"NIKOLA-FILM presents" "Let's talk only during the shoot." "Don't try to entertain me during pauses." "The shoot..." "To me it's the reign of freedom." "It's like every creative process." "It's when you can do anything you want." "You feel you can do anything!" "There're no moral rules here, no obstacles, no sense of duty which has been pressing down on me all my life." "Actually I'm a person of duty." "It's a constant trial for me:" "I feel guilty, I should, I must..." "And here there're no musts." "I want!" "KIRA" "Director Alexander SOKUROV" "I think she has no equals in the whole world." "Director Alexei GERMAN" "I was even in love with her, in a sense, as a woman." "Because for me it goes side by side." "In principle, I cannot fall in love with a fool." "And I liked everything in her." "Actress and scriptwriter Renata LITVINOVA" "She's one of the cleverest women I've ever met." "One of the most spiritually endowed women." "Not in the worldly sense, because I think that Kira... is an absolutely unworldly person." "And as a personality, she's exceptional, there's no one like her." "It's even impossible to explain." "Director Andrzej WAJDA" "She has some deep inner need to tell about the world surrounding her." "I think that today no one else can do such a film." "It's fantastic!" ""The Sentimental Policeman"" "Let it be an antipathetic portrait, it'll be even amusing." "He already looks antipathetic, let it leave like that." "At last we'll say the truth about that man." ""Why?" is already a question of this order..." ""And still." What does it mean?" "I said:" "I don't want to!" "That rules out "and still"." "And still I don't want to!" "Then goes "and why?" Because I don't want to!" "What else can be said?" "We'll get into a vicious circle here." "My dream is to disappear, with only my films remaining." "I don't want to be opened up like a can, and examined what is in there." "Let it be a mystery!" "Let it be like that!" ".." "There was such a person, and she's vanished, her corpse thrown in a dump." "No cross, nothing, only films remained." "Some people like them, but most don't." ""Brief Encounters"" "I should wash the dishes." "Or leave them?" "Or wash?" "To wash or not to wash, that is the question." "It's always one thing or another..." "I wonder why you just complain and complain?" "But I don't seem to say a word to anybody." "I'm talking to myself." "Can I complain to myself or not?" "I don't give a damn..." "I know a lot about her childhood." "I know that she alternately went to Russian and Rumanian schools." "Bucharest." "The late 1940s" "She even told me that she had to conceal it..." "Scriptwriter Natalya RYAZANTSEVA" "In the Russian school she concealed that she knew Rumanian, and in the Rumanian school concealed that she knew Russian." "I guess it had had its imprint, the fact that she had those complications as a child." ""Change of Fortune"" "I just thought so." "We are all civilized people." "White people must be friends." "They should solidarize." "I can't stand natives." "Only a white woman is a woman." "I mean, formally, they're also white, but somewhat yellowish." "You're a feast to us." "A little diversion for a lady." "Wonderful cosmetic exercises, look." "You rub your temples." "Pull your ears back." "Lift them up and strain the back of the head muscles." "Make your face tense." "Open your eyes as wide as possible." "After that you can proceed to training the ability of seeing magnificent luminescence, the eternal ideal's light." "Muratova is a fundamental filmmaker." "In terms of deep roots which she undoubtedly has." "The tree doesn't know all its roots either, and doesn't think about them, it's not interested from which depth it's being nourished." "The same is here." "Di rector Al I KHAMRAYEV" "She helped me out a lot." "When I had suddenly lost ground under my feet At the final stage of some of my films..." "I called up Kira and said:" ""Please come, I'm having a hard time."" "She laughed and said: "You know and can do everything yourself."" ""Kira, it's so hard, I'm confused about the film's montage structure." "I must do some dialogues, a few letters." "I'm again making a film about a woman's soul." "And who knows a woman's soul and the East better than you!"" "And she caught a plane to Tashkent and helped me." "And when she was given money, she began to shout:" ""You think I came here for the money?" "!" "Take this money away now!" "I won't take a kopeck of it!" "You fed me, I'm living at your place, you took me to the mountains!" "I've seen so much of Central Asia, and you dare offer me some money!"" "I said: "Kira, it's not my money, it's the state's money." "You've always been underpaid for your art." "You want me to tear this money and throw it away?"" ""All right, give it to me."" "She was a foreign girl." "And as such she attracted attention." "Because despite her Russian surname, Korotkova (her father's name) she was a Rumanian, after all." "Besides, she was elegantly dressed." "They in Rumania had things we hadn't." "And while our actresses put makeup and God knows what on them," "Kira wore a simple, but very good suit, always had a perfect haircut, wore no makeup, and in this she was foreign." "Dear comrades!" "Dear comrades." "Dear comrades, we all know perfectly well that..." "Dear comrades, we all know perfectly well..." "Dear comrades." "Dear, dear, dear, my sweet comrades..." "Oh, go to sleep, go to sleep." "Leave me alone." "I'm so much conceited that it's even impossible to flatter me." "And at the same time," "I know very well my limitations and my place." "I don't remember my first and second year at grade school, howl learned to read and write." "Perhaps there was something unpleasant, and I forgot it." "I have a very healthy quality:" "I forget some things." "In this particular case, I don't know why I've forgotten that time." "But I've forgotten many things because they were unpleasant to me." "So I can't answer some questions, though it looks stupid." "I'm not a companionable person, I don't feel my generation." "On the contrary, when they start talking like "Remember that?" "..."," "I think, okay, I'll play up to them, otherwise it wouldn't be polite, but let's end it as quick as possible." "Loneliness?" "There's so little of it!" "I need it." "All the time I want some loneliness!" "I've never been lonely, it's the catastrophe of my life." "On the Steep Cliff" "Written and directed by Kira and Alexander Muratov" "(Diploma work of the VGIK graduates)" "My teacher was Sergey Gerasimov." "That name tells it all." "He was my favourite teacher, he was, in fact, a great teacher." "I would even say, the great teacher of all times and peoples." "I'm a very narrow person, very narrow." "A person..." "programmed only for cinema." "I perceive myself as being programmed, as a sort of automaton programmed for cinema." "If they had put into me another program at the time when I was willing and open to programming," "I might have been differently programmed." "I remember that in one of my college studies..." "When I said something..." "to Lucia Gurchenko." "We were at college in the same year." "I said: "Sit like that."" "But a thought flashed through my mind:" "what if that pose doesn't fit into the Middle Ages?" "Perhaps, that pose is too modernistic for a woman of that period." "There was just a hint of doubt." "But I liked that posture." "And I said: "We'll do it like this."" "Then the master came and looked at what we had done." ""That pose." "It's wrong." "It's not characteristic of a woman of that period."" "And I had a blissful feeling because he'd made the observation I had foreseen." "It means I think the same way he does!" "And gradually I found myself in a situation where I was the director," "I had to do it and I liked doing it." "I got the taste of that narcotic, and I thought:" "how strange that I'm doing what I want to do and they pay me for it." ""How Honest Bread" Kira Muratova as Agapa" "Tell me, Agapa, does your grandson write to you?" " He writes to me that he's pleased." " He's written to me too." "And I thought he wouldn't." "You know how these young people are." " How are you getting on?" " It's about the house again." "Are they treating you badly?" "No, they don't." "But they're strangers to me anyway." "You didn't recognize Aunt Agapa, sonny?" "I used to take you to the apiary by your hand, remember?" "No." "You don't remember Aunt Agapa?" "She's the mother of Grits Makogonenko." " You mean the tank-man?" " The pilot." " The one who died?" " Yes." "His widow remarried and they had their own children." "It turns out now that I live with strangers." "I had my own grandson, but Makar sent him to a technical school." " He should study." " I only wish to die in my own house." "You'll have your house, Agapa!" " A room and a kitchen." " I can do without a kitchen." "About Kira..." "You see..." "It was the year 1987." "I was filming "The Garden of Desires"." "One day I met Kira at the House of Cinema and asked her how she was." "She says: "How can I be?" "You can see yourself what's going on."" "I say, "By the Way- I'm begging you." "I've got a set standing at the "Mosfilm"." "I just have to make one shot." "And I need a witch." "Kira, you must go with me." "Help me out." "What are friends for?"" ""But I'm not a witch." I say: "You are a witch!"" ""You're a real, powerful witch."" ""I see you won't leave me alone." "All right." "Let's go."" "We went there, and we had her made up." "She laughed:" ""What are you doing to me?"" "She stood before the camera and pulled herself together..." "She had such a look in her eyes that I had an eerie feeling." "A real Witch Muratovna." ""The Garden of Desires"" "In my life, Kira Muratova... to use an expression in vogue now, a fateful personality." "But in simpler words, she had opened for me a road to cinema." "Actress Zinaida SHARKO" "She told me then: "I've tried many actresses for this part." "But I need an absurd woman." "And I've found you."" "So I passed and won her competition for the most absurd woman." ""Long Farewells"" "Please, Miss, I want this flower." "It's the same as yours." " And I want yours." " They're all alike." " I want that one!" " Please." "Sasha, look what beautiful flowers!" "With Kira, I had no problem of transition from the theatre to cinema." "Before shooting she rehearsed with me the whole part at the hotel." "She came and read all the cues, so by the start of shooting I had my whole role ready." "And she shot the film in succession, as it was written in the script." "Incidentally, as we were shooting," "I had an absolutely identical situation at home, with my son, Vanya." "Really, everything had coincided." "My Vanya said:" ""My mother loves me?" "She loves nobody!" "She's nuts about her theatre." "I read that script." "And by the fights we had at home with her," "I knew what scene they were going to shoot tomorrow in Odessa."" "Sasha." "Sasha!" "I'm talking to you." "Wake up." "Take a nail file and get your hands in order." " You heard what I said?" " No way!" "At first we continued to stay in contact." "When she came to Leningrad, she attended my performances." "And once she even..." "She sent me a card which I'm keeping." "It was, so characteristic of Kira, very concise, without unnecessary emotions:" ""Zina, I'm thinking of you with nostalgic affection."" "That's all." "You must admit it's very precious." "It's a very rare thing when a person writes and thinks only in terms of cinema." "For example, Kira's approach to scripts." "She read a script and liked it very much." "She says: "But there's everything written here." "What am I to do?" "I have nothing to do here." "Everything is already written."" "Actually, that's what cinema is about." "Feature films are all built on the contact with the living, disappearing, changing, ailing, dying material." "You've chosen the location, you've had everything approved." "You come there in just a few days and you see a big hole or ditch dug up there." "Something new and unexpected occurred." "You have either to change the place, which is not always possible, for the appointments have been fixed, a lot of elements have converged." "Or you have to somehow adjust to it." "There should be something interfering." "And by interfering, it helps you." "I mean, it introduces an element of counteraction, a sort of resistance which excites you and inspires a reciprocal action." "It's like with animals, with unprofessional actors." "I mean it's something that exists and you can't control it." "Actually, a process of editing is a very long one with me, because I begin to edit as soon as I get first two shots." "Shorter - longer, first - second, second - first, A" " B, B" " A." "And when I get the third shot, I start making other combinations." "That is, I edit from the very start." "All art is a matter of habit." "We think that there appear some super new, unexpected, strange, modernistic forms." "And take versification, the simplest form that has existed for centuries." "What is this?" "Why do they write in verses?" "And why does no one say that it's not how it is in life?" "What you like most, at first seems shocking to you." "And you think, it must have been shocking because I like it." "And really, just seconds, minutes or some time later, after you've seen it all and get back to this, you feel, yes, I like it." "And I like it exactly because at first I thought I didn't like it." "It's like..." "Yes, it's like..." "falling in love." "Bang on the head!" "Who is this weirdo?" "I remember how unexpectedly" ""Long Farewells" came crashing down upon me." "But then it began to get to me." "And, finally, like a huge mass, it came down on me." "It literally weighed me down." "Especially when you're just starting to shoot and feel fearful..." "And suddenly you come across an amazingly free work of a master." "Because we had our masters." "Sergey Gerasimov was a great master." "Well, we had many masters." "But this free spirit of creation, this free flight of fancy," "I'm doing it not like you, I'm doing it as I breathe, with my own breath-in and breath-out something from my heart is going onto the screen." "Come on, sit down." "You're in the way." "I was summoned to Goskino when I was releasing my "Lapshin"." "Naturally, the conversation was very tough." "I said: "All right, you don't like me." "You must have your reasons for it." "Frankly, Filipp Timofeyevich, I don't like you either." "You've wrecked my life." "Please explain it to me, for me to understand the policy of the state, why you're destroying Muratova." "She's a purest, most delightful specimen, nothing more." "What does it matter to the state, with its dreadnoughts, its nuclear submarines lying on the bottom of the sea, with its gigantic power, what does it matter to it that mother is jealous of her son?" "Why do you have to destroy that too?"" "He suddenly got very fussy, and said: "It's not me, it's Ukraine."" "Here are the photos." "This is Sharko." "This is Sasha Ustinov." "These are shots from the film." "They are interesting photographs." "To my question, where the Ukrainian Party Central Committee's decision on "Long Farewells" was published, they answered: "We regret, but we can't help you."" "Plumber Zinovy TENENBOIM" "The Ukrainian Central Committee takes a decision on a film!" "It should be included in "Communist Party Central Committee Resolutions"." "And where is it?" "There's nothing." "So they say: "We don't know."" "These are the articles I wrote, these are their titles." "Look, read." ""About the unjust and illegal destruction of distribution copies of the Odessa Studio's feature film 'Long Farewells'."" "That's the name of the article." "I said to you that Tenenboim was a well-known name." "Here." "A. Romanov." "August 18, 1972." "The issue of the film "Long Farewells" is more complex than you think." "The film had been released." "The audiences didn't like it." "It insulted their views on life, and was severely criticized." "Soviet cinematography has always taken into account the public opinion." "And it will do so in the future."" "This is, in fact, a book about Timofey Levchuk." "It's about... well..." "the mystery of one career." "Kira told me that Levchuk called her and said:" ""What does Tenenboim think he is doing?" "!"" "He said very nasty things about Kira." "He was always going with the tide, always..." "So I decided to punish him." "To punish him..." "by writing a whole book..." "Kira said that he had called, but she didn't tell me to stop it." "But I said that I would, and I stopped writing about it." "When I was very young, I thought that only if all people read Leo Tolstoy, they would understand everything..." "Who?" "Who?" "Where from?" "Where from?" "Where did they come from?" "Who are they?" "Who are they?" "Where did they come from?" "It's a gay atmosphere you have here." "So, you're Nadezhda Tikhonovna?" "Oh, Nadya!" "Nadyusha!" "I also had a daughter named Nadya." "My mother won't let me in after 11 p.m." "So allow me to spend the night here, at the police station." "It's some desire to show a cabinet of curiosities, which then abates." "I've been satiated with it." "In those situations, you go through some psychological rotations." "I begin to think of myself:" "perhaps you just can't do anything without it?" "Try to do without it." "Can you do without all this?" "In an absolutely open space, without all these little embellishments that would create some live background." "Perhaps you're just..." "I mean, one can do everything at the same time..." "You can pass off, intentionally or unintentionally, your inadequacy as your willingness to do so." "I don't like it when people say:" ""How you suffered!"" "I've never suffered for any idea." "Sacrifices, self-sacrifices - this stuff is alien and repulsive to me." "Repulsive!" "I don't like it in Tarkovsky, I can't bear it." "When they go:" "a martyr artist!" "You enjoy just saying these words, "a martyr artist"." "You enjoy everything:" "you, I, everyone who does anything." "Don't miss it!" "I'm fucking sick and tired of all this shit!" "We were in Bolshevo." "It was the night when..." "Kira came to visit me." "We lived in the same house with Andrei Smirnov." "And my husband, Ilya Averbakh, also joined me." "Our whole company were sitting on the terrace under a birch tree." "That birch tree grew up through the terrace." "Ilya and Andrei, when they met, immediately started talking about Chaadayev, Berdyayev, and all the books they had read." "They simply devoured each other with their talk of Russia's destinies." "Kira listened to them, now and then chuckling to herself." "Then she and I went to our room." "And she said:" ""They're still such adolescents!"" "Why should I look at it?" "I'm not going to work like this." "I'm going home right now." "Leave me alone, you with your absolution." "When you can go forward'!" "?" "As soon as Kolya leaves, you go like that, closing in." "A grin from ear to ear." "Attention!" "Quiet!" "Close the door." "Action!" "Our days go by and melt into dark." "And nothing will make them return." "But, nearing me, Again will they spark," "That day and that night and that fern." "Sounds emerge that were hidden deep," "A light thread of music extending." "Revived are the days once forgotten." "Faraway, faraway we'll be taken by spring" "When, suddenly, amid silence," "From the window it will sing." "Cut!" "Well?" "O how wondrous is the blossom of spring!" "Quietly flows the day's radiance." "The world is once more discovered." "Faraway, faraway we'll be taken by spring" "When, suddenly, amid silence," "From the window it will sing..." "KIRA" "Author Vladimir NEPEVNY" "Idea by Igor KALYONOV, Andrei PLAKHOV" "Producer Igor KALYONOV" "Consultant Andrei PLAKHOV" "Cameramen Vladimir BRYLYAKOV Alexander KUZNETSOV" "Valery MAKHNEV Dmitry FROLOV" "Executive producer Yevgeny GRIGORYEV"