Projecting history
By Leo Mourzenko
Special to The St. Petersburg Times

On April 30 next year, Lenfilm, Russia’s oldest movie studio, will celebrate its 90th anniversary. However, the director of "Lights in the Stage", an upcoming film about the St. Petersburg studio, doesn’t want his deeply personal film to get confused with a variety of celebration projects that are due in 2008. Alexander Pozdnyakov, who worked at Lenfilm for quarter of a century, calls his project “a poetic reminiscence.”
In just 25 minutes, the film takes the audience on a journey around the studio, its premises and its history. The trip is formally guided by Leonid Rivman, one of the oldest employees of Lenfilm, who never speaks but opens up the studio’s sound stages to the camera which to date have never been seen by the general public.
At 98 years old and having worked at the studio throughout his life, Rivman has participated in many of the major productions made at the studio. From the 1934 cult classic “Chapayev” to the beloved 1961 comedy “Polosaty Reis” (“A Lively Voyage”), Rivman was always there to create magic. One of the first Soviet cinematographers and visual effects masters, he also appeared in cameo roles in films such as “Molokh,” Alexander Sokurov’s 1999 study of Adolf Hitler. The director of “Lights in the Stage” refers to Rivman as a cicerone, or guide to antiquities, who pays homage to a studio to which he, as well as Pozdnyakov and the other celebrities who appear in the film, have dedicated their lives.
Those making an appearance include the popular actors Alisa Freindlikh, Semyon Furman, and Anna Kovalchuk, and the renowned director Alexei German to name a few. Pozdnyakov says that they all volunteered to appear in the film.

The film mixes images of the original studios with a dramatization of the first cinema experiences in St. Petersburg a century ago. Lenfilm is located on land where the Aquarium, the city’s first movie theater, once stood and that association is celebrated in the film. A recreation of the first movie show in the Aquarium takes place in the exact location where the screening actually occurred in 1896. Today, one of Lenfilm’s sound stages stands in this spot.
“For many years, Lenfilm was known as the Russian Hollywood, where big movies which involved multiple costumes and huge sets were shot,” Pozdnyakov said. To illustrate the point, the film tells the story of “The Blue Bird” (1975), a U.S.-Soviet coproduction filmed by Hollywood director George Cukor at Lenfilm with Ava Gardner, Jane Fonda and Elizabeth Taylor. Although a highlight in the history of Lenfilm, the film was beset by numerous technical problems and Vincent Canby in The New York Times accused it of “lumbering tackiness.”
Lenfilm’s achievements are an essential part of Russian movie history, but Pozdnyakov’s aim in shooting “Lights in the Stage” wasn’t an educational one.
“I didn’t want to make a historical movie, along the lines that first there were movies like this, then there were movies like that,” Pozdnyakov said. “This is our chance to speak out our love for these walls, this cradle of Russian cinema.”
The official release of “Lights in the Stage” will happen at the end of April. There will be a few screenings during The Festival of Festivals this summer, while a wider audience will have a chance to see it on TV in the next few months.
The official release of “Lights in the Stage” will happen at the end of April. There will be a few screenings during The Festival of Festivals this summer, while a wider audience will have a chance to see it on TV in the next few months.

The St. Petersburg Times
Issue #1260 (126), Friday, April 6, 2007