The second ever Russian Film Festival in London opened last Thursday night and I was at the press conference on Friday to mark its opening and get the general lowdown on contemporary Russian cinema from the festival’s organisers and some of the principle directors, actors and producers. And hopefully have a delicious BAFTA lunch too.
A room full of people drinking coffee and all speaking Russian on my arrival made chatting pretty difficult – I can do nyet, da and spassiba but find that leads to a fairly limited level of conversation – so I settled down with a cup of tea and a biscuit to read the press release and decide which films I thought sounded most interesting. I had just settled on 20 Cigarettes, Nirvana, and rock documentary Rock Monologue when the babble of Russian voices died down and the conference began with the terrifying words, ‘So, does anyone here not speak Russian?’
Cue my lone hand and embarrassed realisation that I was going to be the saddo at the back, annoying everyone else by having someone muttering in my ear all the way through. Bad enough, but not insurmountable and really quite glamorous in the long run. Until it turned out that my translator would be my ex-boyfriend’s identical twin brother. Really, you couldn’t make it up. So, acquaintance rekindled, I set about the slightly disorienting foreign film experience of trying to keep up with the dialogue whilst also keeping an eye on the action and trying to stop my translator from chatting to other people instead of translating for me (sabotage?). Coupled with the dunce-like feeling induced by being the only person in the audience not laughing before the subtitles. You could say I had earned my lunch by the end.
However, most of what I eventually did learn from the conference, turned out to be an interesting reflection of Russian history, current politics and the film industry. I realised that, contrary to what we may be led to believe by the miniscule distribution in British cinemas, there is actually a sizeable Russian film industry, of which the 10 features shown at this festival are merely the cream of the past year’s crop. Since the films are all having their British premiere at the festival, and so remain unseen by any of the British press, it is difficult to make a quality judgement about them or guess how successful they would be if on general release. But the fact that so many of the films’ stars and directors are making the trip to London for the festival to promote them and partake in Q&A sessions and round tables shows a concerted effort to publicise the industry outside Russia.
It was also interesting to learn how things have changed and modernised since the bad old Soviet days. There was a laugh, a joke and a merry quip about the communist film sound production company (which may or may not have actually been called ‘Red Sound’, sadly my notes aren’t totally reliable) and their pre-computerisation techniques, including the yummy practice of using slabs of meat to create slapping sounds. The vague rumblings in the audience of a resurgence of state intervention and funding was swiftly denied by the panel who were all predominantly involved in independent filmmaking. The executive producer of 20 Cigarettes, Irina Smolko, pointed out that she ran her own business, the funds from which she then channelled into making films, and that this was not at all unusual, although nobody outright denied that there might be increasing pro-government propaganda in some movies.
All in all, a day that my mother would describe as ‘character-building’, although it hasn’t deterred me and I’m still determined to make at least a couple of the screenings while the festival is still on. And the lunch was delicious.
For full listings of screenings and events between 18-29 September, visit www.academia-rossica.org.
