00:00:04 Vsevolod KORSHUNOV: I suggest we sit down, Anatoly! No? You don’t want to?
00:00:07 Anatoly IVANOV: I’m an athlete!
00:00:09 Anatoly IVANOV: Fine.
00:00:09 Anatoly IVANOV: If you don’t mind? You can take a seat, I’ll stand.
00:00:11 Vsevolod KORSHUNOV: No, I absolutely do not mind. So… and sedentary lifestyle is evil. Friends, if you have any questions, please raise your hand, we’ll pass you the microphone… I have the first question. When introducing the film, you said that it’s a documentary movie filmed with fiction cinema methods. What did you mean?
00:00:27 Anatoly IVANOV: I meant that… When we tried to shoot a pure documentary, using the methods of documentary cinema, that is, voice-overs, interviews, some kind of archival footage, clippings, photos, sepia and so on… With some kind of graphs, with explanations: “On your right is a vinyl record, on your left is also a vinyl record”, we obtained a video tutorial or some educational film. But it didn’t create an experience, in the viewer’s mind, of this profession, that is, of what a DJ feels… a professional, who travels back and forth. So I turned to narrative cinema fiction film, which has a much wider arsenal of creating a mind-image. Of, namely, feelings, emotions, in the viewer. In other words, essentially, offering better manipulation. And we decided to combine some aspects of a documentary film. For example, the airplanes are real. They are not CGI, they are not drawn. Those are real passengers, who screamed: “Where are we flying? And what’s that bazooka on that man’s shoulder?” And we couldn’t shoot 2 takes. That is, we had to shoot everything in one go till touch-down and then, for some reason, no one wanted to try to take off immediately and shoot a second take. But we shot a lot following a script, with multiple walk-throughs, with takes. A good example is this wonderful Moscow elevator that shrieks. We, probably, shot about 20 takes in it. Moreover, on 2 different visits to Moscow. And the use of music, the use of color. Plus the camera… it’s not an auto: traditional manual focus. Separate sound and picture recording. We didn’t have a clapperboard. Although, no, on some sets we did have a clapperboard. Everything else, it was the classic method of manual focus pulling and composition, lighting, and so on and so forth, that’s purely fiction cinema. As a result, a person gets an immersion into the DJ world, often an unpleasant immersion into the world of the DJ. And, it seems to me, that it worked better, than to just say: “Here is a DJ, he works like that!” And obtain the output as some… well, transmission of information, but not of emotion, not a transfer… of the ins and outs of what it’s like to be a DJ. Documentary cinema conveys information, but, in my opinion, struggles to convey life. And archetypes of someone’s profession or of someone’s life.
00:03:48 Vsevolod KORSHUNOV: But still, that apartment scene with friends, it looks like, some kind of, well… traditional, classic — for a documentary film — cinematic observation?
00:03:56 Vsevolod KORSHUNOV: Yes.
00:03:56 Vsevolod KORSHUNOV: Or those were also roles and written dialogue?
00:04:00 Anatoly IVANOV: There, we obtained a kind of a hybrid. Because, I originally wrote in the script: I want a hipster apartment, overlooking Moscow, the Kremlin, preferably. With tea, “Azbuka Vkusa’s” honey somewhere on the table, and so on, all that’s supposed to be at Moscow apartment gatherings. But that was my first time meeting those people. That is, for me, it was somewhat… horrendous. Because, Pushkarev, the main character and DJ, tells me: “So? Let’s go! Let’s shoot!” He has this manner: “Hey! Let’s go to St-Petersburg! Let’s leave…” And no script was given to the speakers. That is, we talked about completely different subjects. And I had to film at the same time, pull focus, record the sound, as well as moderate them, somehow. Because it degenerated constantly into: “And DJ Petya… Arghh! A terrible person! He went onstage, did this, did that! And KaZantip is such a… and…” Well, the typical stuff men do when they get together: “And Tanya, she came to my place, and I gave her a present…” And so… all of this… I had to cut out and apply a lot of editing. The editor… Film editing generally makes the documentary movie. Therefore, this is one of the main… one of the main reasons that made me choose the documentary genre. Because it was possible to practice film editing. Before I started shooting motion, I actually thought that editing did not exist in cinema. That everything is filmed in a kind of one take. And until 2011, I thought, oh! “Inception” — so cool! The camera would be switched on for 2 hours, and switched off. Or some, well, even, for example “Battleship Potemkin”… Kuleshov? I had no idea: who’s that? When someone hinted to me that, well, actually, there are cuts… So I decided to practice. And harder… nothing’s harder than editing documentary cinema. Because it’s unpredictable, often, unlike with a fiction film. And this scene of the conversation over tea, it’s a great example where, boom! The moment, when: “Aha ha ha!” one of the guys turning to look at me… because, I also seem to be talking to them? They’re not pro actors… and I’m, like, pow! Cut to some… “he pours tea”. In reality, he poured tea 6 months after the initial shoot. That is, I shot the scene, watched it in Geneva, where we were doing the post-production, became horrified, lost the rest of my hair, and said: “OK, we’re flying back to Moscow… to shoot additional inserts… to save this scene”. So, it all probably, maybe, it sometimes seems… spontaneous, but behind it all… In fact, it is really tight logistics of a fiction feature film, when the producer calculates how much will it cost, is it feasible? Almost everything you’ve seen was shot with filming permits from up there… Or, which direction is Kremlin? So, and… Pretty methodically filmed, often not in chronological order. Accordingly, all those flights, as well… Pushkarev did not board the plane in Moscow and fly to Geneva and so on. No, those are completely disconnected, separate shoots, that were later, at the editing stage, connected in a single story. We’ve used completely different Airbuses, with different wings. Wings that were “tweaked” in post-production, so that it seems like a one and same wing, although, this is actually not the case. That is, a lot of CGI, actually. Rotoscoping, CGI… that, I hope, none of you have noticed. I… Well… At the moment, how old is the film? No one has ever said: “What’s going on there?” That is, again, those are fiction, narrative film methods. In order to create a documentary impression, a documentary sensation. That is, when professional DJs watch this film, they are terrified. They write us e-mails, mainly, to Pushkarev, who is the main character. And they say: “Jeez! It was terribly unpleasant to watch this movie. Sometimes pleasant, but really, like, I’m watching, and I’m thinking, damn, I remember, me, too, I’d tour in Romania, and I’d think: ‘They’re gonna whack me!’ You exit the airport and there, a guy barely speaks any language. Some basic variant of: ‘Do you speak English?’ ‘Yes, a little bit.’ And then, they proceed with their creepy… ‘Hehe!’ And you don’t know, is it a one-way trip, and then they’ll forget about you?” And the DJs, that is, professional ones, they’d watch this movie and see that the mixer, which is, in this case, the instrument… The DJ’s musical instrument, well, it’s quite primitive. I’m sorry, but as a… as a person with a musical background. Maybe… Who in our audience is… plays any musical instrument or used to play… a musical instrument?
00:09:51 Anatoly IVANOV: One! Two people! Well, OK! Well, I’ll just tell you that to mix a track from one record with another — it’s simple. That is, almost all of you here can learn this pretty quickly. The hardest aspect of DJing is to choose, which track to play after which. So, he’s more a curator than a musician. He’s not a performer of Bach, Mozart, and so on. And so… This technical aspect, the technique, when there’s some channel, an equalizer and so on… We shot it very carefully, to conform to reality. But if we would have just put a camera in the club, relatively speaking, and filmed what was happening, it would have turned out to be complete rubbish. Because the sound would not match time-wise. It wouldn’t happen realistically. Usually one techno track, it lasts 8 minutes. And here, if you’ve noticed, in every club we have 3-4 minutes for 3 tracks. That is, we had to constantly come up with ways to show one thing, not related to the music recorded in situ, and then compensate in post-production, so that it looked authentic anyway. It turned out more realistic than the kind of, “caméra vérité”, where you set the camera, turn it on, roll, turn it off.
00:11:23 Vsevolod KORSHUNOV: Well, one more thing, I’d like to… I have a comment, rather… As Hitchcock used to say, right? That, if you want to make a scene seem real, on the contrary, you need to place the camera not at eye level, but… Set a table, put a chair on the table, sit the operator in the chair. And so, that is, the more realistic the footage, the less realistic are, in fact, the methods with which you achieve this.
00:11:44 Anatoly IVANOV: Yes, it’s such a strange paradox. That is, for example, in clubs… Excuse me! I’d film like this. Usually braced against some kind of device. So, I would shoot with quads under tension. And I had a 20 kg camera, and I’d be like: “Aah!!!” Nobody around me, that is, people dancing: “Yeeehaaa!!!” And nearby, a guy screams completely different sounds of pain: “Aaahhh!” So, actually… What helped me the most, for my role of director and operator, was weightlifting. That is, we bought a set of very serious dumbbells, a barbell. Like… Everything else, stuff like… film editing, lighting, dramaturgy… Useless! Compared to weightlifting. So, if any of you is going to shoot not from a dolly, but, with, like… a Steadicam or handheld. I highly recommend it! Radical improvement. I’m transformed, I’ve stopped drinking, improved my diet, yoga, sleep. As much as possible. The best there is, for a director of photography.
00:13:01 Anatoly IVANOV: Yes, please.
00:13:02 Public: Who and why chose Andrey Pushkarev as the main character?
00:13:09 Anatoly IVANOV: I did. Pushkarev didn’t have the slightest such idea in his head. When… I just scrolled through my Apple Music (iTunes) collection, I had, at the top of my list, Pushkarev’s mixes. That is, chosen by the quantity and quality of sets. Plus, this DJ toured constantly, which is quite rare. Especially, when someone plays, a DJ plays dub techno, deep techno. That is, it’s very non-commercial techno music. Maybe you’ve listened to or have been in some nightclubs, where you hear all this “bam-bam-bam” and you exit thinking… “No can do without cocaine”. And here we have rather melodic techno that you can listen to in the car, even at the office, while working and so on. And he toured places… constantly. So I called him, we met in Paris. Initially, I thought to shoot rather a team of DJs, rather than just one DJ. So really, initially, I thought to rather film all the others from the DeepMix.ru team. The program director of this wonderful web radio, also legendary, Dima Zaginailov, something happened to him. He fired everyone. That is… DJ BVoice, who else was there, DJ Kubikov, DJ Izhevski, there was no one left. He deleted all the mixes.
00:14:43 Public: And could I ask? I found information on the Internet, on IMDb, that the budget of the film is 100 000 euros, approximately?
00:14:49 Anatoly IVANOV: Yes, after which I just stopped counting.
00:14:51 Public: Right! Here’s the question: the way I understand it, most likely, this money was found either at a pitching, or something like that… Really? Is all of it – this DJ’s money?
00:15:01 Anatoly IVANOV: No, no.
00:15:02 Public: Is that your money?
00:15:03 Anatoly IVANOV: That is… part of it is my money, it’s my friends’ money, it’s the money of… people, actually not particularly related to cinema.
00:15:13 Public: In fact, the question is…
00:15:14 Anatoly IVANOV: Meaning, that’s the so-called, the technical term is “private equity”.
00:15:18 Public: The question, actually, is not about that. It’s a very large amount for a massive documentary. Especially when you talk documentary cinema in Russia, with a figure of 100 000 euros next to it, it’s a lot.
00:15:27 Anatoly IVANOV: Well…
00:15:29 Public: Yes, that’s really a lot.
00:15:30 Public: Actually, the question is: how did you manage to convince those people, that they should give you money for a film, in which, practically, there is no fundamental, well, like, no conflict? There is no transformation of the hero in the frame. That is, you cannot say that: “Here, in the beginning of my film he’ll be like that, and by the end he’ll change and become different”.
00:15:48 Public: There is no hero, no antagonist.
00:15:50 Public: Yes. And how to prove it to a potential, roughly speaking, to the investor? How did you do this?
00:15:55 Anatoly IVANOV: I… to any investors, since then, and now, and in the future, I have… an extremely honest approach. That is, I believe that the investor is a member of the team. Therefore, he is a person that should know as much as possible about the project and about both any potential sales, as well as about any potential disasters. Meaning, about, well… total… Can I say? Fuck-ups? In other words… that nothing might work out and he’ll lose money. And with all investors, I’d sit down at the negotiating table and say: “This is how it is, we will have an antihero, who’s going to have the guts to state the problem, to say that ‘I’m tired, I want daytime parties, I want a natural circadian rhythm, I want this, I want that, I strive towards! And, and, and, and…’ And he doesn’t succeed at all.” Really, this film is a drama, turns out. That is… At some point, the people who watch this movie, they realize that… he will never succeed at what he has in mind. That is, this development arc, it transforms into stagnation and is cut short, eventually. That is, in this regard, he is a kind of a classical antihero. Despite this, what really helped me was that by then I had about 15 years of professional photography. I was published, like, by Taschen, and… others. Meaning, that is, I’ve worked… for Magnum, VU, Getty, etc., etc. And I could show a picture, of what the film would be. That is, I wasn’t just a random person, like, from the street, who… suddenly decided to make a movie. I had something specific, I’ve worked out a business plan: what our target audience would be, how much could be sold, how much would never be sold. Therefore, we tried to film as cheaply as possible. To recoup the money back. And each time it was, essentially, a human-to-human conversation. People give money… In the cinema industry, I mean, private equity, and not only private equity, let’s say, the studios, and government structures, they all give money to individuals. And first of all, to the tandems of director-producer. Producers, unfortunately, don’t get enough coverage in the press, at festivals. Those are… Well, they are amazing people. That is, they are building something from scratch. Even despite crazy directors like me. So! Therefore, the main thing is the dialogue between an investor who believes in the personality, the ability of the producer and director. It is, essentially, a relationship… a dialogue. The same with, I don’t know, in France – with CNC (Centre National de la Cinématographie). When you apply to the selection committee, and your script is read, and so on… the first thing they ask: “OK, and who are your producers? Who are your actors?” And when you present your project, it’s not pitching, but rather a conversation with the selection committee in order to understand how you, as a team work well, confidently, together. How much conflict do you have, whether you have it or not. Naturally, it is better to take those without conflict, that is… Cinema is, really, a kind of team sport. That is, if you want to work alone, there’s, like, photography, there is sculpture, there are tons of other activities in… on our planet. Cinema is about the team. If the team does not function, it is not given money.
00:20:23 Public: Now, I have a question, really, in your opinion, where is he headed all the time?
00:20:27 Anatoly IVANOV: He… first of all, he follows a routine. Secondly, because this is how it pans out and because, he is built for this. That’s one. Two, what I’ve noticed is that he still thinks about his dream: to work in a, figuratively speaking, in a small house by the sea, or in some fields overlooking the Swiss Alps. Because, this is a guy from Votkinsk. Who knows where Votkinsk is located?
00:20:59 Anatoly IVANOV: Well, I didn’t know either. There’s Izhevsk, and from there… still miles and miles to go. And the road ends, and there is a city, which, from my point of view, doesn’t look like a city, but looks like…
00:21:09 Public: Hell.
00:21:11 Anatoly IVANOV: …a village. And you’ve seen where he’s jumping over some kind of puddles? That’s Kirov Avenue. What Kirov Avenue?! That is, they don’t have sewers. I was horrified, but it is what it is. A city. And… he is a man of nature. That is, he isn’t comfy in megacities. That is, he works in supercities, because the clubs are in megalopolises. He is very much depriving himself of a lot in life, like… of the food he loves to cook, of relationships, of sleep and other things. In order to give people, show this new music, somehow to acquaint them with it. That is, technically speaking, it’s an act of heroism. Which forces people to listen to something new in the club, then go home… listen to SoundCloud, searching for some… new… musical themes, finding out something new. And metaphorically, I put it in the film. That is, he constantly, as soon as — thud — he disconnects, he has memories of his home popping up… and of Votkinsk. This huge Kama river, endless forests, fields. And, ultimately, he arrives, that is, he keeps trying, keeps thinking, to go for a swim in this Kama. Finally, he makes it to the real sea and realizes that… It does not solve his problems. That is, he leaves for yet another loop, for the next lap, the next square. That is repeated, repeated, repeated. Meaning, what remains is his bag, with these square, covers, vinyl envelopes, but essentially… The sea is there! Why? Man, where are you going? Where? Here, right here… take a seat, here’s the happiness! But no, happiness does not come. That is, he goes on, to some yet another club, in some yet another city. And, it’s unclear, how this will end.
00:23:32 Public: A question. I myself have DJed now and then, and I understand the emotions that you get from simply bringing people your music.
00:23:39 Anatoly IVANOV: Yes.
00:23:40 Public: Then why… is this guy so unemotional? Why doesn’t he show any emotions at all throughout the whole movie?
00:23:48 Vsevolod KORSHUNOV: Well, I’d like to pursue this, same, this thought, right? While answering your question. This is, of course, a movie about a trap, and it is full of repetitions. And, these repetitions are, in fact, the essence of this trap. The main character… A question appears: where is he going? Where is he running? From what, from whom is he running, right? What ghastly sadness is he trying… to drown out with these flights, those endless loops? So. And in this case, because, the inner state… of the character is such, the movie is also such. Yes, it contains a lot of longing, emptiness, exhaustion, a kind of entrapment. And in this sense, the film, of course is, well, such an interesting case, because it, on the one hand, combines different aesthetics, right? Of a road movie, of some kind of a music video. On the other hand, it works with, what modern aestheticians call “non-catharsis aesthetics”.
00:24:42 Anatoly IVANOV: Yes!
00:24:43 Vsevolod KORSHUNOV: There is a catharsis…
00:24:44 Anatoly IVANOV: It does not occur.
00:24:45 Vsevolod KORSHUNOV: Yes. And here, there is no way out. In fact, this emotional connection — that you are talking about — it is intentionally excluded; it’s not there either. And there is such an aesthetician, Sianne Ngai, he says that contemporary art, overall, including cinema, more often works not with the cathartic elements, but with the, so-called, “ugly feelings”. That is, for example, with the feeling of awkwardness, the feeling of boredom, the feeling of some discomfort when watching. And here, first and foremost, it is with these that Anatoly works as a director, rather than with the emotional connection you are talking about. That is, yes, it does completely… probably excludes a number of viewers, right? But this is a special goal, as I understand it, if we…
00:25:26 Anatoly IVANOV: You understand absolutely correctly. I’m, because… Well, literally, today a new article came out on Colta.ru about the translation of a book called “Selfie” by Will Storr… The dude, maybe you’ve heard?
00:25:38 Vsevolod KORSHUNOV: Yep.
00:25:39 Anatoly IVANOV: where the comrade, the author, says that, in reality, to change yourself is very difficult. And that we, starting from the Ayn Rand epoch, we have been lied to, that the most important is to straighten your shoulders, and Atlas… will shrug and leap and… you will succeed in everything. No! If you were born with a certain set of DNA, and you have more of neuroticism, how is that in Russian?
00:26:12 Anatoly IVANOV: Than other traits, it will be very difficult for you to change. This is the truth of life. What to do with it? Regardless, there’s still something that can be done! We must ask, for example, for help, we must take care of ourselves. And I’m trying to make movies about what can be done and about what’s real. Rather than create fairy tales, as is done in Hollywood, where… I don’t know… If you take Michael Mann’s example, “Collateral” with Tom Cruise, where, a guy, who’s a taxi driver and dreams about his own business, a complete zero, a loser, suddenly becomes a mega-superhero, saves everyone and everything. That… That doesn’t happen. It does not happen! There are people who save, all the time. There are people who dream to save. Therefore… it is a choice. This is a choice! Naturally, people often want to go to the movies to disconnect and to dream. To dream about skydiving with Tom Cruise. And that they will sometime, someday, when they’re old… No.
00:27:37 Vsevolod KORSHUNOV: And, moreover, in fact, the format of the documentary film, probably, presupposes this honesty, that “Mirror”. The square of that mirror, huh? Which, in general…
00:27:44 Anatoly IVANOV: Yes, “Kvadrat” is… one of the reasons why we’ve chosen such a title – it is a window to a life of a real person, and not something, abstract. And… And so, it is, by the way, one of Pushkarev’s requests. When I suggested to him to make a film, he said: “OK, I agree, if we shoot honestly. I do not want to lie. Really, that’s how I feel during those flights.” He is truly suffering. Well… When I was shooting this movie, I’ve, honestly, rarely have I felt, physically, so bad in my entire life. Meaning, that last club… I was just sick. I mean, I left for the hotel, I almost threw up. I took pills so that I would not vomit. That’s how much… Because we shot: we started like… on Friday at 6 am and finished on Sunday at 8 am. Non-stop, I’ve filmed all this. And when Pushkarev, every time you see him, that he’s… zzz… sleeping. Me, I’m not sleeping, I’m shooting it all. Man, it was tough! It was mega-tough. But it is honest. That was the first thing. The first thing that he asked me, to be honest. And that’s why he’s not mad at me, he does not say: “What did you do with me?! I’m some kind of unemotional dummy! And really, what will people think of me?” No. And the second thing, that I wouldn’t interfere with his DJing. That is, he asked me not to appear in the DJ booth and, like: “Oh, what’s that track?! Come on, change it, I need it for the film!” So, we had such an agreement, for this to be as honest as possible, and so that I wouldn’t mess with his sets.
00:29:50 Vsevolod KORSHUNOV: Well, honesty is great, really, and, it seems to me, that is a good coda for our conversation. Because documentary cinema, and films in general, of course, and, really, our life, of course, we’d like them to remain honest, and first of all, honest and true in relation to ourselves. Friends, thank you very much for this conversation, let’s thank Anatoly. Thank you so much!
/ RU Moscow / 2019-04-18
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