MWFF 2014: CHAGALL - MALEVICH

CHAGALL - MALEVICH

2013, Colour, Russia, World Greats 

Production Team

Director : Alexandre Mitta

Screenwriter : Alexandre Mitta

Cinematographer : Sergei Machilsky

Editor : Alla Strelnikova

Cast : Leonid Bichevin, Anatoly Belyy, Kristina Shnayderman, Semyon Shkalikov, Dmitry Astrakhan, Aleksay Ovsyannikov, Darya Pashkova, Filipp Zohloba

Music : Alexei Aygi

Film production and Sales : Prod.: Larisa Schenidermann, Alexandre Mitta, 'ShiM-Film, Marksistskaya Street h.14/16, bld. 1, Moscou 194147 (Russie), tél.: (+7-495) 620 48 58, llaverna@mail.ru Ventes/Sales: Intercinema Agency, Druzhinnikovskaya Street 15, Office 305, 12342 Moscou (Russie), tél.: (+7-499) 255 90 52, post@intercinema.ru 

Director

Born in Moscow in 1933, Alexander Mitta graduated from the celebrated VGIK film school in 1960 and went on to garner numerous honours for his films over the years. Selected filmography: MY FRIEND, KOLKA! (1961), NO FEAR, NO BLAME (1962), THE GIRL AND THE BUGLER (1965), BURN, BURN, MY STAR (1969), MOSCOW, MON AMOUR (1974), HOW CZAR PETER THE GREAT MARRIED OFF HIS MOOR (1976), AIR CREW (1979), A TALE OF WANDERING (1982), MESSAGE FROM THE FUTURE (1988), LOST IN SIBERIA (1991, shown at the MWFF) and HOT SATURDAY (2002). 

Official Synopsis

The story of Bella’s selfless love for her husband, the great painter Mark Chagall, unfolds against the background of his duel with his brilliant contemporary and total opposite, Kazimir Malevich. It is further complicated by an even more desperate struggle for Bella’s heart with her former childhood friend and now a Soviet Commissar, Naum. The film is about two geniuses which were caught up by fate in Vitebsk in 1918-1921, an account of their uneasy relationship and Malevich’s struggle for young minds. 

"Chagall and Malevich are two opposite figures both in terms of humanity and regarding attitude to their students. The story has many sharp turns. Chagall takes care of his students, just like Mikhail Romm once cared for us, his students. Malevich treats them like soldiers, who have to punch the ideas of abstract art. He perfectly understood who he was, whereas Chagall was an intellectual." -- Alexander Mitta 

The film portrays the two great Russian painters, Chagall and Malevich, who at the beginning of the 19th century captivated the international artistic scene. It shows the differences those two painters had in art philosophy and purpose, as well as in their totally different approach to the teaching of art to students.

The film elaborates on the relationship Chagall had with his wife Bella. It also portrays Chagall's great undertaking when establishing the Art School in his native city Vytebsk just after the revolution, and where he invited Malevitch to be a teacher. The differences between those two artists become painfully clear when Malevich succeeds to persuade the scool's art students that his Suprematism is more conducif in portraying the new revolutionary ideas that the figurative art of Chagall. This leads to the sudents deserting Chagall's classes, and mowing en mass into the studios under Malevich supervision.

This is a great film which helps to understand the creative impulse of those two famous artists, to understand their relationship, how they contributed to Art, and how they created new art theory, styles and movement at the turn of the 19th century.