Los Angeles. when the band held an autograph session to celebrate the release of the album “Violator” (1990). But the most impressive in the film are the stories of Russian girls who “pity” Depeche Mode. This group compensates them for the lack of love, for which the world around is not too generous.

Despite its success at film festivals, the film was never released. The reason Jeremy Deller cites is, again, the fans. According to him, a German family, all of whom dress as members of Depeche Mode, infiltrated the “The Best Of, Vol. 1” release events, which neither the label nor other fans liked. The label was generally repulsed by the not-too-glamorous depiction of Depechmode’s torcida. Fans are unpredictable in their expressions of joy, and it doesn’t always match the polished brand that Mute Records creates. So there is almost no original filming of the band on stage in the film, it is not in the interests of the label. Just the happy fans who actually made the Basildon boys millionaires.