of the MSNC is to pour
in the Russian film industry a «new blood».
In order to create an «own» industry, one must not only have
a complex system consisting of different, successfully operating
cinematographic mechanisms, one must also have «his own»
mythology.
One of the main goals of the Moscow School of New Cinema
it is to inject new blood into the Russian film industry. It is naive
to think that it's only in craft, in the profession, in inability
to write scripts and make films.
Everything is much deeper. The school initiates a series of explorings that study the functioning
of different levels and systems of the most successful film industry in the world, which is the American film industry. The main component of this industry is the presence in it of its mythological system. Hollywood is built in the likeness of Olympus. It is structured according to mythological laws,
not pragmatic. And it seems that this is pure business, but it's not true.
This is our mistake. We look at Hollywood with a superficial glance, trying to adopt schemes
and patterns, but you need to look deeper. It's necessary to build a mythological system. For example,
a policeman and a thief are mythological figures. And we don't get films about thieves and policemen, not because there are no good scenarios, or whether they can not shoot films of directors, but because there are no these mythological figures, which are our own.
It's impossible to work with someone else's mythology. We are now in a situation in which Hollywood
was in the early 20th century. You need to start creating figures, mythical figures, you need find them
in their own reality, and then need a long time to grind them, bringing in them all that the «figure» demands: charisma, purity of the image, conventionality. All these «figures» and myths need to be created anew. Those that were over!
There was a «soviet» mythology. It was original. Cinematography flourished in Soviet times. There were heroes, archetypes, genres, and all this collapsed in one day. We were in another country, without myths, without images. We have lost the archetypes. The fluids have left our images, and we found ourselves in a situation where «the soldier isn't a soldier», «the criminal isn't a criminal», «professor isn't a professor», «lover isn't a lover».
We must understand that our reality isn't «real» to the extent that the «real» is American. Therefore, to begin with, it is worth moving away from reality. We need to realize this formula:
the further from reality is the more reliable!
This is the situation in the Russian reality, and if you realize it, you can start doing it first steps.
It is necessary to escape from reality. Don't catch her, as in the author's cinema, but to leave it, create other worlds.
To learn the «living» craft is to learn to distinguish «living» law from already «hardened» or «dead». Laws, as well as people, grow old, stale, become empty, useless. Observance of these «empty», «dead», «yesterday's» laws leads to falsity, to mental dying. And then it happens that everything
is done «correctly», all by law. But it isn't «working»!
The spectator after all looks through the eyes of the heart, and not the eyes of the mind. He «doesn't believe», he isn't interested, because «according to the law», isn't «through life». And life has its own laws. They never happen «yesterday's». They always coincide with life itself. And how impossible
to love in advance given a pattern, so it is impossible to make films only by means of a template.
To study a craft means to learn how to transfer life to «film». There are laws here, and they aren't
as simple as they seem. They don't boil down to the truism of drama, directing, acting. Although there are «truths», and in many american textbooks they are correctly spelled out. But, unfortunately,
for the functioning of these «right» laws and truths, which Robert McKee successfully describes
in his lectures and books, the american industry. But why? Aren't they universal? The laws of drama, the laws of development of the plot, the laws of character building, the laws of interaction of heroes. Aren't they universal? And what then are the laws, if they aren't universal?
Laws are universal, but in order to make a film by laws, you need to have something else.
You need have «live» material, from which the script is composed and the film is made. To apply laws, you need to have ingredients to which laws apply. So that by prescription make a dish, you need
to have «fresh» products. Before you comply with the laws, you need have heroes in life, you need
to have the very «life», you need to have a myth.
YOU NEED TO CREATE THIS MYTH!
The american industry pays much attention to building
a contradictory image. It builds an actor, creates a myth from it.
Industries need to learn how to create images, you need to learn how to bestow your actors charisma. After all, american actors aren't people, they are like Olympic gods or heroes. They are disgusting, insidious, unbridled. This is how their image is built. This is necessary to create a certain distance. Distance is one of the main components of the mythological system.
I'm here, the actor is there, far away, on Olympus. He isn't a man in the sense in which person I am.
He lives by other laws that are incomprehensible to me, but fascinating, inviting, interesting. And then
the spectator goes to look at this wonderful creature: infantile, unearthly, capricious, vicious. He goes
to watch as it moves across the screen.
At us, it is necessary to appear to a little bit more interesting actor, his image is immediately exposed inflation. For the industry doesn't have tools to work with the image. A living person and his image
are two different things. At us the actor there and then starts to broadcast ordinary, standard, family values. He is the same as everything, he has «everything like people», the distance is broken.
He ceases to carry the mythological energy that spontaneously arose at his first appearance.
And no one goes to the cinema for him.
The industry is the totality of all these elements: drama, craft, image, mythology, charisma.
The Moscow School of New Cinema initiates the creation of a whole nurtures filmmakers, screenwriters, playwrights, sociologists for the needs of industry, for its successful formation.