"Peasant" Vyacheslav Orekhov - the best documentary of the festival "Stalker"

MOSCOW. Laureates of the Stalker festival announced.

On December 10, 1948, the UN adopted the Declaration of Human Rights. On this day, the International Stalker Festival starts annually. In 2017 - for the 23rd time. The program includes documentaries and feature films. The main theme is the protection of human rights, a protest against discrimination of any kind, a story about those who want to live in good conscience. And she, according to Hegel, is powerless in the state, unlike laws, and is like a clawed beast that scrapes the heart, as the Pushkin Baron used to say in The Mean Knight.

Viewers want to watch such films. During film screenings, the screen invariably highlights in the darkness of a full room caring, inspired faces. Directors - to shoot, as evidenced by a program full of worthy films. Food for the mind, support for the soul.

The prize for the best documentary went to the film "The Peasant". Its director Vyacheslav Orekhov is one of the best masters of domestic non-fiction film. The creative, warm atmosphere of the Higher Courses of scriptwriters and directors, the lack of mentoring and snobbery, the lectures of Trauberg, Utilov, Tarkovsky, Bykov, Shpalikov, Galanter, Khutsiev helped to reveal the individuality of each of those who were lucky to study there. The heroes of Orekhov’s films — workers, village philosophers, conscientious, decent people — are elusive, each in his own way, reminiscent of himself, close to him in his attitude. The legendary balalaika virtuoso Mikhail Rozhkov, the craftsman Nikolai Ivanovich Ivanov, who spent nearly two dozen behind bars due to the denunciation of some bastard. Former groom, carving stunning horse figures from a tree, naive artist Ivan Nikiforov, author of his favorite animated films, Valentin Karavaev. It is enough to stop, look around, to meet a soul mate.

The main thing, says Orekhov, is not to lose the spirit that helps to remain a person in any circumstances and to be reborn like a Phoenix bird from the ashes. In recent years, a member of the Nika Academy of Motion Picture Arts has been living in the village of Sipkino with an amazing history. In the mid-50s, a popular gathering decided to give it a different name. But what a! Over the past 60 years, in all documents, this settlement is listed as Yasnaya Polyana.

The desire to move to the countryside was largely influenced by communication with Dmitry Arsenyev, the hero of one of the films he shot. A spiritual search led a former GITIS teacher, a musician, to a remote village, and as a result, to himself. According to Orekhov, leaving the city helped him gain inner freedom and spiritual harmony.

The hero of his last film is 80-year-old farmer Stanislav Kuchinsky. An amazing person, a tireless hard worker, rural intellectual and philosopher. His farm is his state, where no one imposes on him how to live and what to do. Slave labor is inefficient, which the Bolsheviks never understood, says Kuchinsky. He is his own boss, self-sufficient, avidly in love with life.

Elena Tanakova © Gallerix.ru