“A special language of national cinematography” is the main theme of the just completed XXII International Debut Film Festival “Spirit of Fire”, and this was reflected in literally every program of the show. In competitive and non-competitive sections, films by directors from Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Brazil, China, India, Iran, African countries were shown, and some of them were even awarded: the film “Like Father and Son” by Chinese director Bai Zhiqiang received a special prize, International Competition Prize “Bronze Taiga” for the debut film was awarded to the film “Property” by Brazilian Daniel Bandeira, and the Indian “Abduction” by Karan Tejpal received a special mention from the jury. The winner was the Kazakh film by Askhat Kuchinchirekov “Bauyrina Salu”.
A significant part of the business program events also spoke about the very features of national cinematographs and attempts to unite them - in cultural, intellectual, financial and production terms. One of the key events was the plenary session “Connecting Bridges. Intercultural dialogue and new BRICS+ partnerships.” Participants in the round table “BRICS Film Festivals as Tools for Bringing National Films to International Markets” discussed in detail the problems of promoting national cinema. Those who gathered for the discussion “Film Dialogue: Russia – Iran” were looking for points of contact between the cinematographies of the two states - and for good reason: the Iranian drama “Parallax” won last year’s “Spirit of Fire”. Even at the round table “Filmed in Russia. Regions as centers of film production" touched upon the topic of cooperation with different countries. For example, the Russian-Indian film “Pearls” will be filmed in Moscow, Mumbai and Khanty-Mansiysk.
And even this was not all: directors from China went to Surgut and Nizhnevartovsk to show and present their films.
In fact, it is worth remembering that the organizers of the “Spirit of Fire” turned to the topic of national cinema, including from the BRICS countries, 10 years ago - then in 2014, the Asian film industry market was held as part of the festival. Three years later, the festival was already considered a permanent platform for filmmakers from the BRICS countries: here authors from these countries showed their films, shared experiences, and presented projects in search of partnerships.
Cinema from the BRICS countries is not the only thing the film festival has focused its attention on over its more than 20-year history. Almost every Spirit of Fire had an overarching theme or dedicated one event or an entire series to a chosen theme, personality, or trend. So in 2019, the given theme was “Union of Theater and Cinema”, film director Sergei Solovyov, the ideological inspirer and long-term president of the festival, talking about the upcoming show, said that the community and relationship between theater and cinema “is very interesting and important for the professional community,” and called the theater audience one of the most active and “lively.” “I welcome this motive of twinning between cinema and theater, as it is an extremely important component of our life”, he explained.
The XII festival was dedicated to Russian oil workers. One of the venues was the “Museum of Geology, Oil and Gas” of Khanty-Mansiysk, where they even held a creative and scientific conference with the participation of oil workers, scientists and filmmakers under the motto “Oil yesterday, today and tomorrow in the fate of Russia and the fate of the world.” Film buffs were shown Paul Tom Anderson's drama There Will Be Blood. At the same time, we celebrated the 60th anniversary of the Berezovskoye field. And an equally important leitmotif of the festival was ecology.
Two festivals were dedicated to the anniversaries of Victory in the Great Patriotic War. In 2010, for the 65th anniversary of the Victory, the jury was headed by front-line director Pyotr Todorovsky, and they showed both short films from the 1940s and large-scale war dramas. A separate program of films about the war, shot in the 70st century, was collected, from the careful adaptation of “Live and Remember” by Alexander Proshkin to the daring “We are from the Future” by Andrei Malyukov and the controversial “Halflight” by Artem Antonov: here one could appreciate both the freshness of the look and the attempts re-analyze history. Five years later, for the XNUMXth anniversary of the Victory, the “Children of War” program was created, the films of which told about the young participants in those tragic events - “Ivan’s Childhood”, “Summer Trip to the Sea” and others.
There was also an innovation - microfilm competition about the Victory, in which videos of any genres and forms with a running time of no more than three minutes were allowed. Veterans became the heroes of many films; their works were posted on the festival website and online voting was held. The format caught on, and starting next year the program became permanent.
Great people were often remembered at the festival. It's worth remembering that The first “Spirit of Fire” was dedicated to the 70th anniversary of Andrei Tarkovsky — demonstrated a retrospective of his works, held master classes and a student forum for young filmmakers.
In 2005, the 100th anniversary of Leo Arnstam, a student of Yuri Tynyanov and classmate of Dmitry Shostakovich, who wrote the music for most of his films, was celebrated. A multiple participant in international festivals, Arnstam brought two films to the Cannes competition in 1946, and in 1955 he was awarded a special prize there for the “Best Lyrical” film-ballet “Romeo and Juliet” (filmed together with Leonid Lavrovsky). His widow and actress of the film “Zoya” Galina Vodyanitskaya came to “Spirit of Fire”.
In 2012, composer Evgeniy Doga, who was celebrating his 75th birthday, became a guest of the festival; he also became a member of the new composer jury, established for the first time to encourage directors who worked most successfully with sound. And if the 10th anniversary film festival was associated with music, then the next, 11th, the governor of Ugra proposed to devote to sports - just in time for the upcoming Olympics in Sochi.
The cinema of Kazakhstan was praised at other festivals, celebrated the 60th anniversary of the Gosfilmofond, the 90th anniversary of Lenfilm and the 100th anniversary
domestic cinema. We organized creative evenings of the Kazakh workshop of Sergei Solovyov at VGIK or a display of works by students of that very famous workshop of Alexander Sokurov at the Kabardino-Balkarian State University named after Kh. M. Berbekov. In 2009, they organized an exhibition of works by the legendary photographer Mikola Gnisyuk, dedicated to Alexander Abdulov, it was called “The Year without Sasha.” In 2013, the director of their Yugra, Alexander Montov, participated in the festival program for the first time; the actor from his film “The Day” received the Alexander Abdulov Prize “For the best male role in a Russian debut film.”
