"Artdocfest" - a dialogue on the embrasure of non-conformism

ST. PETERSBURG. The non-conformist Artdocfest opened. An open and honest dialogue with society, ignored by the Ministry of Culture.

The lack of state funding was not an obstacle to the opening of "Artdocfest." Although, in the opinion of its president, Vitaly Mansky, none of the films presented at the competition is overly provocative and unacceptably sharp. "Artdocfest" is an alternative to unipolarity, the absence of any opinion other than the approved one, an attempt to defend the last frontiers of democracy.

The "event" of Sergei Loznitsa returns to the crucial year of 1991. The black-and-white frames that were in the archive sump are the excited and inspired residents of Leningrad, the painfully familiar faces of famous people, the slogans that are impossible in today’s streets. The absence of an off-screen text is an opportunity to think through it yourself, to recall futile hopes and illusions overturned into nowhere. “Joseph’s Children” by Ekaterina Gordeeva, contrary to possible associations, is a film about Brodsky and those for whom poetry expelled to emigrate the poet and his name were synonymous with freedom. “Speech and Punishment” by Eugene Mitta - analysis of the artistic demarche of Pussy Riot, which has not lost its relevance. “Fools do not belong here” - a provocative film by Oleg Mavromatti, now a resident of Bulgaria, with discouraging monologues of the foolish Sergius Astakhov.

The festival is in full swing. Ahead - the most acute and necessary for the current viewer tapes that are sure to show. Even without funding from the Ministry of Culture.

Elena Tanakova © Gallerix.ru