TIME, HERO AND PROBLEM

Another film festival ended in Baku in mid-September. It was founded nine years ago upon the initiative of famous Bakuvian, Rustam Ibrahimbayov. Although only 10 countries participated in the festival, there are certainly people in these countries who now know that the oil-rich land of Azerbaijan is inhabited not by thugs and traders, but by hospitable people who, just like all people of good will, wish for a good and peaceful world.

At the festival's opening ceremony, Minister of Culture and Tourism, Abulfaz Qarayev, expressed the hope that there will be more countries participating in the festival next year and that the Baku international film festival (IFF) East-West will occupy a worthy place among world film festivals. One fine day it will become prestigious, and everyone will be trying to come here to participate in the festival. But before this happens, the organizers have to solve many problems, including the promotion of national cinematography -  in conditions of tough competition in the global film market - with an excellent material base, modern technology, a high class promotion campaign and the ability to conquer the market. Having become an elite art, cinema is still a powerful ideological weapon. It can create and destroy. There are many examples. Over the last 10-15 years, low quality American movies have managed to shake the moral-ethical foundations of the rising generation, enforcing their own stereotype of relations with the surrounding world. The pirate movies which have flooded the country have also played a major role here. For this reason, it is a task of paramount importance to strengthen the foundations of the IFF. Firstly, it has promoted human ideals for the last nine years, secondly, it has carried out educational work, familiarizing the country with the development of cinema in European and Oriental countries, and thirdly, it has a chance (with support from the state) to change the image of the country in the eyes of the world community.

Reach for time

The ideological basis of the current film festival relates to human existence within the changeable structure of time. Esoterics say that time is moving quickly on. Those who cannot keep up with it die, as they cannot withstand the strong pace. An inability to reconcile oneself with time and to find one's own path through time is a problem for many of the characters in films shown at the ninth film festival, East-West. Paskal (Petr Popiordanov), a character in the Bulgarian film, "Sparrows in October", persists in trying to ensure that a life with well-established traditions, in his village of Dervent, acquires more modern rhythms. The whole world is progressing -  from the relations between men and women to high technological achievement. For Paskal, this world is a delightful dream that resembles an exotic fairy tale. The village, gifted with unthinkable beauties by God, seems to be stuck somewhere between the past and the future. It is frozen in time, testing itself with temptation. This temptation can take the form of humanitarian aid coming from the new world, but also of a rubber woman brought from somewhere outside… Myths of our reality! They do not promote progress. On the contrary! The village drinks and does not want to do anything. It wants a carefree everyday life. Winning a trip to Australia, Paskal is happy to leave Dervent, escaping the reviled stagnation in time. Alas! After many travels, he returns home with a hang-dog look, understanding that you cannot travel from the past to the future without a natural life in the present; for only the present ensures the development that alters relations between man and time. Of course, film director Henry Kulev's appeal to the audience is not limited just to this aspect of the problem. The director's position is that of a patriotic painter who cares about the fate of his people who served as an outpost of the 15 Soviet republics for many decades.

The Ukrainian film, "Near the River" (director Yeva Neyman) offers a masterly professional performance by two wonderful actresses - Nina Ruslanova and Marina Politsemayko. The main character gets lost in time, confusing the past and the future, failing to understand the momentariness of time and without seeing the future at all. For her, the present is concentrated in the past where she was a young, beautiful and happy woman, where the world, just like life near the river, was cloudless and harmonious, where all those who loved and were loved were alive, where there were no tragic losses or cruel demonstrations of time in the form of repression or persecution for class affiliation. She aged under the blows of fate, but did not lose the inner light that preserved her breed and emphasized her genetic attachment to the class regarded as the cream of the nation. She can no longer make her way into the present. She does not want it any more. She has lost everything: happiness, love and the meaning of life. There can be no present for her without all this. Her subconsciousness has blocked her contact with time, saving her life.

Russia presented three films - "Travelling with Domestic Animals" (director Vera Sorozheva), "Simple Things" (director Aleksey Popogrebskiy) and "Nothing Personal" (director and script writer Larisa Sadilova). All three films can be viewed as the result of an inseparable link between a painter and time, which imperiously invades his life. It is time to make a cruel and tough choice - no-one can hide behind the principle, "I don't know anything". Now everything belongs to time which influences, changes and compels one to make a decision, make a choice and define his path and destiny. There is no such thing as a small, private problem. Any problem can become a common human problem. We should say a few words about the work of Aleksey Popogrebskiy, whom we know from the film "Koktebel" (shown at the festival in 2005). The main character of his film is an anaesthesiologist (Sergey Pauskepalis). Unlike many of his colleagues, he has managed to preserve his humanity and noble principles. At some point, he enters into a conflict with time which provokes him into rejecting his principles and exchanging his true ideals for false ones that level and simplify things. Conscience, dignity, honour, loyalty and fidelity are obsolete ideas - ideals consigned to oblivion. However, the problems of life back him into a tight corner and force him to choose between morality and immorality. What does he do? Giving in to the temptation to take money for the picture of a patient (Leonid Bronevoy) who is still alive, he tries to come to a temporary compromise, committing a moral crime against himself without committing a criminal offence. However, he has failed to make a deal with time. We leave the hero with no idea of what the ideals of a modern person should be. Should there be no ideals at all? The question remains open. Everyone is playing their own game with time.

The Turkish film "My Ice Cream" (director and script writer Yuksel Aksu) is the liveliest and most cheerful of all the films presented at the festival. Filmed in the best traditions of Soviet cinematography, it is surprisingly modern in terms of style and bears the director's stamp. Behind it is a knowledge and understanding of the national character, life and mentality of the Turkish people. This work can be compared to Georgian Soviet films where the main character was a village gawk who had the sincerity and naivety of a person who is not tempted by the favours and myths of civilization. The main character in this film story (actor Turan Ozdemir) is a village businessman who makes and sells ice cream. He is possessed by delusions of pursuit by big business sharks. He believes that they first want to learn the secret of his ice cream recipe and then swallow his business, as the high quality of his product poses a real threat to world capital - the globalists, separatists and other forces which have an eye on a poor village ice cream-maker, who keeps abreast of the times, fervently promoting himself on local television. Having bought a bike to deliver ice cream to surrounding villages, he attaches a loudspeaker to it to advertise his ice cream. He does everything according to the rules of marketing. But the global enemy does not sleep and he is everywhere. Poor guy! He is so obsessed with the plots of global capital, and worries so much, that he does not even realize that all these "plots of the enemy" are simply innocent jokes by village boys who steal the ice cream bike like they steal grapes and watermelons from a garden. What else can you do in a village when you are only 10-12 years old? That's why they steal the big box together with the bike. The plot develops with some very colourful and funny stories, turning the film into a real masterpiece, giving pleasure to the audience and, probably, to the actors themselves.

The Code of Honour and the lack of love

The Georgian film "Russian Triangle" (director and script writer Aleko Tsabadze) aroused special interest at the festival. It focuses on the life of a large Russian city where people who used to be on different sides of the war in Chechnya now have to live together. But the rules of the game are different here. Yesterday's enemies become today's business partners - a literature teacher becomes a "killer", and defenders of the motherland - poverty-stricken invalids who are forgotten by the country -  take the law into their hands. The weapon is revenge. It is a secret weapon. This is a headache and problem for the police who are supposed to defend law and order and ensure people's security. The first angle is the convergence of political, social and moral problems. Intern Nikolay (actor Artemiy Tkachenko) ends up in this situation. What links the three sides of this triangle? Time is cruel and merciless. Like litmus paper, it reveals the surface of life, showing its unattractive, dark, almost fiendish and repulsive side. We don't want to know about this. This insults our aesthetic feelings, and looking away, we walk past, rushing home and locking the door. But the problem will not go away if we ignore it. The only way to get rid of it is to eliminate it, i.e. to solve it. Niko, who was brought up by his Georgian grandmother according to the Georgian kings' Code of Honour, can not look away, which is why somebody else's problem becomes his own problem. This time he decides to solve the riddle of frequent night-time murders in the city. He wants to do so by himself, without his boastful and unfriendly boss who, unlike his predecessor, is not just a boor in an expensive suit, but also an embodiment of the GULAG prisoners' hatred for anything of an intellectual nature. This is another angle. It is a point where the past and the present converge. Aleko Tsabadze by no means idealizes the hero of his story, putting him through all the pitfalls of investigation. In a short time, Niko manages to grow up and learn the real price of life and the price of his ideals. With these ideals, you want your country to be better and more honest. And Niko makes his choice. His does not keep quiet any more and will not give in to the GULAG boor in an expensive suit. This is their time; it has brought them together, like their fathers, into a fierce political struggle. What is at stake now is not just political power, but something more important: how can a human remain human in a world that generates war and evil?

The sensational film by the French film director and script writer, Bruno Dumont, "Flanders", which won a prize at the 59th Cannes film festival in 2006 and a special prize at the Baku international film festival East-West, "for its high embodiment of contemporary problems" does not inspire great optimism. Flanders, a strip of land between Belgium and Holland, which gave the world talented painters and generated a whole school of art, turns into a land unaffected by civilization or the intellectual development of the world, or the spiritual and moral values of mankind. This world called Flanders is inhabited by people who have the typically simple instincts of primeval people. Having sex, just like going out, is natural and simple. This is life. It is also love that can happen anywhere: in a field, in the woods or on the backseat of your car. There are almost no conversations in the film. This world that is lost in time does not actually need them because it lives by its own laws which seem more like a process of active degeneration. Although we all remember that in the beginning there was the word, and the word was God, it seems that God has been forced out of this world. That's why it is so terribly run-down. The beauty of a natural landscape is missing. There is no beauty in the people living there. Young people go to war from this land. Who are they? Peacekeepers? Mercenaries? What ideas are they fighting for? It does not matter. They become murderers - boys who kill out of fear. Violence, brutality and blood. There is no room for love in this world - the love that was sung of by poets and that was seen as something high and divine. In this world, everything is based on the simple basic instinct. This is terrible. What will people of the new age achieve after forcing everything sacred out of their life? This question is answered by Khojaguly Nurliyev's film "Mankurt" (Turkmenistan) (a screen version of Chingiz Aytmatov's novel "A day that lasts longer than a century") which tells of the problem of preserving the genetic, national and moral memory of the generations which developed a great moral-ethical system of rules for human co-existence, directed at moral perfection. The film also reveals how easy it is to lose all this if you forget about your roots. A nation, like a person who loses these roots, has no future.

These are only a few of the 20 films presented at the festival. However, in some way they have determined the ideological and thematic direction of the development of modern world cinema.