Kirill Serebrennikov
Why do we need art: for pleasure and experience or for politics and criticism? Political issue and criticism of the current big league – taboo in Russia, but are main topics in art of Kirill Serebrennikov. He is a follower of Bertolt Brecht in terms of pictorial techniques and the belief that the theater should mention the topical and present day Q.
One more work of him is “Summer", the movie about the vanguard of the rock movement of the 80s in Leningrad (present-day St. Petersburg), a time when Western culture penetrates into Russia. Jeans, music, speech. This is where details come into play. They slowly explain what a communal apartment is, how young people lived on the threshold of perestroika, when censorship and dictatorship seem to exist, but it is becoming softer and more invisible. The film is one-piece. Several times we see unexpected musical inserts, in which a skeptic character necessarily appears who breaks the fourth wall.
The more acutely social film “The Student” directed by Serebrennikov and based on Marius von Mayenburg's play Märtyrer. The movie amazes no longer in details, but in meaning. First staged at the Gogol Center Theater, then filmed. Theatrical conventions do not interfere with cinematography. Through school life, the director shows the versatility and contradictions of the country. Serebrennikov speaks with the viewer in the language of allegories, art, gradually revealing the idea of the picture. Totalitarianism, hypocrisy, anti-Semitism - the author is not afraid of sensitive topics.
Serebrennikov's works are precise but not straightforward; they speak to an intelligent viewer who can fully unlock the idea both in a play or a film. His works are full of a share of arthouse, they are full of details, you can observe both philosophy and politics. At the same time, the director, creating pictures of European quality, enriches them with Russian flavor and typical Russian character.