Stockholm Film Festival

COMRADE TCHKALOV AND HIS men are ordered to go to the North Pole. After many heroic and good deeds they finish their mission and leave for America where they win the hearts of the proletariat. And then they live, happily ever after...
Comment:
MAXIM PEZHEMSKI IS ONE OF the youngest dircctors in the Soviet Union, and youth might be the main way of characterizing the aesthetics of this film, Only a person whose awareness has bcen untouched by the moralizing Soviet 30s films and the older generation's heavy dogmas and historical guilt can make such a rougish and ironic film.
Valeri Tchkalov, a hero in Soviet history writing and the main character in a classical film with the same title, by the director Kalatozov (an episode from this film, by the way, is in the film, as a stylistic contrast) is for Pczhemski above all the main character in a game - a joke, nearly a cartoon character. Soviet history itself, with its revolutionary pathos and pompous monumentalism, is here reduced to a game of chess. It's so to speak, the glossy surface of thc chessmen that fascinate the young director, and without making much of an effort, he has the audience smilingly observing them, as well. It's both a film and a spontaneous investigation with theoretical consequenccs. Out of the terrible isolationism, significant of thc films of the 30s, completely new genres were born, colchos comedies, films about ''thc enemies of the people'', Stalinist falsifications of history, ''biographical films'', and so on. Disregarding the limitless cynicism in these films, their sole purpose were of course to fulfill propagandist goals, the enthusiasm by which grown people was spreading lies in the giant land awakens some sympathy. Pezhemski smiles amused at the lies and gives them nearly a puppet-like, mechanic stylization. The boldness in an endeavour like this had only a year ago been too sardonic (''making fun of a people's tragedy like this'') but is typical for an artist of the 90s. Pezhemski sees, as thc 60s child he is, all the 30s Comrade Tchkalovs as a thing of the past and quite simply avoids the problem of having to place them in the stocks. _
PETER SJEPOTINNIK

Medverkande

Alexander Zavjalov, Semen Phourmane

Producent

Lenfilm

Manus

Maxime Pejemskij

Foto

Valerij Mironov

Musik

Sergeij Kourjehin

Talat språk

N/A

 

Andra filmer från sektionen Short Film Competition

Se alla festivalfilmer från 1991