The great Russian filmmaker Aleksei Yuryevich German honoured with the Award for Lifetime Achievement of the Rome Film Festival
World premiere screening of the master’s latest highly anticipated film, Hard To Be a God (Trudno byt’ bogom)
The 8th Rome Film Festival (November 8-17, 2013) will present the Lifetime Achievement Award to the family of the great Russian filmmaker Aleksei Yuryevich German, who passed away in February this year. The award was announced personally to the Saint Petersburg master in early winter last year, so as to accompany the release of his new ambitious film Hard To Be a God (Trudno byt’ bogom). For the first time in the history of European festivals, a Lifetime Achievement Award will thus be conferred posthumously. The award will be accepted by Svetlana Karmalita, the director’s widow, partner in all of his most personal projects and screenwriter for the great master’s last two films, along with their son Aleksei A. German, who has also been at the forefront of the renewal of contemporary Russian cinema (Silver Lion at the 2008 Venice Film Festival for Paper Soldier).
Following the awards ceremony will be the world premiere screening of the Hard To Be a God, the monumental philosophical science-fiction epic, inspired by the cult novel Hard to Be a God (Trudno byt' bogom, 1964) written by brothers Boris and Arkady Strugatsky, authors of, among others,Roadside Picnic, which Andrei Tarkovsky adapted for the screen in his film Stalker.
The Artistic Director commented the decision to honour the master from Saint Petersburg with the 2013 Lifetime Achievement Award in the following words:
“His attention to the difference with respect to the demands of the present, his predilection for dissent rather than consent, alarmed non-Socialist Russia’s commercial system, which then invented new obstacles to the filmmaker’s tenacious creative impetus. But that did not stop him from developing ambitious projects, which led to the production of extreme films such as Khrustalyov, My Car!(Khrustalyov, mashinu! – in competition at Cannes in 1998) and Hard To Be a God.”
“Hard To Be a God marks the conclusion of the director’s exploration of time and memory, connecting the absurdity of the past and the present with that of the soon-to-come Medieval Age. In this film German wants to tell fantastic stories, while keeping faith to his concern for documentary authenticity. This is a documentary filmmaker who, having penetrated into the imaginary world of Hieronymus Bosch’s paintings (according to German, ‘Bosch is far more realistic than Rubens’), obstinately continues to try and capture the smallest details.”
“Aleksei German was a genius artist who has been very persistent in his radical approach. An artist who always chose to address insurmountable problems. If fate could give me one last opportunity to dine with him today, in one of those Dostoevskian-Leningrad restaurants he was so fond of, I would quote this Russian proverb to him: ‘It takes a Chinese to solve a difficult problem. But it takes a Russian to solve an impossible one.’ A Russian genius like him.”
ALEKSEI YURYEVICH GERMAN
The extraordinary artistic integrity of this filmmaker, equivalent to that of great masters such as Terrence Malick and Stanley Kubrick, and the incursions of Soviet censorship, which regularly barred the release of his films, limited German’s production to five feature-length films. They have represented and continue to represent a vital benchmark. German’s stature has few equals in modern cinema – with Andrei Tarkovsky and Aleksandr Sokurov he is a member of the ‘Russian trinity’ who revolutionized the conception of cinema.
Aleksei Yuryevich German was born in Leningrad in 1938. His father, Yuri P. German, the famous, award-winning ‘humanistic’ Soviet writer, a friend of director Vsevolod Emilevich Meyerhold, convinced him to enrol in the Faculty of Theatre Directing in Leningrad. After graduating, German collaborated with Georgy Tovstonogov, a key figure in Soviet theatre in the 1950s and 60s. In 1964, the director began to work with Lenfilm, the oldest “studio” in the Soviet Union, which became the cradle of auteur filmmaking. In 1967, he made his first film with Grigori L. Aronov, Sedmoy sputnik(The Seventh Companion). In 1971, German finished Proverka na dorogach or Operacija “S novym godom” (Trial on the Road or Operation “Happy New Year”), inspired by a novel written by his father. The film, set during World War II, was immediately forbidden with the excuse that it distorted historical facts: it was not released until 1985. In 1977, the director made Dvadtsat dney bez voyny(Twenty Days Without War), inspired by the novel by Konstantin Simonov, the famous party-loyal writer who defended the film before the leaders of the Central Committee and ensured its distribution. In 1984, German again worked on one of his father’s novels and made his most famous film, Moy drug Ivan Lapshin (My Friend Ivan Lapshin), set in the early 1930s. German’s portrayal of Soviet history irritated the Party and the film was immediately withdrawn from movie theatres. To survive, German wrote screenplays together with his wife Svetlana Karmalita, under her name alone.
German’s parabola of life and creation was fraught with events that were as tough as they were dramatic, and which reduced his opportunities to personally develop his own projects. During the longest period of his inactivity as a director, in 1988 German and his companion in life and work Svetlana Karmalita did however create and direct the Studio, for debut works and experimental films at Lenfilm, a structure to develop debut works by new directors which produced eight feature-length films, as well as shorts and animated films.
With the advent of the 1990s and the new political situation, German worked on Khrustalyov, My Car!, released in 1998, after being presented in competition at the Cannes Film Festival. In that film, German came to the conclusion that after the horrors of the Stalin era, art was no longer possible in its previous form. In 2000, the director, finally recognized as one of the great masters of Russian filmmaking, and honoured with many awards, began to work on the epic project of Hard To Be a God, inspired by the famous eponymous novel by the Strugatsky brothers, which took thirteen years of hard work. In this work, German portrayed an entire civilization onscreen, reviewing the history of humanity with ruthless precision and enormous compassion. Aleksei German died on February 21st, 2013: the film was completed by Svetlana Karmalita and by their son Aleksei A. German.
FILMOGRAPHY (director)
1967 – Sedmoy sputnik (The Seventh Companion)
1971 – Proverka na dorogakh (Trial on the Road)
1976 – Dvadtsat dney bez voyny (Twenty Days Without War)
1984 – Moy drug Ivan Lapshin (My Friend Ivan Lapshin)
1998 – Khrustalyov, mashinu! (Khrustalyov, My Car!)
2013 – Trudno byt’ bogom (Hard To Be a God)
THE PRODUCTION OF HARD TO BE A GOD
Hard To Be a God is a project that German had been meditating since the mid-1960s. As a matter of fact, German tried to make it as early as 1964, as his “actual” debut film, but to respect the rules of Lenfilm, the historic production company for which the director always worked, he made Trial on the Road instead. The project was later approved by Goskino, the State agency responsible for organizing filmmaking in the Soviet Union, but in 1968, after the uprising in Prague, the authorization was revoked for ideological reasons. Twenty years later the director returned to the project, but decided instead to make a film that would take him a long time to complete, Khrustalyov, My Car! Ten years later, after stating “I am not interested in anything but the possibility of building a world, an entire civilization from scratch”, German committed his efforts to hard to be a God. The film was shot between the autumn of 2000 and August 2006: it even involved the construction of castles near Prague and on the sets at Lenfilm; the shooting took so long that some of the actors died of old age; the post-production phase took over five years. German died on February 21st, 2013: the film was completed by his wife and closest collaborator, Svetlana Karmalita, and by their sonAleksei A. German.
SYNOPSIS
A brilliant film version of the 1960’s cult novel Hard to Be a God by Boris and Arkady Strugatsky. A group of scientists is sent to the planet Arkanar to help the local population which is going through a historical phase equivalent to our own Medieval Age, in which a ban has been issued not only on intellectuals, but on anyone who simply knows how to read and write. The protagonists, who work in incognito, have been forbidden to influence political and historical events on the plane: they must remain neutral. However, Don Rumata – the leading character – tries to save the local intellectuals from their punishment and cannot avoid taking a position: “What would you do in God’s place?”