We wanted the best: the Zerkalo festival put director Panfilov in a stupid position

Angelica Dean

As you know, yesterday in Yuryevets, Ivanovo Region, the 14th Tarkovsky International Festival Zerkalo (Mirror) opened. True, the host of the opening ceremony, Ksenia Rappoport, standing on the balcony of the old Brewery, converted for a movie screening, called the festival "regional." In fact, everything is so - even worse: the “Mirror” does not even look regional, but rural.

Many absurdities in 40 minutes were said by a far from stupid actress and even more by stupid director and producer Aleksey Agranovich (he does not even know that “Beginning” is far from the first film by Gleb Panfilov - the first “There is no ford in the fire”). In addition, “Zerkalo”, according to the leading Rappoport and Agranovich, is “the first experiment of the festival online”.

Before the opening, Ksenia Rappoport shared her know-how: “cinema is the art of ghosts”. In fact, Tarkovsky, whose name is the festival of the Ministry of Culture of Russia, sought to ensure that "cinema was as full of art as painting, poetry, literature". He wrote about this in his Diaries. About his homeland, where the festival takes place, Andrei Arsenievich also wrote in the "Diaries" after 30 years later, on December 8, 1973, returned here for one day:

- It was not necessary to go to Yuryevets! Let him remain in my memory as a beautiful, happy country, the birthplace of my childhood... I correctly wrote in the script for the film that I am shooting now that we should not return to the ruins...

It is funny that Tarkovsky attached a label from the Zhigulevsky beer to his record with the inscription: "All that remains of the trip to Yuryevets". Today, at the factory producing this beer, a film festival is being held in his honor. Here is such a metamorphosis in semi-quarantine Russia of the 21st century.

One could quietly laugh at the ghost festival if it did not touch upon very fundamental and somewhat historical issues. So, the president of the Zerkalo festival, Sergey Bodrov from Los Angeles, “presented” the “Prize for Outstanding Contribution to Cinema” to director Gleb Panfilov, but he could not receive the award in the online format, and, according to the presenters, it will be delivered to his home.

I'm afraid it’s true that Panfilov was shocked by such an award, because, unlike Sergei Bodrov and the organizers of the festival, he knows that Tarkovsky called him “evil and envious” in his Diaries (January 7, 1977):

- I filmed samples to the Stalker: Solonitsyn, Grinko, Kaydanovsky. I haven’t seen it yet. I'm ill.

The premiere of "Hamlet" is postponed to the 28th (instead of the 21st) because Churikova and Panfilov went to rest. I did not even deign to inform. Where? In which country? When? In which theater? What actress could do that? This, of course, is the influence of Gleb, and it will ruin Churikov. This is my prophecy. And God will punish him. What an evil, envious person he is!

No, after all, Genius and Villainy are incompatible, Tarkovsky wrote in black and white.

Andrei Arsenievich said a lot of things and wrote about Panfilov, but already “evil and envious” is enough to not give the Prize for outstanding contribution to Gleb Panfilov at the Tarkovsky Festival. Do not bind these two names - and the point.

Someone argues that Tarkovsky was a sharp man, and indeed publishing the Diaries is a rash step. But the word is not a sparrow. In any case, the festival should not have revived the "history of hostility" between filmmakers from nonexistence.

As it is hardly necessary to use the word film festival itself, the name of Tarkovsky for a ghostly experiment that has no future. The chairman of the jury of the Zerkalo film festival is director, cameraman Fred Keleman to the question of the leading Agranovich: “Does the online festival have a future?” replied: "There is no future and no future." True, his phrase, said on the air, was reduced the next day, and the media presented it as if "all about, kay".

Today is the first day of the festival. The competition program has only 8 paintings that have already participated in other festivals, and for the international festival this, of course, is small and bad. To the question: “Why do you need this Zerkalo?” famous film critic Leonid Pavlyuchik replied:

- I do not understand online festivals and do not participate in them. If the organizers of the festival had not held it now, they would have had to return the money to the Ministry of Culture of Russia.