ANT!PODE Sales & Distribution (Moscow) decided to open to the world an unknown but extremely interesting stratum of contemporary auteur documentary cinema. The sales agent strategy is rather unexpected. The package includes debut full length works by the students of the Marina Razbezhkina and Mikhail Ugarov Documentary Film and Theatre School. This is a unique private institution: 180 000 rubles (ca. 5100 dollars) of tuition rate and 1,5 years of studies transform several dozerns of concerned men and women of various age groups in search of themselves into auteur film-makers with the recognizable manner of the School. For a professional critic, it becomes obvious that their works obviously into the rising «wave» unknown to urbi et orbi unlike the wave of “new Romanian cinema” which swept through the festival heights in the late 2000s. The names of Romanian filmmakers are now famous around the world and provoke interest of art cinema distributors. The Russian alternative to the state ideology of Putin’s decades is more modest and basically unknown. Thinking about the festival and TV market ANT!PODE corrected its business strategy with a wish to change this situation.
The President of ANT!PODE Sales & Distribution Anton Mazurov: “Recently I was a member of the examination commission in the School of Marina Razbezhkina and Mikhail Ugarov. 30 students were taught the auteur documentary filmmaking and verbatim. 17 of them came to the graduation with finished films, mostly medium- and full-length. I watched all the films and frankly speaking was shocked. I wanted to show the world the five films which received high marks in three independent ratings (fellow students, examination commission and viewers – the shows were open). I perceived it as a «wave». I was not disturbed by the fact that these films are debuts”.
The School of Marina Razbezhkina was established several years ago from her small worskshop. Marina Razbezhkina is a world-famous Russian documentary filmmaker. Her feature film Harvest Time (Vremya zhatvy) travelled the world in 2004 from Karlovy Vary through Toronto to Thessaloniki. Нer latest documentary project “The Optical Axis” (Opticheskaya Os), which had it’s world premiere at DOK Leipzig October 2013 (World Rights: ANT!PODE Sales & Distribution). Very often Marina travels across the world with master classes and lectures. The names of her students are still not very famous but their films are regular welcome guests on the international festival field. Among such examples – the film “Winter, go away!” (Zima, ukhodi!), the almanach of the School students broadly covering the 2011/2012 protests in Russia which followed the falsified parliamentary elections. This film was premiered in Locarno.
The School was established as an alternative to the conservative retroeducation practice which flooded few Russian cinema schools. In Russia, the state funding of documentary filmmaking did not evolve into the reasoned policy. Moreover, the Ministry of Culture is against live documentary esthetics deemed «black» by bureaucrats.
The films of Razbezhkina’s students share the recognizable auteur manner: first, the conceptual ascetism, the filmmaker and cameraman are united in one person; second, the captivating ability to find and understand the hero in everyday life; and most important, remaining in the field of auteur cinema to fuse with an object of attention, to follow him relentlessly and delicately simultaneously dissolving in reality. These films are a serises of masterful portraits of contemporary Russia, the other Russia, made in different genres, from tragedy to farce.
From long ago such documentaries can never get access to the Russian federal TV channels. There is, though, the Moscow Artdokfest created 8 years ago by and of another world famous documentary filmmaker Vitaliy Mansky (his Pipeline /Truba) received the documentary Grand Prix in Karlovy Vary in 2013 and continues to move from one world festival to another; sales belong to Heino Decker). Artdokfest is hosted in December, in 2014 it will be held for the ninth time. It is an international festival of documentary cinema looking for a «Russian trace» all over the world. It is an alternative way in the Russian documentary filmmaking, it is conceptual and popular. Only there one may watch a wide range of films made by the School of Marina Razbezhkina. “31st Haul” by Denis Klebleev (one of the authors of “Winter, Go Away!”) received the Best Film Award two years ago, it is included in ANT!PODE package and was shown at Cinema du Reel 2013 (Paris), Hot Docs 2013 (Canada), Kustendorf 2013 (Serbia). The recent festival winner The Last Limouzine (Poslednii Limouzin) by Darya Khlyostkina devoted to the last days of the giant monster ZIL, a large Soviet military transport plant, is just starting its festival route but is successfully sold by Heino Decker for TV and was bought by Al Jazeera tv channel.
The ANT!PODE package also includes four unusual works with diverse themes open to viewers: “21 Days” (21 Den’) by Tamara Dondurey is a sublime portrait of an old woman in her last days in hospice; “Together” (Vmeste) by Denis Shabaev is a charming road movie about an attempt of a father and his daughter to find common language; “Mousetrap” (Myshelovka) by Kristina Kvitko is a burning family drama from the life of one unusual mother and her children; “Zviszhi” by Olga Privolnova is a tragic-farce, Boschian sketch from the life of the village Zviszhi located 170 km from Moscow.
Time will show how effective the sales agent strategy will be, but its team is interested in new projects and is waiting for feedback from colleagues. The package will be enlarged by other movies from the School which are now passing through the postproduction phase.
Alexander Manaki