A TEMPLE OF NATIONS

The East-West festival began on 1 June. The film fest in the Azerbaijani capital lasted for seven days. We can say with some confidence that only the organizers' great patience and belief could have yielded such a tremendous result. The East-West festival has become a tradition uniting the flags of different countries underAzerbaijani skies and it creates new ties of culture and friendship between people of different cultures, languages and faiths.

Cultural guides

The festival was opened by the president of the Baku International Film Festival, Rustam Ibrahimbayov, who said that borders have no power over cinema and a dialogue of civilizations is necessary for the survival of mankind. Azerbaijani Minister of Culture and Sports Abulfaz Qarayev congratulated the guests and participants on the opening of the festival and read out a welcoming telegram from President Ilham Aliyev. A favourite of the Baku audience, and president of the Russian Nika film festival, Yuliy Gusman, noted the importance of creative meetings in Baku and said that Rustam Ibrahimbayov had managed to create what many have failed to create in Azerbaijan: not only did he bring together professionals from different countries, he also united the great cultural experience of peoples within small human hearts. The silver Nika which was handed to the creator and inspiration of this festival, the humanist Rustam Ibrahimbayov, was not just in recognition of a particular date, but also an acknowledgement of a most important achievement: many people who have visited our country over these years have begun a lifelong love affair with it. Like good ambassadors, they travel to various cities and countries and tell everyone the truth about our land and people. Some of the guests who had not been to Azerbaijan before were afraid to come here. Horror stories had beset the noble aims, obscuring the wonderful dream of maintaining both Western and Oriental cultures, i.e. the culture of a city which has developed over centuries.

Krzysztof Zanussi, a person of world renown whose films have won prizes at the most prestigious festivals, said that, deep down, he is a traveller, but he had never visited Azerbaijan. But he liked what he saw and he was happy that he had lived to see the day. Then the stage at the Musical Comedy Theatre, where his wonderful evening took place, was given over to children from the Ciraq children's theatre. And they took the participants through a short history of the festival.

This year the festival presented films from Russia ("The Actress" by Stanislav Govorukhin, "Cargo 200" by Aleksey Balabanov, "Expulsion" by Andrey Zvyagintsev, "The Russian Game" by Pavel Chukhray and "Alexander. The Battle of the Neva" by Igor Kalenov), Iran ("Eternal Children" by Puran Derashkhandeh) Kyrgyzstan ("Bright Coolness" by Ernest Abdyzhaparov), Lithuania ("Monotony" by Juris Poskus), Poland ("Tricks" by Andrzej Jakimowski), France ("Life through Rose-Coloured Spectacles" by Olivier Dahan) and Estonia ("Sugisball" by Veiko Ounpuu). Azerbaijan was represented by the film "The Fate of the Monarch" by Ramiz Fataliyev and Dilshad Fatkhulin.

As we know, the International Baku Film Festival is not a contest. But prizes were given in four categories - "Best female role", "Best male role", "The most humane attitude towards mankind" and "Contribution to world cinematography". Another special prize was added this year. It was given by the youth jury which participated in the festival for the first time. The jury included film critics Anton Sidorenko (Belarus) and Aliya Moldaliyeva (Kyrgyzstan).

Aliya is not the only one who appreciated the atmosphere here, the city and its residents. This is not difficult to understand. Such numbers of professional film critics, producers, screenwriters, actors and film directors, who all have something to say and contemplate, do not come here every day. The festival is not just a holiday, but also hard work towards finding ways of developing modern cinema. Thus the subject of the round table was "National Cinematography and Distribution: Problems and Prospects". The conversation was constructive and interesting. This proves once again that such forums are necessary. They define and draw up strategic directions, exchange experience and establish business and friendly relations. The experience of Kyrgyz cinematographers who managed to find a niche for distribution in Europe was interesting. This niche is a chain of small cinemas in the Art House distribution chain which shows non-commercials films. Tickets are inexpensive and halls are not so big but, nevertheless, films show well, attract large audiences and cover expenses. The speech made by Yevgeniy Zykov, publisher of the magazine "Ves Prokat+" (Moscow), was very interesting. His magazine contains important, necessary and useful information as to what is happening in the world cinema industry. This was a study and analysis of one person's useful experience in film distribution, various forms of advertising and so on. In his speech, he cited Russia's example and touched on important problems of film distribution and on the creation of competitive films.

Special colour

Krzysztof Zanussi stressed that many problems faced by modern cinematographers result from the fact that they cannot answer the question: why do people need cinema? While in the 1970s cinema was designed for the elite bourgeoisie, now it is for the masses and for boys from the suburbs who form an opinion about one film or another. In a nutshell, the professionals discussed at length. The films that were brought to the Baku festival this year were used as real examples of film budgets, their distribution and artistic-stylistic particularities.

During the film festival, residents of Baku had a chance to see a retrospective showing of Krzysztof Zanussi's films "Persona Non Grata", "Camouflage" and "At Full Gallop". Also during the festival this year, Krzysztof Zanussi, Pavel Finn, Aleksey Borodin, Tofiq Sahverdiyev and Ernest Abdudzhafarov gave master classes. It seems that a new form of communication between masters and students (and not only students) has already taken root, because it was really difficult to get into Zanussi's master classes, which were held in the hall of the Union of Cinematographers for three days in a row. It was also difficult to get into the retrospective showing of his films. This new form of creative and professional contact, introduced at the festival by Rustam Ibrahimbayov, made it especially colourful and added some depth and meaning. Students of Rustam Ibrahimbayov's cinema school were especially happy as they had the chance not only to familiarize themselves with the works of cinema masters, but also to communicate with them, share their secrets, discuss subjects of professional and human interest, the fate of the cinema of the past and the future. In a word, the festival became a real opportunity for creative and professional contact, cultural unity and mutual recognition. It was an even bigger opportunity for those whom Zanussi invited to visit Poland and attend master classes at his home. He has been practising this for some time and is happy to take in small groups of students from various countries (including the CIS) who would like to learn how cinema is created, not made, because standard Hollywood methods are nothing other than a sober calculation connected to the idea of "making", not "creating". On the very last day of his visit to Baku, Zanussi gave an individual 20-minute master class to every student of the cinema school. After that, it was a pleasure to hear praise from the master of world cinema about our young people who have "such interesting ideas in their minds and such a desire to learn".

So the festival is over… It is always a little sad because you have to part with people who you have struck up a friendship with. On this last evening when results were summarized and all the prizes and diplomas were given, no-one wanted to say goodbye. Latvians, Estonians, Kyrgyz, Russians, Georgians, Belarusian, Czechs, Azerbaijanis and Poles… Photos, exchange of telephones, emails… and very many conversations: about cinema, new projects and possible meetings, and also, congratulations to all the happy winners of festival prizes. This year's winners are Krzysztof Zanussi in the nomination "Contribution to European arts" (Poland), Igor Kalenov - "The brightest debut" ("Alexander. The Battle of Neva", Russia) Faxraddin Manafov - "Best male role" ("The Fate of the Monarch", Azerbaijan), Asema Toktobekova - "Best female role" ("Bright Coolness", Kyrgyzstan) and the film "Grown-up Children" (Iran) - "The most humane attitude towards mankind". Andrzej Jakimowski was given the special prize of the international youth jury for creating the film "Tricks" (Poland).