The most famous German film festival, the Berlinale, which used to take place in the summer, turns 70 on June 6th. This year, it also takes place in the summer: in the winter, prizes were awarded online, and the films will be shown to the public in June in open-air cinema theaters. > recalls the time when Soviet cinema thundered at this festival.
Berlinale is the main German film festival. And, although there are exceptions here, it is the most beloved among Russian film critics, despite the fact that the program here is clearly weaker than in the same Cannes. Patriarch of Russian film critic Andrei Plakhov called his book about the festival “My Berlinale” – a good, intimate, personal name. Imagine the book “My Cannes”: it does not sound and it seems that its author is bragging about a status pastime. The Berlinale is work, passion, art. Hundreds of films, affordable screenings, a friendly lively city. And Cannes – walking tailcoat, because without it, they will not be allowed into evening sessions, and obligatory oysters. Choose for yourself.
There is more Russian language in Berlin than Russian films at the Berlinale
Relations between the Berlinale and Russian cinema are more complicated. For many years a paradoxical situation has been observed here: the Russian language at the festival sounds almost more often than English, but in the numerous programs of the festival it is good if a couple of Russian films are shown. For example, this free and radical festival ignores the wave of modern Russian high-budget patriotic films about war and athletes.
Berlinale, 1977. In the center – Larisa Shepitko with the “Golden Bear”
Back in 1977, at the Berlinale, they gave the main prize to Larisa Shepitko’s “Ascent” – a masterpiece about Belarusian partisans who fell into the hands of the Nazis. Dumbfounded Soviet critics swore that under the guise of a war film Shepitko shot a religious parable with a mystical tinge, while in the West, Shepitko’s film immediately became a classic. Modern Russian films about the war, to put it mildly, do not reach the level of “Ascent”, so why bother with pale copies, if the original was once awarded the highest category, the festival selectors say. And they ignore the entire Russian mainstream, filmed with state support.
The main “Soviet” day of the Berlinale
In fact, the highest point of the success of Soviet cinema at the Berlinale is known up to the day. It’s March 1, 1987. The Berlinale of that year was not only held under the sign of Soviet cinema – that’s putting it mildly. Due to the abolition of censorship restrictions in the USSR, a wave of cinema poured into Berlin, which for many years lay on the shelf and which literally swept away all the awards. That year, Soviet cinema, without exaggeration, was the best in the world, and the main prize, “Golden Bear”, was received by Gleb Panfilov’s “Subject”, filmed back in 1979, but lying on the shelf for eight years.
Gleb Panfilov, 1987
“Theme” is a half-forgotten and scary film about the torment of a successful Soviet playwright, who with his mistress on his own “Volga” goes to the provinces to look for a “theme” for a new play. In the provinces, the playwright understands everything about his own insignificance and at the same time about the country in which he lives, and breaks his “Volga”. The film has an open end: whether the hero survived or not, we do not know.
Gleb Panfilov had not yet written scripts for the high-budget military parables of Mikhalkov, that is, the second and third parts of “Burnt by the Sun”, but was quite a half-recognized artist. Imagine what it is like to make a film that no one will see, which is locked on a shelf, and then, many years later, it is still released and it unexpectedly wins the main prize of one of the world’s most important film festivals.
Kira Muratova on the set, 1985
As critic Andrei Plakhov, who was at the Berlinale for the first time in 1987, recalls, a small Soviet delegation celebrated Panfilov’s success in West Berlin bars so violently that the “golden bear” was simply lost. But that year, films by Elem Klimov, Alexander Sokurov, Kira Muratova and Sergei Parajanov were also shown in Berlin. Even in the category of children’s films, the prize of the UN Children’s Fund was awarded to the Estonian Games for School-aged Children. Soviet cinema thundered all over the world, and it seemed that this would continue, if not always, then for many years …
“Bears” by inertia
Indeed, in subsequent years, up to the mid-1990s, Soviet and then Russian cinema rode on this inertia of success: films were regularly awarded. In 1988, the second most important award, which in those years was called the “Jury Prize”, went to another film that lay on the shelf for many years: “The Commissioner” by Alexander Askoldov. In 1990, Kira Muratova’s Asthenic Syndrome received the same award. 1991 – and success again: this time with the film “Satan” by Viktor Aristov. The hero of “Satan”, a young man Vitalik, in cooperation with his sinister grandfather, commits murder and a number of rapes throughout the film, and in the finale he leaves by tram, cheerfully waving his hand to the viewer. In 1992, the third most important award was given to Marlene Khutsiev – and since then Russian cinema has not received the main “bears” of Berlin.
This does not mean that everything is bad: in 2020, a “silver bear” was even given to Khrzhanovsky’s scandalous project “Dau” for camera work. However, Russian cinema has become a representative of one of the many secondary film markets, and it is significantly inferior to China or South Korea. To replicate the Soviet success, Berlin needs political or artistic changes in Russia: by all accounts, the “stagnation” there has somehow dragged on.
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