The problem of representation of everyday life in the works of A. Pankratov

Abstract

The article explores the films of the Soviet and Russian director Alexander Pankratov. The author analyzes the visual retory and narrative of films. The author draws attention to how various literature shaped and transformed the style of Pankratov’s films, starting with an early film in the genre of the rock opera Musical Fantasy (1978) based on the play by M. Gorky. The techniques used by the director when trying to reconstruct history in his films are analyzed. The films “Portrait of the Artist’s Wife”, created based on the story of Yu. Nagibina “Berendeev Forest”, films based on the original scripts “Happy, Eugene!” (1984), “Goodbye, Zamoskvoretskaya punks” (1987), etc. The author identifies the ways that the director uses to design a space in the style of “retro”, to create authentic characters. Pankratov tried to document and interpret modern life in the USSR or in Russia in his films. Images of time/historical memory occupy a lot of space both in films of the 1970s and in the 1990s. The author pays special attention to characters and plots from modern Russia. The problem of emigration is analyzed in detail in the film “An Emigrant or a Beard with Glasses and a Warthog” (2001) and “Hitchhiking” (2009). The director is alarmed by the dehumanization of Russian society and the immoralism of Pankratov’s contemporaries. The author relies on numerous publications about Pankratov, his interview with him, and Pankratov’s literary works.

Keywords

• alexander pankratov
• culture of the 1970s
• retro cinema
• the image of a contemporary
• the theme of emigration
• melodrama
• intellectual