The Films of Aleksey Fedorchenko: Between Cultural Mythmaking and Playing with a Document
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.15826/qr.2021.2.592Keywords:
modern cinema, Alexey Fedorchenko, artistic consciousness, mythmaking, document, mockumentaryAbstract
This article studies the films of Alexey Fedorchenko in order to discover the dominant features of his artistic world. This is based on the guiding principles of documentary filmmaking, with its commitment to fact, the reliability of archival sources, trust in physical reality, and addressing the laws of the art of presentation, where a free play with reality becomes a dominant feature in its most diverse forms from documentation to mystification. The director creates his own coherent world of fiction and non-fiction, based on strategies of the cultural matrix of mythmaking as a means of understanding and experiencing the “arrangement” of the world. The purpose of the article is to study Fedorchenko’s films in order to discover the dominant feature of his artistic world. The first methodological basis for the analysis of his films is a cultural concept of art where art is understood not only as the self-consciousness of culture, but also as an object that depends on all subsystems of culture, both material and spiritual. The cinematography of Fedorchenko stems from a special type of artistic consciousness, which determines (predetermines) the subject and conceptual sphere of his artistic expression. Analysing the films of Fedorchenko, the author identifies the dominant feature of his artistic consciousness, which is focused on a reflective attitude towards culture and traditions. This type of artistic consciousness is understood as culture-centric. The culture-centric type of artistic consciousness ignores nature and its mimetic imitation, but at the same time, the dominating idea determining the source of artistic creation becomes a conscious attitude to culture as material that requires interpretation in a new context, as a space that generates meanings. Fedorchenko uses myth as source material and cultural space in his films. However, he does not deal with the cinematic adaptation of myths. He creates them on his own, using the logic of a mythological narrative, the peculiarities of mythological space and time. That is why the second methodological basis of the article is the classical concepts from A. Losev, R. Barthes and M. Eliade. The author mostly refers to documentaries and feature films by the director, as well as his mockumentaries. The study identifies certain algorithms in which documentary historical events acquire the characteristics of myth, and mythmaking becomes a key to understanding the truth.
References
Aronson, O. (2003). Metakino [Metakino]. Moscow, Ad Marginem. 264 p.
Barthes, R. (1996). Mifologii [Mythologies]. Moscow, Izdatel’stvo imeni Sabashnikovykh, 312 p.
Efremova, E. (2015). “Zdes’ budet gorod-sad”: utopicheskii obraz goroda v zavodskoi gazete Uralmasha [Here Will be a Garden-City: Utopian Image of a City in the Uralmash Plant Newspaper]. In Quaestio Rossica. No. 4, pp. 57–82. DOI 10.15826/qr.2015.4.126.
Eliade, M. (2001). Aspekty mifa [Aspects of Myth]. 2nd Ed., new and update, Moscow, Akademicheskii proekt. 240 p.
Fedorchenko, A., Loevskii, O. (2019). Mifologizatsiya – eto ukhod ot istiny, a mok’yumentari k nei stremitsya [Mythologisation is a Departure from the Truth, and Mockumentary Strives for It]. In Peterburgskii teatral’nyi zhurnal [official website]. No. 2 (96). URL: http://ptj.spb.ru/archive/96/memory-place/mifologizaciya-eto-uxod-otistiny-amokyumentari-knej-stremitsya/ (accessed: 18.12.2020).
Kruglova, T. A. (2018). Vpered ili nazad k mechte: o kinofil’me A. Fedorchenko “Pervye na Lune” [Towards or Back to the Dream: About A. Fedorchenko’s Film First on the Moon]. In Filologicheskii klass. No. 1 (51), pp. 129–135.
Lipovetsky, M. (2020). Serial’naya retrotopiya [Serial Retrotope]. In Abasheva, M. P., Litovskaya, M. A., Savkina, I. L., Chernyak, M. A. (Eds.). Kul’t-tovary. Kommertsializatsiya istorii v massovoi kul’ture. Moscow, Yekaterinburg, Kabinetnyi uchenyi, pp. 286–299.
Losev, A. F. (2001). Dialektika mifa [The Dialectic of Myth]. Moscow, Mysl’. 558 p.
Medvedev, A. (2020). Mok’yumentari v epokhu postpravdy. Mok’yumentari kak zhanr i priem [Mockumentary in the Post-Truth Era. Mockumentary as a Genre and a Technique]. In Effekt khudozhestvennoi dostovernosti. Materialy nauchnoi konferentsii. Yekaterinburg, 3 dekabrya 2019 g. Yekaterinburg, Izdatel’stvo Ural’skogo universiteta, pp. 97–111.
Mikhailova, T. (2012). The Smoke of the Fatherland: Body as Territory, Sexuality as Identity on Silent Souls by Aleksei Fedorchenko. In KinoKultura. New Russian Cinema [website]. Iss. 36. URL: http://www.kinokultura.com/2012/36-mikhailova.shtml (accessed: 18.01.2021).
Nemchenko, L. M. (2018). Mok’yumentari: semantika i pragmatika (na materiale fil’mov A. Fedorchenko i M. Mestetskogo) [Mockumentary: Semantics and Pragmatics (Based on the Films of A. Fedorchenko and M. Mestetsky)]. In Filologicheskii klass. No. 1 (51), pp. 136–141.
Nemchenko, L. M. (2020). O sovetskom proshlom bez nostal’gii (na materiale teleserialov i blogov) [On the Soviet Past without Nostalgia (Based on TV Series and Blogs)]. In Abasheva, M. P., Litovskaya, M. A., Savkina, I. L., Chernyak, M. A. (Eds.). Kul’t-tovary. Kommertsializatsiya istorii v massovoi kul’ture. Moscow, Yekaterinburg, Kabinetnyi uchenyi, pp. 334–344.
Oushakine, S. (2009). Byvshee v upotreblenii: Postsovetskoe sostoyanie kak forma afazii [Previously Used: The Post-Soviet State as a Form of Aphasia]. In Novoe literaturnoe obozrenie. No. 100, pp. 760–792.
Shaburova, O. V. (2009). Nostal’giya: strategii kommertsializatsii, ili Sovetskoe v glamure [Nostalgia: Commercialisation Strategies, or the Soviet in Glamour]. In Kupina, N. A., Mikhailova, O. A. (Eds.). Sovetskoe proshloe i kul’tura nastoyashchego v 2 kn. Yekaterinburg, Izdatel’stvo Ural’skogo universiteta. Vol. 1, pp. 33–44.
Vertov, D. (1966). Stat’i. Dnevniki. Zamysly [Articles. Diaries. Plans]. Moscow, Iskusstvo, 320 р.
Zaks, L. A. (2019). Sovremennaya evolyutsiya/revolyutsiya kul’tury i formirovanie kul’turotsentristskoi paradigmy soznaniya (na primere filosofii i sotsiogumanitarnykh nauk) [Modern Evolution/Revolution of Culture and the Formation of a Culture-Centric Paradigm of Consciousness (with Reference to Philosophy, Social Studies, and the Humanities)]. In Izvestiya Ural’skogo federal’nogo universiteta. Seriya 3: Obshchestvennye nauki. Vol. 14. No. 1 (185), pp. 154–166.
