Concerts Opera Dance Theater Gigs Exhibits

	Ctb Alexei Balabanov's drama "It Doesn't Hurt" is one of the 14 films to premiere at Kinotavr.

Cannes on the Black Sea

Revitalized under its new management team, the Kinotavr film festival boasts an unprecedented number of premieres.

By Tom Birchenough
Published: May 26, 2006

The fruits of Russia's cinema revival will be more than evident when the country's top national film festival, Kinotavr, opens for the 17th time in the Black Sea resort of Sochi on June 4 -- and in contrast to the box-office hits of recent months, the emphasis at Kinotavr has moved squarely back to more art-house work.

As the festival enters its second year under the management of STS television channel producers Alexander Rodnyansky and Igor Tolstunov, it boasts an unprecedented 14 premieres on its competition slate of 15 films. And there's a new logo into the bargain: a yellow sun-and-ocean design, which replaces the rather strange three-legged animal that characterized the event during the 15 years it was curated by founder Mark Rudinshtein (who makes an onscreen appearance in Alexei Balabanov's "It Doesn't Hurt," though he isn't likely to attend the festival in person, given that the terms of the handover deal specified a two-year moratorium on his presence).

Such circumstances have allowed programmer Sitora Aliyeva an enviable luxury in selection, cutting out reprises of already-released films, especially blockbusters (like last year's prize-winner, "The State Counselor"). If premieres dominated Kinotavr through much of the early 1990s -- simply because the films concerned weren't being released at all, anywhere -- the growth of distribution of Russian movies over the last five years had caused an increasing retrospective slant to Kinotavr's programs. This year, though, the only film in Kinotavr's competition that has already been screened around the country (and far from widely) is Tigran Keosayan's Brezhnev comedy-drama "Rabbit Over the Void."

Competing against it, before a jury headed by veteran screenwriter Rustam Ibragimbekov, is a whole range of new fare. Besides Balabanov's film, there's the World War II Lend-Lease air drama "Transit" from director Alexander Rogozhkin ("Cuckoo") -- both films come from Sergei Selyanov's respected CTB production house, and Selyanov specially agreed to hold over their local release until after the festival.

Rodnyansky's intentions for the future development of Kinotavr are along exactly such lines. "We hope that it will become a real instrument in which festival victory will be part of the future market path of any winner," he said at an April press conference.

"The Island," the latest film from Franco-Russian director Pavel Lungin, whose "Roots" won last year's top prize, will be screened as the festival's opener, but out of competition. It's based on a Church-themed story about a "holy fool" in contemporary Russia, with top billing going to the duo of Pyotr Mamonov and Viktor Sukhorukov. It's a pairing that couldn't be more appropriate, given that their past screen roles have frequently suggested that both have long been missing more than a few of their marbles.

There's much to expect from the younger generation of Russian directors too. Boris Khlebnikov, co-director of the acclaimed 2004 Moscow International Film Festival winner "Koktebel," shows his first solo work, "Free Floating." Theater and television director Kirill Serebrennikov's "Playing the Victim," an adaptation of his own stage production of the darkly absurdist play by brothers Oleg and Vladimir Presnyakov, has already won much acclaim after a single Moscow press screening. Established screenwriter Dunya Smirnova ("His Wife's Diary") shows her directing debut, "Relations." A last-minute program addition came with "Euphoria" by Siberian dramatist and director Ivan Vyrypayev, most recently acclaimed as a co-screenwriter on "Boomer. Film Two."

Alexander Veledinsky (whose most recent film was the Eduard Limonov adaptation "It's Russian") shows "Alive," starring the brothers Andrei and Alexei Chadov, both young and talented actors. From a somewhat-older generation of directors, there's "The Ugly Swans" by Konstantin Lopushansky, a St. Petersburg filmmaker whose perestroika-era work had a distinctly eccentric, sometimes-crazed perspective, and "Soviet Park" from Yuly Gusman, better known as the director of Moscow's Dom Kino until his acrimonious eviction from the position by Nikita Mikhalkov.

On the schedule again is last year's successful and concentrated short-film program -- much valued by producers for the chance to see work from upcoming directors who will be more than necessary for future development of the industry. Programmer Aliyeva has spoken of the much wider origin of the submitted works, which go well beyond Moscow and St. Petersburg, coming from as far away as Siberia and the Far East. Budding directors will be involved in a pitching forum, a new event in which would-be film players present projects to potential producers.

Other programs are both historical (such as "The 1990s. The Cinema We Lost" -- true in a rather tragic sense, given that some works either simply don't exist, or archives won't release their sole surviving copies, according to Aliyeva) and contemporary (such as the "Cine Fantom" program from the STS-affiliated contemporary film club).

Though Kinotavr scrapped its old parallel European film competition program last year, one challenge for 2006 remains the development of a European co-production strand, according to Tolstunov. For that reason, organizers are planning a two-day seminar for representatives of the European Producers Club, as well as continuing expansion of events where recent Russian films are screened for international buyers and festival selectors, with the numbers of expected attendees up from last year's trial run. If that works, then the viewing frontiers of some lucky new film could stretch far beyond the enticing Black Sea beach location where it will shortly be screened.

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