After interviewing Russian filmmaker Karen Shakhnazarov last year about his latest film Ward No. 6, we wanted to find out more about Mosfilm, the studio Shakhnazarov has contributed heavily to over the last three decades. LWLies took the opportunity to talk once again to Shakhnazarov recently, this time embracing his perspective as director general of Mosfilm on a reflection on the state of Russian cinema.
The largest studio in both Russia and the ex-USSR, and one of the biggest in Europe, Mosfilm was founded in 1924. Since then many of the USSR’s and Russia’s most globally renowned directors, including Sergei Eisenstein, Alexander Dovzhenko, Vsevolod Pudovkin, Nikita Mikhalkov and Andrei Tarkovsky, created their masterpieces there. We asked Shakhnazarov to what extent Mosfilm had been used as a tool for communism and state propaganda during the 20th century and what room there had been for individual creativity. His response was that to some extent Mosfilm was a tool for Soviet ideology, but real creativity generated by great artists who made wonderful and valuable works of arts also existed. It would be incorrect to say that Mosfilm had only one face.
The Mirror
But how did artists manage to be so creative within the limits imposed by the then government? Shakhnazarov thought it would be naïve to believe that during the Soviet regime ideology was the only issue Mosfilm was concerned with. All kinds of films were made at Mosfilm. Tarkovsky was able to make films such as the critically acclaimed The Mirror, in 1975, which was groundbreaking both in form and content (although it is worth noting that the USSR authorities granted this film only limited release and did not allow it to be shown at the Cannes Film Festival). So while many pictures at Mosfilm were chiefly based on the ideology of the USSR, at the same time it was possible to make feature films which were not influenced in any way by communist ideology.
Battleship Potemkin
On the other hand paradoxically some pictures which were strongly inspired by communist ideology became masterpieces of World cinema, such as Eisenstein’s 1925 masterpiece Battleship Potemkin. Eisenstein was revered for his use of montage in this silent film, which involved experimenting with editing techniques to evoke an emotional response from his audience.
Shakhnazarov went on to describe how glasnost, the era of political openness and freedom of speech introduced by Mikhail Gorbachev, influenced cinema of the Soviet Union. The main change was that political ideology gave up its principal role in cinema. Censorship ended. Before glasnost it was officially declared the preferred style was socialist realism, although none of the film makers really seemed to know what socialist realism really meant. Even Shakhnazarov made musicals without never knowing whether they were examples of socialist realism or other kinds of realism or something quite different. As far as he was concerned socialist realism was the official doctrine. There were exceptions. Tarkovsky managed to make the feature film Ivan’s Childhood (main picture) in 1962, for example, although Shakhnazarov points out that this film can hardly be described as an example of socialist realism. It was just good cinematic art.
Prior to glasnost did Shakhnazarov feel free to include the political content he wanted in his films? While he certainly wasn’t free to criticise the communist party or the Soviet Union, given that he made musicals, the former was not something he sought to do. So yes, there were certain limits and taboos which you had to avoid, but if you did not make a political film you could enjoy some measure of artistic freedom. Nevertheless even in his musicals some fragments were cut out because they were considered not to correspond to the Soviet point of view.
Certainly film directors in the USSR post-glasnost were able to pioneer hitherto forbidden territory. Shakhnazarov recalls, “If I think about my own feature films, ones such as The Assassin of the Tsar or Zero City, these films could not have been made before glasnost occurred. Their themes were completely censored prior to glasnost.’’
After the dissolution of the Soviet Union Shakhnazarov became Director General of Mosfilm in 1998 and the studio became quasi-private. Since then he has seen his primary task to be that of bridging the drastic technological gap that existed at the time between Mosfilm and Hollywood or similar European studios. He feels the studio has now overcome this weakness.
Turning the subject to contemporary Russian cinema, Shakhnazarov would not go so far as to say that there is currently a ‘new wave’ of Russian filmmakers, in the spirit of the French Nouvelle Vague that emerged in the 1960s. However, some new names such as Petre Buslov, Andrey Zvyagintsev and Ivan Vyrypaev have begun to emerge; names that have the potential to herald the beginning of a new wave. An increase in female filmmaking talent too includes Renata Litvinova and Larisa Sadilova.
Karen Shakhnazarov
As far as Shakhnazarov is concerned a major economic challenge facing Russian modern cinema is DVD and internet piracy. It is very difficult to recoup the expenses of film making under these circumstances. To his mind this question clearly can not be resolved without state participation in the form of legislation. On the other hand Russia is also facing a great artistic challenge as it has yet to generate its own creative ideas or find its own identity. Previously in the USSR original ideas were present but there is a lack of any such thing now.
Shakhnazarov feels that due to a dearth of originality Russian modern cinema tends to mimic external formulae including Hollywood genres. “Russia is not yet certain of its identity. This problem was at least partially caused by the dissolution of the USSR but this is a very complex matter and we find ourselves in a very complicated and difficult situation. One must understand that in the 1990s the cinema industry in Russia was fully destroyed and Russian cinema had to be built from scratch technologically and artistically. But technology can be created more easily. In fact we have achieved that. But creating artistic ideas is more difficult. There is a kind of artistic vacuum at the moment. I and others are individually doing what we can to address this problem through our work.”
Cinema in the now independent states has almost vanished in terms of actual filmmaking. For example on average only two or three films are produced in the Ukraine a year. Kazahkstan is stepping up its film making, but many republics have completely have lost their film making capacity since the dissolution of the USSR.
At present, however, a popular emerging genre in both Russia and the new independent states is war films. These are mainly based on the WWII (or rather the Great Patriotic War, as it is popularly referred to on account of the huge losses and wounds suffered by the USSR). This experience is still very significant even after the dissolution of the USSR to all the new states of the ex-USSR and is one of the factors that continues to unite them – through common history and tragedy.
