Chosen by time and … Contact studio

We have already learned to cry over culture. There is no help for her yet

April 27, 1999

I remember my first impression of getting acquainted with this project. Probably a feeling of satiety. Well, when you are kept on a starvation ration for a long time, and then there is an abundance overnight. Yes, not simple – delicious. We missed the documentary so much (though I don’t think young people even had time to feel it taste for it), that the clip of six pictures, which exploded the film studio “Contact”, pleased with the fact of its appearance.

The cycle “Chosen by Time” – and this is probably the main shock of what we saw – does not remind us very much a pleasant truth: the degree of our ignorance of our not so long history is enormous. And to whom, tell at the mercy, it’s nice to realize. We don’t know – and okay. What, we have few other problems in the hustle and bustle of the day? Well here at least – where to get money? For movies, it is especially acute today…

– But now that the project has become famous, accepted by viewers and evaluated by professionals, the problem find money for it will not be as sharp as before?

“It never happened.” Today it is very fashionable to talk about love for Ukrainian culture. Many bankers, entrepreneurs even set up foundations to support culture. But where and to whom I did not have to turn, always the same answer, polite and cold: we can complain with you about the fate of the Ukrainian cinema, we can even cry with you, but there is no money… But, “Chosen by time”, I will say without false modesty, this is not a private matter of Contact. Well, we can’t build a new full-fledged healthy one a state that does not remember and does not want to remember its past, which forgets people, in fact determining the spiritual health of the nation. After all, the list we have compiled may not claim comprehensive breadth, but this is the minimum of names that, in my opinion, every cultural figure should know man…

Uncertainty is probably one of the most terrible states for an artist, Larisa is convinced Rodnyanskaya. Almost all the heroes of “Chosen by Time” have experienced it to one degree or another. Well, are the creators, those living near us today do not know what it is. Still as they know. At us as from time immemorial it is usual: praise and honor to pay after death. I do not want and can not accept this.

A woman who creates a film annals

Larisa Rodnyanskaya about the chosen ones of time, bureaucratic red tape and film production.

December 16, 2003

There are people in Ukraine who make documentaries. And this is much more important than the endless complaints of others about the impossibility of creating it without the support of the state. And even more important than the inattention of cinemas and television to non-fiction movies. If you really want, you will definitely find your audience, Larisa is convinced Rodnyanskaya, permanent head of the film studio “Contact”. Perhaps it was this conviction that allowed it to create more than 250 films of different genres in one and a half decades of the studio’s existence. Movies, many of which will become the pages of the annals of our country.

– Contact Studio recently celebrated its fifteenth anniversary. How did you come to this date? – With a good, you could even say, happy mood. Despite the fact that our studio is practically not subsidized from the budget. But the mood depends on the people who work for us. And they – enthusiasts and optimists, professionals in their field.

I have repeatedly said that we started when cinema stopped being subsidized. In that time formed a lot of studios. Most of them did not stand the test of commercial relations – both arose and disappeared. Our studio survived. However, we did not start with cinema, but with publishing activities: made calendars, published cartoon children’s books. And themselves sold on Andreevsky descent. We organized great creative evenings at the Cinema House, and with us were sold out. We sold tickets ourselves – both in the subway and on Andreevsky Descent …

However, the bureaucratic system that surrounds us is even more developed today than it is was before. For example, today we again have to ask for permission for this or that project from the All-Ukrainian copyright agencies. Sometimes it lasts for months… This bureaucratic red tape is something unbearable. This is not the case in the West. They like everything to be clear: to have a project, to be financially calculated, that there was an annotation and the script was applied. If you submit a project and they accept it, that’s enough. In addition, we have another problem. If, for example, in Germany, France there are still funds, public organizations, which along with the budget give money for movies, then our public organizations do it very rarely. What is feature film, they still somehow understand, but as soon as the speech comes about the documentary, you need to give lectures on film studies, to tell for a long time what a documentary is movies today, who is, for example, today the producer. In my opinion, this is now the most important figure in cinema. In reality, the producer is a mediator between the author and the viewer, between the sponsor and the author, that is the co-author of the project is a person who oversees the creative and technical process that leads the picture from the very beginning to the very end.

– But is it still normal when there is a television platform to understand global problems, and there is no place to tell about yours?

– The trouble is that for commercial channels, first of all, rating, money, advertising are important. So I and I believe that the “Culture” channel should be created. There is a lot of talk about it, but nothing to create it do. Yes, you need money for this. But in the same Kiev districts are being built, rebuilt, houses repainted and restored, the areas appear – with taste and completely tasteless. There is money for the same. But still consciousness determines being. And the spirituality that the city needs is simply not there. Here, for example, the channel “Kiev” only tells how good the city of Kiev (we know it ourselves), how good the city power like it’s all wonderful. But you need to talk not only about yourself, loved ones, you need to talk about culture. Instead of PR, you need PR of spirituality.

– Or maybe you need to reconsider your attitude to the documentary itself? For example, there is an opinion that chronic cinema is not needed at all, given the development of television today …

– Today you do not need a parquet movie, but the chronicle, I think, should exist. Documentary short stories should be. How today, for example, not to tell about Bogdan Stupka, about Pavel Zagrebelny, etc.? As it was not to tell about Anatoly Solovyanenko, about whom we made a beautiful picture when he was forgotten? And when he died, it turned out that this was the only picture about him that could be shown to everyone TV channels. And we are proud to have made a film about this pure and talented man. We did a lot paintings about cities – about Kiev, about Donetsk, about Kirovograd, about Kamenets-Podolsky, about Ivano-Frankivsk, about Коломые. Every city is a story, every cobblestone, every stone, every house in this city is something will tell you. Therefore, I believe that documentary film should exist. It is more eternal than that feature film. And it’s really a reflection of our lives – good, bad, complex, multifaceted – real reflection.

Anna Sheremet