by Helmut Merschmann
The Soviet Parallel Cinema called then Cine Fantom has been
constituted in 1985 around the film magazine of the same name. It brought film
producers from Leningrad and Moscow together to form a subcultural underground
movement. Till 1987 they projected their films in their own flats as well as in
other private flats. The status of underground reinforced the common theme
about taboos of the society as well as the situation which made them deal with
subcultural non-public subjects such as critique of ideology, violence and
homosexuality. The culminating point of this artistic period was to be the
first Cine Fantom-Festival in Moscow in 1987.
As a consequence of Glasnost which enables discussions in various publications
about themes forbidden in the past these subjects disappeared for the
film-makers. Consequently they lost their underground identity and they have to
take a new course. The festival of Riga (Forum of the non commercial
cinema) which for the first time offered a place to producers not organised
in institutions was important to this development.
The fusion, now called Parallel Cinema, did not think of itself as a collective
superego that is active as a group and that determinates its own themes, it was
rather so that each film-maker developed in a very individual way.
A lot has happened since that time. The brothers Igor and Gleb
Aleinikov produced at the film academy VGIK of Moscow as well as at the
debutant division of the experimental film studios of the national Mosfilm
(Somebody was here). While their early works (Cruel Illness Of The
Men, Metastasis, Tractor) were characterized by ironic critique on
public state of affairs and while their theoretical quarrels dealt with the
Soviet cinema of the twenties and of the thirties today they intend to give up
this kind of direct influences.
One of their main interests is the relation of the individual and ideology
Postpolitical Cinema. The film presents an exposed piece of HomeArt, a
style reminding us of shaking Super-8 home-movies. Consequently the producers
filmed their holiday at the Baltic around Leningrad and edited them as a
montage with sequences from Soviet History.
In many of these earlier films the language is an essential part that functions
like an insertion and is used asynchronoursly, or in an entangled or a
simultaneous way equal to the visual part in order to distract from the
significs. The new works (Somebody Was Here, Mirage) are mostly dealing
with "film" aspects. Aesthetics and content, directing narrative constructions
and also technical components such as direction of the camera and of the light,
composition of the space move into the center of the work. The Aleinikov
brothers turn explicitly away from postmodern arbitrarian style and try to use
genuine (Soviet?) style in working out a film of the nineties.
The video producer Boris Juchananov works completely different. His video films
do not deny the fact that he has been assistant producer for a theatre. He
works with several Moscow theatre groups and apart from his video work he sets
up ballets. The associative improvisation in the company is part of his film
concept, every sequence is developed collectively and transposed into film
whereby staging and documentation are linked together. In this way his work
gains on reflection that refers to the origin of the situation and to the
acting together of the actors and the camera.
His video theory (on which he is writing at the moment) contains an extremely
wide gathering of material ("matrix") which he assembles individually for
special presentations and for video copies ("variation"). No copy is like the
others. A video philosophy is attached to it and regards that medium as linear
and not discret. The temporal aspect, the length, are more important than the
editing and the structural composition. At the moment Boris Juchananovis head
directry at the Free Universityof Leningrad which he helped to found
other directors of the Parallel Cinema such as the necrorealists
from Leningrad cannot be included here or in the programme of the festival.
However we would like to call attention to the 3rd Festival of the Parallel
Cinema taking place in 1991.
TRAKTORA
16 mm, 13:00, UdSSR 1987, by Igor und Gleb Aleinikov.
In 1980 the power of the Soviet tractor engines amounted to 497 million horse
power. Who is to be surprised that this industrial achievement induced the most
important methaphor. The tractor is being associated with earth and
people. "The myth that the drivers of tractors possess an extraordinary
potency arises among female persons" (film text). What do female drivers of
tractors think about it in the country of the functional emancipation?
SOMEBODY WAS HERE
35 mm, 42:00, UdSSR 1989, by Igor und Gleb Aleinikov.
A man comes home, finds footprints in his flat and a mysterious note: "I will
be waiting at 3 o'clock at the Peking." Who is the mysterious writer, how did
he get into the flat and what does he want? - The man does not find anyone at
the restaurant. Written on a napkin a new meeting being proposed for the next
week.
A detective kind of tracing which takes him into his own past is to begin for
the man. For the film it is the beginning of a structural reflection about
traces/signs and their misleading information.
BRUTAL ILLNESS OF MEN
16 mm, 12:00, UdSSR 1987 by Igor und Gleb Aleinikov.
The dance of technology, militarism, progress credibility and ideology is to be
attributed to masculine authoritative thinking. Romantic abandoned industry
aesthetics symbolize the civilisation decline and the human disdain. Being
shown "Pictures of this world" a naive spectator falls a victim of a metaphoric
homosexual rape.
METASTASEN
16 mm, 16;30, UdSSR 1985, by Igor und Gleb Aleinikov.
The compiled documentary material from educational cultural and TV films shows
a Soviet tradition and reveals its decadence and the ideology in every day
life. A montage which reminds of the one of Eisenstein confronts the sequences
with a sound collage which elevate the culture critical tenor to a derision.
POSTPOLITICAL CINEMA
16 mm, 25:00, UdSSR 1988, by Igor und Gleb Aleinikov.
This film describes the trip of the filmmakers to Leningrad. Inserts show:
words are no words, film is no film, while consumption statistics and war
reports are to be heard. The Aleinikovs as tourists rowing a boat or in the
streets of Leningrad in front of Eisenstein's house.
CRAZY PRINCE FASSBINDER
VHS, 44:00, UdSSR 1989, by Boris Juchananov.
Rainer Werner Faßbinder is the declared idol of the actor Evgenij Cerba.
He soliloquizes in exalted tones about Faßbinder's greed for work and
about his fury to live. Other artists of the Mowcow underground report about
ficticious meetings with his hero. The identification and also the uselessness
to want to live a myth were felt through biography and intimacy mixed to an
information staccato.
Through the improvised style of the presentation the video medium seemed to be
superior for that kind of themes. Aside from the implicit authenticity the
style can transmit the context of the Soviet artists in an understandable way.
WING
VHS, 30:00, UdSSR 1989, by Boris Juchananov.
The first novel of Mikhail Kusmin Wings published in 1907 dealing with
the love of the student Wanja to the bourgeois free idea Stroop serves as a
model to this video. Historical fragments emerge: talks about literature
between the boy and the novelist. From a window a nude boy playing in the snow
is to be seen and this thematizes the generation conflict and the distance of
the novelist to the innocence of the boy. The typewriter types: "It is
necessary to hold a certain distance in order to get a real perception of the
picture. "
