Moscow festival presented by its Programmer

The XXVII Moscow International Film Festival is to a certain extent a transitional one. Its aim is to set new landmarks for the development not so much of the festival movement but rather of the world cinematic process. The past year saw radical changes in home cinema. Film production gained momentum and strengthened its bonds with the audience. The number of movies being made for theatrical release grew, the practice of distribution also changed. It became more structured, more benign to home movies. Moreover, there appeared in Russian cinema a number of works which were intentionally made with the national and world distribution in view, they belong to the category of trans-national works like Hollywood movies. It does not matter much that their worldwide success is not so wide as yet, the trend itself is very important and fruitful. At the same time we witness the intensive development of festival, art-house cinema, of movies for specific groups of viewers. That is why the present festival will to a certain degree be a transitional one for the home film industry as well. Its main peculiarity lies in its orientation on film practices, support for the cinematic processes rather than on the social side which traditionally plays an important part at the Moscow Festival. The primary reason is that the situation in home industry has changed.
Should I be asked to propose an advertising slogan for the present festival I would suggest "cultural diversity". The very notion of cultural diversity which at present runs contrary to globalization is very widespread. Conferences, symposia throughout the world are devoted to the problems of cultural diversity, specialist on culturology and film scholars, ministers and even heads of state meet to discuss these questions. Cultural diversity has become a kind of a slogan not merely for European countries, but also for the countries of Asia, Africa, Latin America. Our experience of selecting movies for the Moscow Film Festival tells us that the unquestionable prevalence of Hollywood transnational produce and our own Russian transnational works does not lead to the impoverishment and elimination of those works that reflect the peculiarities of different cultures, of their history etc..

The Festival program offers varied works that differ not only in style and theme, but also in character and tendency, not only in the material used, but also in artistic peculiarities because these movies will function within the system of movie distribution. I think that this richness of world film process is to some extent reflected in all festival programs despite certain economic difficulties that the present festival experienced. First of all it is true about the competition program. We reoriented it a bit. In previous years we gave our attention to such a popular region as South-East Asia, this year we focused on movies from the Middle and the Near East. It includes not only Iranian cinema, which is traditionally represented at the Moscow festival, but a Franco-Syrian movie, an Uzbek picture. The Near East lies next the Balkans, an important region in contemporary world, a region torn by crisis. First of all it is the movie "Bal-Can-Can" by Darko Mitrevski, made in that region. It is the second Macedonian movie in the Moscow competition. The film is made in the genre of comedy, which is not typical for the Balkans region. Cinemas of Bulgaria and Greece are also represented. I would call them more traditional in the sense of their genre peculiarities. Traditionally, European cinema occupies a prominent place in the program. The presence of American cinema is a relatively new phenomenon, again dealing with diversity. The thing is that American filmmakers are unwilling to present their works in competitions of international festivals. They either expect a guarantee of wining a prize or prefer to screen their works out of competition. To some extent they are right. But this year there will be American movies in competition and in "Perspectives".

As in the past year the second competition program "Perspectives" will focus on experimental, exploratory works, which sometimes do not conform to traditional scholarly notions and views or traditional preferences of the audience. While last year we accepted only first and second works of young directors, this year we included movies by older directors if they do aim at creative search and break out of the boundaries of genre and stylistic forms. The Russian program at this festival falls into two parts: the traditional Russian panorama, representing the most interesting movies of the past year, and the "Russian Alternative " program which includes off-centre, unusual and sometimes shocking works, which open up new vistas for the development of cinema, albeit many of them might later prove dead-ends. One of these movies is Sergei Loban's "Dust", included into the "Perspectives" competition.

The leading movie-producing countries as usual take the lead in special screenings. Among them is the American "Hotel Rwanda" about the genocide. Or Francois Ozon's "Time to Leave". Lars von Trier's new movie "Manderlay" is the sequel to his "Dogville", which enjoyed special popularity in Russia. There is also the Hollywood super-production "The Interpreter" representing the political genre. We will also see the provocative picture "The Intruder" by the jury member Claire Denis. What distinguishes the present program from last year's one is that instead of the poorly structured and somewhat amorphous out-of-competition program of the previous festival we now have a fully structured one, because we were extremely limited as to the number of movies that we could select for economical reasons. The selection committee decided to make it clear why this or that picture was chosen for the out-of-competition screening. Alongside traditional National Hits the festival will again offer the art-house "Eight and a Half films ", the new "Asian Extreme" which now includes the greater part of East-Asian movies.

We carry on the tradition of the past festival with the "Russian Trail" cycle. More and more films around the world are related to Russia in one way or the other: Russian actors, Russian directors, Russian settings, Russian location shooting. They make up a program that arouses the special interest of the audience, something that became evident a the past festival. In competition our national cinema is represented by Alexei Uchitel's film "Dreaming of Space".

For the first time the festival offers a special documentary program called "Fortress Europe". It is devoted to the construction of new Europe, facing new growing difficulties. To a certain extent some of the present-day problems were foretold by the movies that we have included into our program. Some programs like "Fortress Europe" and "Asian Extreme" include pictures made not only during the last year, but during the last two or three years. The reason is that many interesting and even prominent movies of the latest years failed to reach our viewers. For different reasons we were unable to show them at the festival in due time so now we fill up the gap and the audience will have a chance to see a number of key works, representing the leading tendencies in contemporary cinema. Naturally, the entire out-of-competition program has a number of common themes. One of them is the Middle East, Islam which will have dramatic resonance at the memorial evening devoted to the Dutch director Theo Van Gogh. We will screen his two latest works. The second theme is that of the relationship between Israel and Palestine, which repeatedly returns to the screens (for example "The Last Moon" by the Chilean director Miguel Littin, who won the main prize at MIFF in 1983 for "Alcino and Condor"). And finally a range of topics relating to terrorism which are primarily found in adventure movies.

This year's personal retrospectives are devoted to the French director of Armenian origin Robert Guediguian, whose last movie "The Last Mitterand" screened in Berlin spoke about the last days of the French President Francois Mitterand, and to the East-German director Konrad Wolf. Konrad Wolf's retrospective fits into the sum total of programs related to the 60th anniversary of the victory in the Second World war. This is the topic of a special program prepared by Gosfilmofond of Russia and called "WWII Premieres: The Chronicles". The same is true of the small program "WWII: A XXIst Century Perspective", which includes movies of different genres dealing with the period of war from the modern stand-point. The national retrospective this year is devoted to the actively developing Danish cinema.

And finally, the bulky part of the out-of-competition program is called "Films Around the World". Movies are selected according to the cultural and geographical principles. We choose movies created in different countries and regions, try to find films that demonstrate the most important tendencies of their region ranging from the Republic of South Africa to France and the USA. In this way we complete the panorama of world cinema, although the one hundred plus movies that we are screening can hardly give an exhaustive representation of the world cinematic processes. Two movies will open the program. On the one hand it is Alfred Hitchcock's classical detective "North by North-West" made in the late 50s and its modern echo "South by South-East" by the director from Belgrade Milutin Petrovic. Thus the program embraces all the parts of the world.

The panorama of cultural diversity is traditionally completed by "Media-Forum", presenting works of video art, experimental movies with its own competition.

Thus the idea of cultural diversity and the screening of a number of Hollywood and home mainstream films are the distinctive features of the present festival.

Kirill Razlogov
Program director of the MIFF