Artistic Opening of the Dilogy of Vidugiris on the Toktogul Hydroelectric Power Station
Retreat Two. “The HPP was built by the whole country...”
...While browsing through some remnants of film material about the beginning of the construction of the Toktogul HPP in one of the halls of “Kyrgyzfilm,” someone noticed a “freak” crossing the bubbling Naryn on a cable. Then they spotted a camera and a battery tied to the “adrenaline junkie.” Indeed, Vidugiris was in his element, “capturing” yet another “stunning” shot...
A characteristic feature of all Vidugiris's films, including the documentary works of the Naryn cycle — “Three Answers to the Mountains” — 1963; “Overlapping” — 1966; “Naryn Diary” — 1971; “Toktogul Sea: Day One” — 1974; “In the Year of the Restless Sun” — 1977 — is a pronounced authorial beginning, the ability to open a new theme, a new layer of life, which can be defined as a constant, active desire to “extract the maximum possible from the world of physical reality.” Only the “realism of Krakauer” — the impartial photographic depiction of life, which presupposes the absence of a clear ideological position of the artist, a personal authorial view on what is happening, widespread in the 60s in the West in the searches of French “direct cinema,” English “free cinema,” American “New York school,” and others, who used many methods of Dziga Vertov and sometimes called themselves his direct “creative heirs,” Soviet screen journalism opposes artistic interpretation of life phenomena from revolutionary positions. Not the impassive, factographic “cinematic truth,” but the effective, world-transforming Vertovian cinematic truth — the study of life phenomena through the method of artistic analysis.
The regularity of the historical process of the transition from informational chronicle to a new type of screen art — figurative journalism — has allowed progressive documentarians around the world to address the most pressing issues of modernity based on factual material.
A significant artistic discovery of the diptych by Vidugiris about the Toktogul HPP — “Naryn Diary” and “In the Year of the Restless Sun” — is the creation of deep, psychologically rich characters based on documentary, factual material, often surpassing the images created by actors in feature films.
Characters that are inherent precisely to the socialist way of life. By using various methods of “recasting” chronicle into journalism, overcoming impassive factography, the author of the diptych achieves the effect that the objective content of documentary footage becomes an expression of his deeply personal reflections on the meaning of the events depicted.
The thematically united parts of the diptych, however, differ in their manner of embodiment. The years that separate them have significantly changed Vidugiris's creative style. Reportage, chronicling, “immediacy” — as a technique, as the main “instrument” for organizing event material, have given way to a contemplative, tension-filled narrative tone. Concise. Laconic. Figurative. A single fact is perceived by him as a synthesis of subjective and objective beginnings, concealing a deep socio-historical meaning.
But production events have never been self-valuable for him. Even the launch of the first units of this very station, which was born and grew before his eyes in the literal sense of the word...
A. V. ...I know that you care about the facts. Just the facts. But what about the person? What about the people? What is happening within them and what torments them? Why are they sad? Why do they rejoice? For what reason has everything intertwined in a knot — and no one can unravel it...
R. X. The White Chronicler from the dramatic poem by Justinas Marcinkėvičius “Mindaugas,” unlike the Black Chronicler, believed that compared to the work of a chronicler, his task, his “craft” was much more complex:
...we must necessarily embrace the general and the individual, see the goal and clarify the reason...
The symbolic images of Justinas Marcinkėvičius — the White and Black Chroniclers — are antagonists. Let’s try to do without extreme viewpoints. Let’s move to the equator — for balance. So: fact and image...
A. V. For several years, I helped to make a documentary film about climbers. Although I really wanted to. These crews at the construction of the Toktogul HPP were the first in the history of domestic hydropower construction. Their work was both dangerous and very interesting, and expressive — “it looked good.” But through the hustle of everyday tasks: cubic meters of rocky soil, tons of explosives, through all this production daily routine, which promised to provide a unique, previously unseen HPP in about ten years, I could not reach a generalization that conveyed the meaning and spirit of what was happening, its image. I only saw bare facts. Completely unexpectedly, the symbol of the quest for the unknown, the image of the obsession of a pioneer was found a few years later. In feature cinema. The hunter Choro, played by Sovetbek Jumadylov, aspired to a distant mountain peak, drawn by a mysterious glimmer on it. And he began to weave ladders... Can you imagine how many were needed?..
R. X. Shouldn’t we conclude from your story that the possibilities of documentary cinema in creating a “portrait” of a phenomenon, its generalized image are not limitless?
A. V. Certain spheres of human relationships, some manifestations of the inner life of an individual are beyond the reach of the documentarian. Feature cinema, in turn, does not always possess the persuasiveness and power of the art of real fact.
R. X. The desire to increase documentary authenticity in feature cinema is clearly visible now not only in the great interest in iconography, its widespread use, but also in the increase in the share of audiovisual information. In the trend towards maximum saturation of each of its “bits” — frame, word... In “The Tale of Man, the Wheel, and the Chinar,” there was, in my opinion, an attempt to unite, to “melt” in one artistic context the way of thinking of modern man with the peculiar — philosophically contemplative — worldview of the ancient poets of the East.
A. V. An interesting short film was made. There was an attempt to expand the possibilities of feature cinema. A fact from reality — the construction of the Lenin Canal in the sands of the Karakum — prompted us to turn to the ancient history of the Turkmen city of Mary, the ancient Merv. Documentary footage of the construction of the Karakum Canal concluded this tale, played by actors. The documentary became a continuation of the parable!
R. X. It seems we have reconciled the White and Black Chroniclers...
A. V. For an author who “found a theme,” there is no fundamental difference between feature and documentary. As long as it is interesting. As long as it is necessary. How does a painter work, for example, in what technique? Sometimes “in pencil,” sometimes “in oil” or “in watercolor.” As the material requires. So it is in cinema... Each film, each specific theme requires its own manner of execution, its own genre, technique. The main thing is the thought. And the genre is just a form of organizing the material. The best technique is the one that is organic for this material. You just have to know, you must know what you want...
R. X. In a review of “The Watch,” published in the magazine “Art of Cinema,” Tatyana Tess called the events occurring in the film — the generally mundane changes in the biography of the oilman, yesterday’s tenth grader Kostya Borisov — “events of the soul,” events that occur in the deep layers of the human psyche.
There are different kinds of events... And although in “Men...” the editors have to find and eliminate a complex break in the power line, and moreover high above sea level — in a situation clearly of an extreme nature, the difficulties they face are not only “external.” An accident, rockfalls, the break of the cable, along which they had to transport the steel behemoth of a bulldozer from one bank of the Naryn to the other... The main thing in the film, in my opinion, is different. Problems of an internal nature. Overcoming weaknesses, delusions, complexes, if you will... The path to overcoming...
A. V. Creating a truly living, new documentary film is many times more complex than making a feature film. You don’t have actors, a professional screenwriter, and a powerful film crew. You often depend too much on chance. Sometimes, to “find” a two-part story, you spend a year studying the material... We are talking about real, found documentary material from life, not yet another, routine footage shot for “checking the box.”
R. X. In documentary cinema — the beginning of today’s “Kyrgyzfilm,” the roots of Kyrgyz cinema, which has already celebrated its fortieth anniversary. During the harsh wartime in the rear of Frunze, based on the corporate unit of the Tashkent studio “Soyuzkinokhronika,” a republican chronicle studio was organized. And the first product with the titles of the new studio was, of course, a periodical — the newsreel “Soviet Kyrgyzstan.” — We all came from documentary cinema, — noted during the shooting of the first feature film Bolot Shamsiev, who had the experience of “Manaschi” and “Chabana,” which triumphed in Oberhausen and Mankei... I dare to assert that the forms and methods of organizing documentary, factual material found in “Diary” are now increasingly spreading in screen journalism. Both in cinema and on television. On the other hand, the influence of television film with its freedom of action in life material, keen, attentive interest in the person, diverse use of synchronous shooting methods is now clearly noticeable in many works not only of film documentary but often of feature cinema as well. “Today the problem of television concerns not only those who collaborate with it.
Every filmmaker must honestly tell themselves: it is impossible these days to work in cinema while ignoring television... The screen artist must now think about the peculiarities of film perception both in the cinema and at home, on television”... So wrote Jerzy Kawalewicz ten years ago...
A. V. Sometimes it seems to me that we are on the verge of cinema of a new quality...
I see elements of cinema and the future in the works of television documentarians. The events occurring in the country and around the world concern each of us. They personally concern us...
1970—1983
Builders of the Naryn Cascade. Television and Cinema of Kyrgyzstan in the 70s—early 80s. Part - 16
