2023-10-28 12:53:23
The premiere of Alexey Fedorchenko’s new film “Mitrofan Aksenov’s Sausage” took place at the national competition of the “Message to Man” festival in St. Petersburg. Little is known about the hero of the picture; there is no date of birth or date of death. Did he really exist, and if so, what was he like? – this is what the spectators, at a loss in conjecture, thought about after the most mysterious film show.
Many people check what they see on the Internet, and then it turns out that Fedorchenko did not invent his hero. His books exist and can be bought, and the scientist Malykin from Nizhny Novgorod mentioned in the film is also not a myth. He exists and wrote the article “Russian philosopher Mitrofan Aksenov and the theory of relativity,” although we will not see him on the screen. For some reason, he was unable to meet with Alexey Fedorchenko, but set the vector for further searches by sending filmmakers to Baku.
So, Mitrofan Aksenov is a real mathematician and philosopher of the late 19th – early 20th centuries, whose name is certainly accompanied by the postscript “little known”. And he actually wrote the work “Transcendental-Kinetic Theory of Time.” Fedorchenko displays several of his brochures on the screen. It is known that Alexey collects old books, orders them from different countries, buys them at world auctions and already has a unique library. And he talked about how this happens in an interview with MK. At the same time, doubts overcome each time, because what is happening on the screen seems incredible. Moreover, fiction is taken at face value, but the truth seems to be fiction.
A year ago, the premiere of Alexey Fedorchenko’s grandiose film “The Big Snakes of Ulli-Kale” took place at Message to Man. Soon after, he traveled with a film crew to Colombia, where he filmed the sequel, Raccoon Town. The name has changed, now it is “New Berlin”. Its premiere recently took place at the Mayak festival in Gelendzhik. And now Colombian echoes have appeared in “Mitrofan Aksenov’s Sausage,” where a certain specialist from the city of Cartagena talks about a little-known scientist and even draws some parallels with Tolstoy. Outside the window of Fedorchenko’s interlocutor there is a magnificent landscape of a city on the shores of the Caribbean Sea. At this point even greater doubts creep into the soul about the authenticity of what is happening.
We know very well that Fedorchenko is a master of hoaxes, as “The Big Snakes of Ulli-Kale” brilliantly demonstrated. Alexey is a virtuoso of mockumentary, pseudo-documentary cinema, but every time not only neophytes, but also experienced viewers fall for his phantasmagoric tricks. And all because for Fedorchenko in cinema, reality as such does not exist, there is only himself and us, all together we are the real reality.
“New Berlin” begins with real-life film director Marina Razbezhkina talking with her students (their authenticity is not in doubt, but then some details become clear) and explains to them that there cannot be reality in cinema by definition, since in any case it is a look and something specific to the filmmaker. You can’t argue with the truth of her statement. The artist’s view is always subjective. And then a graduate of the Marina Razbezhkina documentary film school, Viktor Schaufler, but in fact an actor from Yekaterinburg Sergei Kolesov, and his daughter, but in fact an actress Daria Konyzheva, go to Colombia to find traces of the director’s relative who has disappeared into obscurity – or an aunt, or older sister Bertha. This is where you get completely lost in the details. Yes, and Marina Razbezhkina, although the real Marina Razbezhkina, is still an actress invited to play herself in the proposed circumstances.
Still from the film “Mitrofan Aksenov’s Sausage.” Photo: festival press service
As a result, two independent stories emerge, worthy of separate films, but for some reason Alexey Fedorchenko unites them. One – “The Mystery of the Five Hundred Missing Virgins” – tells about the search for the mysterious Bertha. The second, “Raccoon City,” is dedicated to a mysterious city in the ice of Antarctica, where Nazi criminals of World War II are hiding and praying to new gods. No longer to the Fuhrer, but to raccoons. Thanks to the latter, this amazing story came out. Near Grodno, old films were found where all this was recorded, and chronicles of the life of former “heroes” were kept under layers of ice in the habitats of raccoons. These “testimonies of time” were filmed by the wonderful cameraman Alisher Khamidkhodzhaev.
Alexey Fedorchenko wrote the script for the film “Mitrofan Aksenov’s Sausage” with his regular collaborator, and now actress Lida Kanashova. Together they reconstructed the unknown life of a little-known person and became the heroes of their own film. The genre of presentation was defined as film-biblio-detective. Over the course of an hour, the life of a forgotten Russian philosopher, who anticipated the discoveries of Albert Einstein and 15 years before the advent of the theory of relativity, published a work on the fourth dimension, is being resurrected. Fedorchenko finds people in Arzamas, Baku and Moscow who are passionate about a given topic and have their own theories on this matter.
One of them is the barker of the erotica museum. He attracts people on the street to an enchanting exhibition, where they can play with intimate toys and talk about Aksenov. He has a theory based on the fact that in fact no Aksenov is Aksenov, but the well-known judge and writer Anatoly Koni. But such research seems very dubious, and a pair of animated horses (if they are Horses, then literally horses) appear on the screen, plunging into the abyss of water in a submarine. They drowned.
Aksenov’s fans – let’s call them that – consider him a pioneer, a man who was ahead of Einstein’s discoveries. In general, we have before us another “first on the Moon.” And Fedorchenko made an early film about this in the mockumentary genre, which received an award in Venice as a documentary film.
Fedorchenko’s Einstein resembles Papa Cipollino from the well-known and very relevant book of Gianni Rodari at all times. Green leaves grow on its onion-shaped head. This is how it was invented by cartoonist Maria Sedyanova together with Fedorchenko. Mitrofan Aksenov was also animated. He flies like a comet behind Fedorchenko and his interlocutors, like a guardian angel looms behind them.
We take a cartoon trip through the cities with which the life of the mysterious hero is connected, we will visit virtual Kharkov, and then Zhitomir, where Aksenov gave a lecture. Now it seems incredible. And Fedorchenko’s film crew never got there due to well-known events. From the TV screen, the president announces his decision to launch a special military operation. The film expedition did not take place, and Fedorchenko remained sitting on his suitcases. But an imaginary journey is quite enough for the viewer. In addition, the group managed to establish the dates of Aksenov’s birth and death, relying on a variety of documents, for example, his mention among the graduates of the first Kharkov gymnasium in 1866.
Everything seen seems like a grandiose invention, but inexperienced viewers unconditionally believe in the “obvious-incredible.” As one of Fedorchenko’s heroes says, if it was filmed, it happened. The animated Aksenov flies along the time line on the screen, serving as an illustration for his own writings. He studied changes in the density and geometry of bodies moving relative to the observer, and this is visualized on the screen. It also appeared in “New Berlin,” and now Fedorchenko tried to resurrect it using a neural network. In order for the authenticity of the portrait to become obvious, he also reproduces the image of Leo Tolstoy. And here is the result of the neural network – a crooked, sideways, three-eyed character. We’ll love him like that too. What does the sausage have to do with it? It is being cut before our eyes by one of the experts on Aksenov’s heritage, telling at the same time about his life. The audience lick their lips in unison – the sausage is so appetizing, smoked, aromatic. You can eat a piece or return it to its place, and the illusion arises that it is whole again.
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