Karen Shakhnazarov:
“Each viewer creates the film that he wants to see”

MOSCOW. “I do not think that cinema, by and large, meets the challenge of time. In my opinion, art cannot generally evaluate the time in which it exists, ”says the director of Mosfilm Karen Shakhnazarov in our conversation. The level of a work of art is determined solely by the uniqueness of the style.

“What is the difference between a very good and professional artist? The fact that you can cut off the credits and understand who shot it… I can tell you the names of outstanding masters who have no style. Spielberg, for example. And Tarantino has a style, because you can immediately see that this is his film. ”

At the same time, Shakhnazarov carefully avoids trying to determine what the essence of Russian cinema is. “Yes, we all understand that modern Russian cinema is different from Western European or American. But somehow it’s impossible to express and define this difference… ”, he says after the meeting. But at the same time, a number of his statements help to more accurately determine the essence of the events that are happening today in the cinema.

- “When we talk about the problems of Russian cinema, we must understand that the same problems exist in almost all cinemas in Europe. Maybe in France the situation is more or less good now, but in Italy and Spain it is very difficult. In Russia, definitely not enough movies are being made. About 70 films were shot last year, which is very few. If you make 300 paintings, then there are always 30–40 worthy films. If you make 70 paintings, then you yourself understand. Therefore, I think that this is, above all, the issue of production in Russia. Russian cinema has become completely divorced from the audience. It absolutely does not depend on the audience, it is fully funded by the state. Therefore, our series have become much more interesting than movies. The series are focused on the viewer, they need a rating, they need money. There is a lot of junk, but there are much more interesting things than in the movies. ”

The conversation at the Metropol Hotel in Geneva was conducted by Aleksey Firsov and Aleksey Serditov, in the framework of the KINO Russian Film Festival, held by the Timchenko Foundation.

Completely Karen Shakhnazarov’s interview published on the website of the Center for Russian Culture Studies .