Woman's Part

In 1994 Gosfilmofond of Russia took part in the creation of the montage film Woman's Part. The creator of the film, Ivan Dykhovichnyi, is one of the best-known Russian film directors working in the Russian cinema of the "post-Tarkovsky" period. At the film festival in Yalta he was named one of five film directors most likely to establish "the Russian cinema style of the XXI century." Ivan Dykhovichnyi worked for ten years as an actor in the Moscow Taganka Theatre (directed by Yurii Liubimov), then graduated from the High School of Film Directors. His first short films are marked by a delicate and elaborate style. Black Monk (prize-winner at international film festivals in France and Italy), based on Anton Chekhov's story, turned out to be too aesthetic, and in his following film Prorva (Moscow Parade), Ivan Dykhovichnyi took a different path in search of new words and new ideas, and created an unexpected and startlingly original artistic interpretation from well-worn thematic material - the repression of the Stalinist period. Before commencing work on a new feature film (Music for December), the director was seduced by the opportunity, presented by Gosfilmofond, to make a film completely from archival footage. This film is Woman's Part.

It is difficult to imagine a literary or a musical composition, compiled exclusively of quotations, which would purport to be an author's original work. Nevertheless, cinema since the 20s has dealt with the notion of a montage film, which manifests this apparent contradiction between appropriation and originality. Still, the classic Soviet montage film (from Esther Shub to Mikhail Romm) used archival material as a historical document, organized in such a way as to establish a certain filmmaker's ideas
and arguments. It was very much in the spirit of young Eisenstein's "montage of attractions" to combine (for example) documentary footage of the solemn tsar with images of the people's sufferings, rebellions, etc, in order to create certain effects and meanings. Romm later added the "lyrics" of the filmmaker's commentary to the visual effect, a quantitative addition that didn't change the filmmaker's basic attitude towards the image material

Quite recently an important change has taken place in the history of Russian montage film: one after another we have seen a stream of films such as Oleg Kovalov's Scorpion's Gardens and Islam of the Dead, and Ivan Dykhovichnyi's Woman's Part. The critical evaluation of these individual films is not particularly significant here. What's important and new is the filmmaker's attitude towards archival material. Both directors spent a lot of time at the cutting table in Gosfilmofond. God knows what ideas they started with, but there is no doubt that the viewing of the archival footage brought out the spirit, the flavor, the "force field" of the time. One can play with and multiply words for ever, but it is clear that the experience of viewing the archival footage influenced and transformed the filmmaker's original ideas, adjusted them, and re-shaped them.

Woman's Part demonstrates vividly the differences of aesthetic potential in each period of Russian cinema from the beginning of the century to the present. Though the aesthetics of the female image (especially in the strongly ideological Soviet cinema) is to a large extent socially determined, it's not the focus of the director's major interest. Dykhovichnyi doesn't attempt to snobbishly ignore the ideological purposefulness of female characters, but at the same time he doesn't stress that aspect of the image of woman. The filmmaker identifies, in each period of the cinema and in each paradigm of the female image, the specific beauty, the precious quality that comes from the impossibility of repetition, the absolute and integral uniqueness of the concrete images of women in each historical era of Russian cinema.

This kind of aesthetic approach to historical material allowed the director to escape the necessity of enumerating all the faces and events. The criticism that some famous actresses were excluded, and that the periods of cinema are too frivolously mixed is misguided here. The director gave way to a sensitive, artistic reaction to the material, and this reflects the long-awaited freedom of Russian cinema from servitude to "official" ideas and representations. So the sudden novelty of the montage film reveals itself to be a sign of great changes, at once inspiring and sad. For, liberating as the changes may be, it is still disappointing to witness the cinema vacating its instructional and edifying role in favor of "art for art's sake.

Woman's Part exists in two versions, one in video and the other in 35mm film. The film variant (about 60 minutes) will be presented by Gosfimofond at the forthcoming FIAF Congress in Los Angeles.

Natalia Yakovlova, Film historian at Gosfilmofond

En 1994, le Gosfilmofond de Russie participa à la production du film de montage d'Ivan Dykhovichnyi: Woman's Part. Ce film retrace l'image de la femme à travers les courants esthétiques soviétiques et russes depuis le début du siècle jusqu'à nos jours. Selon l'auteur de l'article, le réalisateur est connu, depuis le Festival de Yalta, comme l'un des cinq cinéastes “post-Tarkovskiens qui marqueront par leur style le cinéma russe du XXI Siècle”. Le film de Dykhovichnyi serait, malgré le fait de n'être composé que de matériel d'archives, une création artistique originale qui ouvrirait la voie à une nouvelle forme d'expression comparable en nimportance à celles ouvertes autrefois par un Michaïl Rom, une Esther Shub ou un Eisenstein.

La version cinéma (35mm, 60min.) sera présentée par Gosfilmofond au prochain Congrès à Los Angeles.

Woman's Part

TREn 1994, el Gosfilmofond de Rusia participó a la producción del film de montaje Woman's Part, del director Iván Dykhovichnyi, que representa a la imagen de la mujer a través de las corrientes estéticas rusas y soviéticas, desde principios de siglo hasta nuestros días. Según el autor del artículo, el director se destacó en el Festival de Yalta como "uno de los cinco directores pos-tarkovskiano" que marcarán con su estilo al cine ruso del Siglo XXI". El film de Dykhovichnyi parecería ser, a pesar de estar compuesto de materiales de archivos, una creación artística de valor comparable a lo que fueron en su tiempo las películas de montaje de un Michaïl Rom, una Esther Shub ou un Eisenstein.

La versión cinematográfica (en 35mm, de 60 min. de duración) será presentada por Gosfilmofond durante el próximo Congreso de Los Angeles.