Convegno SNCCI
THE CINEMA OF NIKITA MIKHALKOV
in collaboration with S.N.C.C.I.
The project gives the opportunità to create valuable comparisons on the cinematographic art of the great Russian director thanks to the participation of some of the most important representatives of national and European cinematographic institutions.
In Mikhalkov presence, Vito Attolini, Vincenzo Camerino, Morando Morandini, Sauro Borelli will attend the conference in Lecce. The meeting will be moderated by Bruno Torri (President of S.N.C.C.I.).
Thursday, 17 April - Cityplex Santalucia
NIKITA MIKHALKOV by Bruno Torri
Nikita Mikhalkov, or, the pleasure to narrate. Mikhalkov, in fact, is a director motivated, first of all, by the taste of narration, by the desire to tell stories; stories of people, of existential events, of feelings, but always contextualised in an environment, in a society, in a word, in a space-temporal, historical dimension. It is not casual that Mikhalkov is Russian, and it is not intended that many of his films are taken by Russian literary works. The expressive reasons of great Russian literature (novel as well as theatre) are to be found mainly in the artistic and ethic aim of portraying its own country, its own people, its own dimension, the most intimate and the most public, constantly putting at the centre of all, man with his ideals, his hopes, his sufferings, his expectations. From here, from this rooted humanism, derives the universal value of this literature. I cannot remember who said that and I am not even sure of the exactness of the quotation, but I keep the sense: “every nation has two literatures: its own and the Russian’. In a way this explains why Mikhalkov’s cinema has obtained such attention and approval also beyond its country. Even if making his début and making a name soon, in the 70s when Soviet Union was a great power, Mikhalkov directs films that, for their thematic choices, for their inspirational sources and for the relations with the tradition and especially with Russian art and culture, turn out to be a ‘mise en scène’ and a truly witness, much more than politics and the dominant ideology, of the lives of their protagonists, of their inner lives and their emotions. In this way Mikhalkov has been able to live with the Communist regime, without assuming positions of open dissent, but without submitting to make ‘regime films’, succeeding in communicating, instead, together with the complexity and the deepness of Russian character, the refuse of the offences that the historical events bring to the individual. So we can explain, in Mikhalkov’s cinema, the substantial continuity of substance and tones between the films shot in the Soviet period and those shot after the fall of the Wall. It is necessary to add, to these observations on contents, that Mikhalkov’s films, especially the most achieved ones, while revealing in their author the preference for a clearly ‘classical’ language, sometimes with some manneristic inclinations, reveal clear formal values, that is, works endowed with a precise authorial style, the result of a strong mastery of the cinematographic means and of a personal stylistic elaboration. The use of different and well calibrated expressive registers (with the predominance of pathetic and ironic) emphasises another distinctive feature of Mikhalkov’s cinema: his ability to make transparent, without using effect solutions and without ever falling off in commonplace, the treated themes; and this also in order to establish a dialogue with the spectator, who is asked not only to be moved or amused, but also to reflect. Mikhalkov’s cinema, in a word, offers several reasons of involvement, that the National Syndicate Cinematographic Critics aims, at least in part, at gathering, examining and discussing, organising in the European Cinema Festival , the traditional conference which will be attended by the director, by Vito Attolini, Sauro Borelli, Vincenzo Camerino and Morando Morandini.
