Alena Bocharov about the Beat Film Festival and family business
IN RUBRIC "BUSINESS" We acquaint readers with women of different professions and hobbies that we like or are simply interested in. In this issue, the director of the Beat Film Festival Alena Bocharova, who five years ago with her husband Kirill Sorokin, invented and created a festival of documentaries about music. This year it will be held in Moscow from May 27 to June 8, and within its framework they will show “20,000 days on Earth” about Nick Cave, “The National: Taken for Strangers”, “Good Old Fred” about the permanent secretary of The Beatles and other important films of recent years.
It all started easy. Kirill, working at the Solyanka club, dug up a whole layer of documentary films about music, about which no one here knew anything. Some of them turned out to be in programs of big festivals like Cannes, others - independent and strange. I’ll say right away that I never had a synephil and actually did two things before the festival: I worked in the music industry and in glossy - well, I translated books at my leisure. The glossy died, and I was invited to the cinema "Pioneer" as a person who understands something about the general cultural context. I have always been interested in the idea of effective cultural management, because in Russia it seems to me that it is very small. While studying at the university, I traveled a lot for all kinds of internships, then to the Gruner + Jahr publishing house in Hamburg, then to Stanford University, and after six years in a row I went to America as a translator to accompany various groups of non-English-speaking teachers and social workers, who came to the United States to learn from their Western colleagues. From all this, I had a clear idea that there is Western management and Russian, where people are divided into those about culture and those about money. And there are few of them that are about that, and about the other. Now, however, "effective management" as an idea and a vital issue is outdated, and its place was taken by the creative economy and creative industries, and this is our festival - just a vivid example of these industries.
This year at Berlinale, there was a whole section of conversations about documentary films, and at one of them a certain person from New York said: “Listen, I open The New York Times every Friday and see 50 premieres of documentaries at various venues there, from the IFC Center to Lincoln Center. Maybe it’s better to immediately sell these films on iTunes, or is it somehow difficult to navigate? What does it take to fool the viewer ... "And a friendly moan rolled through the audience, because even in Europe everything is not so, let alone and about Russia. The answer to his question, by the way, is simple: the publication of even a small announcement in The New York Times influences the fate of the film in America - including selling it on iTunes, and not renting it on the NYT without even having a few movie hits. But what I mean is that with this example it is easy to explain why in America even documentary films will soon start shooting films. Because there is a system that allows directors to make a "small" movie - with a small budget, a small rental, budget-free promotion, media coverage, etc. In Russia, the documentary filmmaker is stuck in the system of tiny film clubs, where most of the shows are free, and In principle, you should be happy - you have a viewer and your movie is not filmed on the table, or these are large-scale projects for which European producers are looking for money for directors - and this territory is generally scary for a newcomer. Today, as a festival, we see our task also to participate in creating the field for the emergence of such small but high-quality pictures.
Critics and film critics usually work as selectors, and these are usually men. But among the important festival managers are many women.
Holding festivals is quite an ordinary profession. There are not so many people involved in it all over the world, but their job descriptions are about the same. We, like all festival people, go on international festivals for a year, communicate with directors and copyright holders, and are still actively friends with independent festivals. For example, the Barcelona In-Edit, which also shows a musical film, for 15 years of its existence, revived the national documentary: young directors began to make films about music, and then spread to other topics. Or the CPH: DOX festival in Copenhagen, which was also invented by a group of enthusiasts, but already in the third year the city authorities themselves offered him support and made it practically the hallmark of the city. For us, communication with them is always a conversation about perspective and hope. We are five years old, and they are ten or fifteen, and you realize that in a few years you are supposed to be there. True, then you return to Russia and realize that it is not a fact.
It is absolutely true that now international film festivals like to show documentary films about music, especially at official discoveries, because the concept of movie stars is gradually becoming obsolete, and rock stars are still alive. At the Berlinale "20,000 on Earth" was represented by Nick Cave, who came to participate in a press conference and did not give any concerts. Patti Smith was also coming out on the red carpet as part of the presentation - attention! - a seven-minute film about yourself. This year we will have a full-fledged collaboration with Russian artists for the first time: at the closing of the festival we will show the film “More” about the group “AuktYon”, they will play a concert timed to the premiere, and the next day they will come to present the show and answer questions from the audience.
By the way, this very film about Patti Smith will be shown in the program of the short meter, which we are doing for the first time this year. We are proud of her, because when it comes to a short musical meter, everyone comes up with a video clip. We managed to collect films that do not even closely resemble clips - and this is such a comment to the festival program in general: the names of the musicians are not so important for us as the quality of the stories about them. The same film about Patti Smith - an essay that she recites herself about how she didn’t meet Jean Genet during her life, but gives him a tribute after death - is most of all like her unpublished story. Or there are super-energy mini-movie interviews with Shepard Fairy, as it turned out, a wild punk fan, and Amanda Palmer, who left the big label and switched to crowdfunding and twitter.
Recently, Cyril and I had a funny talk about the genealogy of the profession of festival selectors and directors. It was discussed that film critics and film experts usually work as selectors, who pack their knowledge in festival programs, and these are usually men. But among the important festival managers there are quite a lot of women: for example, on the American SXSW or the Canadian Hot Docs, in Istanbul! F Festival or on the same CPH: DOX. And Cyril says: "Women usually do not have enough eggs to sit and write critical texts, they would have something to lay down, so they fold programs and festivals." It's funny and super-chauvinistic - but in general I agree.
Working with her husband is both difficult and fun. We have several clear rules that we try to follow (it turns out, of course, not always): not to talk about working at home during off-hours, discuss complex issues that can cause, so to speak, personal transition, only through GoogleTalk and never out loud , use the rest of the staff as a buffer for communication, for example, asking about how a business is progressing through third parties. Fortunately, there are already eight people on the festival team, and there are many opportunities. Between ourselves, we try to communicate for some strategic things. In fact, we share the responsibilities of festival directors and do our part: Kirill, artistic director, me as manager, and we also partly earn money from SMM managers, marketers, producers, copywriters, and so on.
In recent years, our festival has finally taken root in Khamovniki, where we ourselves live. Therefore, for us the work on the festival is in a certain sense the arrangement of a space for our own life: here is the playground near the Novodevichy Pond, where we take the child for a walk, or Gorky Park, where we walk ourselves, but between them Horizont cinema, where the festival takes place shows
I’m puzzled when the director blocks out a poorly shot film with the lack of funds or equipment
We position the Beat Film Festival as the main platform for premier documentary films about music in Eastern Europe, and today the festival has a good international reputation. Therefore, the political situation of the recent times in terms of the program has not affected us. The National group is not particularly impoverished from the cancellation of concerts in Russia - well, they will go instead to Nicaragua. But documentary films do not have many markets; both directors and producers in documentary films value their audience much more.
In Russia, there are people with ambitions to make a documentary film about music. But good stories are not enough if there is a story, but there is no picture, better sit down and write a book, article or story. Well, or learn to shoot, and how exactly - you can just look at the Beat Film Festival. I am genuinely perplexed when the director blocks out a badly made film with the lack of funds or equipment, because modern technologies make it possible to shoot even on a mobile phone (by the way, he received the Oscar-winning Searching for Sugar Man film when the director ran out of money ). In general, there are conservative and democratic professions, and so, it seems to me, today the documentarian is one of the most democratic and mobile professions, where the majority are raznochintsy. Therefore, if you really need to, watch a movie, learn and shoot.