The importance of memory was reminded at the documentary film festival

Renovation in Chinese will be shown in Moscow

The competition program of the Docker documentary film festival in Moscow includes the films “Mr. Tan” about renovation in Chinese style, the hero of which is a 94-year-old man, and the Russian film “Alive” about the work of a search squad engaged in the reconstruction of events during the Second World War . Both are about the importance of memory.

Dmitry Poshtarenko became the hero of Konstantin Selin’s “Alive”, who, from the age of five, has been searching for soldiers who died during World War II. Even at kindergarten age, he went out with a small shovel and discovered the remains of that time. Not afraid. He says that boys experience everything differently, not like girls. Later, Dmitry organized a search party, and now, together with his father and his comrades, he is engaged in searches, establishing the identity of the dead by medallions. Some dacha owners are unaware that their houses are built on bones. “Russian guys are lying in the garden,” Dmitry never ceases to be surprised.

His grandfather fought, reached the Reichstag, and now he is very interested in what his grandson is doing. And Dmitry, as part of the Nevsky Battalist group, consisting of artists and sculptors, recreates the images of soldiers. He reconstructed his grandmother Lucy, who survived the blockade. All these people are saints for Dmitry, because “they have gone beyond themselves.” Gigantic installations are born from dummies. They do not live very long – they have to be destroyed every time. In “Live” we become witnesses of how this happens at one of the factories, where the exhibition “The Road Through the War” was organized for a short time. At the end of the film, the Victory Train is shown, which Konstantin Selin shot superbly. So the feeling was different, not at all the same as in the reports on the day of its official launch. Then all this caused bewilderment, it seemed like an outright props and conjuncture.

Four of his relatives come to the place where the remains of the fighter were found – the niece of the deceased, her daughter and two granddaughters. At the age of 16, he left the village and went to the front. Fight. An adult niece is talking to the deceased uncle at his memorial: “You should not have died, Kirill, you destroyed the Soviet Union. Although you are my uncle, you are fit for grandchildren by age.

The film lives its own life and, in addition to the will of the director, acquires new meanings that he did not lay down when shooting the picture. In the frames of the chronicle, the writer Yuri Nagibin says that we must repent for the fact that not all the bones of the killed soldiers have been buried yet, and this is a grave sin. And for not asking for forgiveness for it. Years have passed since then, and only volunteers are engaged in the search for the dead.

The competition program of “Docker” includes the Russian premiere of the Chinese film “Mr. Tang” about the renovation of one of the old cities in China, which, like everywhere else, causes discontent among residents, especially the elderly, who have lived in their homes all their lives. Mr Tan, 93, lives in the old house where his father was born and died. He cannot understand why he is being evicted. “That’s not how they do it! he argues. “I am in my last days. I live and don’t bother anyone. And I’m being forced to leave.”

Soon he will become a widower. His 89-year-old wife passes away on the day of her husband’s 94th birthday, when children gathered in their house to celebrate such an important event. In this old house, Mr. Tang will survive the quarantine. He will go out into a cozy courtyard, where he grows flowers, feeds fish and birds, where he planted a seed as a child, from which an orange tree has grown. His passages along the old street are filmed simply superbly. No skyscrapers can compare with the originality of these places. But next to it are the ruins of demolished houses …

The narrative is unhurried, but you never cease to follow with interest the life of ordinary Chinese, which is completely exotic for us. Even if you have been to China more than once, it still fascinates. The funeral ritual alone and farewell to Mr. Tan’s wife are worth something.

The film was directed by two directors. One of them is the professor and dean of the College of Cinema and Animation of the Chinese Academy of Arts Xia Su, who became famous for the circular panorama “City Square” at the Shanghai Exhibition, the author of the only Chinese film “Gold Eats People”, presented at the main animation festival in French Annecy. The second director of “Mr. Tan” was Hongyu Su, a student at the College of Film and Animation of the Chinese Academy of Arts, for whom this is a feature-length debut.