“In The Island I expressed my attitude to the revolution”

One day before broad audiences see it on 23 April, the Moscow’s Udarnik film theatre held a press screening of Fyodor Bondarchuk’s second film based on the Strugatsky brothers’s novel “The Inhabited Island. Combat”.

On the day the debut part of the dilogy appeared on the internet, the number of downloads exceeded 1,100 thousand. “We had to shut down over 3 thousand illegal websites,” said before the closed screening Fyodor Bondarchuk. “We incurred terrible losses… Isn’t that success?”

After the press conference, Mr Bondarchuk answered questions from Tatar-inform.

Q: What are your expectations from the second part of The Island’s release?
A: There will be a boom, just like with the first one. The audience is to split fifty-fifty: the first half will destroy me, the others will hold up flags, but there will be no middle. This one is a tumultuous project, the film will leave noone indifferent, and that is success. That is what is called success.

Q: What is personally yours in this film, otherwise made “in accordance with the Strugatsky”?
A: In The Island, I expressed my attitude to the revolution that took place in our history in the late 10s of the 20th century. At the end of the film, Garmash takes the symbol of Papa's power and Kutsenko lifts a retransmitting station. This is what is not in the book. This silent scene represents my opinion of the revolution.

Q: Critics are awaiting an Inhabited Island’s sequel…
A: The critics who smashed The 9th Company, admire The Island. The critics who adored The 9th Company, have smashed The Island. The same will happen now.

Q: Let us make it clear… Do film critics have influence in Russia?
A: No. In America, an article at the bottom of the New York Times impacts the viewer, it can make him or her go to the cinema. Here, it is not like that… I think it is a matter of time. Critics can help the cinema. There is an informational famine now, the newspapers have since the Yeltsin time greatly changed.

Q: Becoming what?
A: Becoming unfree. We had a time when we would look at the watch to go see Dorenko first, and then Kiselev: one tried to slay the mayor, while the other… I am nostalgic for that time.

Q: So, what is the problem with the contemporary film critics?
A: The problem is in the amount of talent. Many have lost their jobs and rushed to claim they are now film critics. I remember the drama theory at VGIK [Russian State Film Institute], or lectures by Weisfeld – that was film critique. We still have it: there are giants like Andrey Plakhov, Yuri Gladilschikov, try reading Lidiya Maslova, who downright razed me. She simply danced a Cracovienne behind my back, and it was phenomenally talented! So, I think the role critique plays has been understated by critics themselves.

Q: Are you capable of laughing when you read something about yourself?
A: I am not paranoid… I am realistic…

Q: Moving away from criticism to finance. What do you think of the present-day phenomenon in the global economy, the crisis?
A: The world will no longer be what it was. What is going to happen? I do not know.

Q: Have you felt any aftereffects?
A: Certainly. Filmmaking has ended, production has stopped. It has become a hundred times harder to find money to make a good film. And a worthy piece does require coin.

Q: What is your subjective estimate, how long will it last?
A: An optimistic prediction is that the crisis will last between 2 to 5 years. But this is optimistic, as I said.

Q: What is Easter to you?
A: Easter is my favourite holiday. I already see sandwiches with sausage floating, as I observe a strict fast, and not just in the last week.

Q: Since when?
A: All my life.

Q: Does that come from your parents?
A: From my grandma. I am an Orthodox Christian… But a fast without other types of abstinence is called a diet. That is why food is what I am least of all focused on here.

By Rafael Mukhametov