Post in memory of Kira Muratova: "I want only films to remain from me "

2024 Author: Richard Flannagan | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-15 23:55

On June 6, 2018, Kira Muratova died at the age of 84 in Odessa. Together with her, a whole era went to the cinema. The management considered the director a difficult person, and the actors rejoiced in her ability to find a common language with everyone. She lived as she saw fit and made her films the way she felt. Kira Muratova did not like the hype around her, often refused to give interviews and was categorically against filming a documentary about herself. She left us her films and made it possible for us to evaluate her life and work.

She called herself a "rootless cosmopolitan." Born into a family of Romanian Communist Party leaders. My father died in the Great Patriotic War, my mother went all the way to the Deputy Minister of Health in Romania. For a long time she herself was a Romanian citizen with a residence permit in the USSR, and only at the end of perestroika became a citizen of Ukraine.

After completing the first year of the philological faculty of Moscow State University, she transferred to VGIK, studied in the workshop of Sergei Gerasimov and Tamara Makarova. Even in her youth, as colleagues recalled, Kira Muratova was slightly aloof and mysterious. Which remained until the last day.

After graduation she worked at the Odessa Film Studio, filming together with her first husband Alexander Muratov in 1962 the debut short film "At the Steep Yar", which was followed by a full meter - "Our Honest Bread", also co-authored with her husband.

The first independent work of the director was “Short Meetings”. The film came out in the third category and was therefore shown exclusively in small clubs. The tape received real recognition at the beginning of perestroika, when about 4 million people saw it.

The director's next film, "Long Farewell," was not released for wide distribution either, putting it on a shelf and showing it only during perestroika. The dissimilarity in the views of Kira Muratova and the management of the Odessa Film Studio made the director move to Leningrad.

In the northern capital, she met her second husband, Yevgeny Golubenko. In 1978, the picture "Learning the White Light" was released, already at "Lenfilm". It was this film that Kira Muratova called the most impressive in her creative biography. Critics called it an interview film about how to shoot high-quality films in the conditions of a Soviet construction site. Here she managed to combine the harmony of perspective and the lyrics of feelings. Beauty was only guessed in the movement of the construction site and seemed to Kira Muratova exciting and very understandable.

She did not work very much, but during perestroika her first films began to be released, and then she shot her "Asthenic Syndrome", where two fears were combined in two parts of the film: the black-and-white fear of death and the colored fear of life. The picture was met ambiguously, the mate sounded in one of the episodes in general almost served as the reason for the ban on this film. But he still came out, albeit in a limited edition.

"Asthenic syndrome" did not go unnoticed, the reality of the life of the whole society at that difficult time was shown too talented and emotionally. In 1990, the film won the Silver Bear at the Berlin Film Festival and the National Nika Award for Best Feature Film. Kira Muratova herself became the People's Artist of the Ukrainian SSR.

She could never be called a people's director, and she did not aspire to shoot a popular movie. She loved to shoot non-professional actors, but over the years there were fewer and fewer of them in Kira Muratova's films. She believed that only a stutterer can play the most reliable stutterer. It may not be ideal from a professional point of view, but liveliness and individuality will appear in the role. Sometimes she acted herself in her films, knowing exactly how it should be and seeing the scene through the eyes of an actress.

But at the same time, there were always roles for talented actors in her films. Zinaida Sharko, Oleg Tabakov, Vladimir Vysotsky, Alla Demidova - this is an incomplete list of talented and famous professionals who starred in her films.

Cooperation with Renata Litvinova took a special place in the director's work. Their acquaintance took place at one of the film festivals in 1994 and resulted in a strong creative union. The actress starred in several films by Kira Muratova, and in life they treated each other with great warmth, constantly communicated. From time to time there were rumors about their quarrel, although in fact there was no reason for this. Renata Litvinova refused to shoot a documentary about her favorite director, explaining her refusal by her unwillingness to hurt: “… When you love, you are afraid to hurt”.

However, Kira Muratova herself did not want any films about herself. She even planned to burn diaries, memories, notes about the past: "I want only films to be left of me - that's all …"

She considered herself a slave to cinema, and yet she was glad that now the pictures she shot live independently of her. And they will live when she is gone. Kira Muratova passed away on the night of June 6, 2018. But her films have stayed with us forever.

It is impossible to come to terms with the fact that together with the masters of cinema, an entire era is leaving. Nobody else will shoot a movie like Kira Muratova did. How will not play any more roles in his inimitable manner whose heart stopped beating on March 12, 2018.