New York showed a retrospective of Kira Muratova’s films

May New York raging. Crowds of tourists, congestion, sounds of police sirens. In one of the souvenir stores on the Times Square sells a jokey T -shirt with a portrait of Trump. This is probably the only reminder that the country has been experiencing unprecedented political turbulence recently, which is shocked by the rest of the world. America is in crisis, but in Manhattan a different summons. Here, as before, in self-inflammation, earning and spending money, walking at parties and suffering from a purely New York neuroses.

Neuroses and crisis are the main theme in the work of the prominent Ukrainian Odessa director Kira Muratova. « Ekizes of Chaos » -The large-scale retrospective of her films in New York is so eloquent. It lasted from May 16 to May 25 in one of the central US Central Institutions-at the Lincoln Center.

The event that became the first serious acquaintance of the American audience with the work of Muratova was organized by the former director of Dovzhenko-Center, writer, film expert and researcher at Cambridge University Ivan Kozlenko, as well as curator and artman Marta Kuzma, who can be named without exaggeration.

Once upon a time, in the mid-1990s, Kuzma, American of Ukrainian descent, was the first director of the Kyiv Center of Contemporary Art of Soros, a legend of Ukrainian Art Tuning and a curator of software exhibitions of contemporary art. After the expiration of the Directorate, Kuzma broke up with the Ukrainian Art Scene.

Instead, she made a high-profile international career-in 2004 she was a co -man of the modern manifesto, and from 2016 to 2021 worked as a dean of art school of Iels University. Despite the pause for a quarter of a century, at the beginning of a full -scale war, Kuzma mentioned her connection with Ukraine.

Recently she announced an ambitious platform « Faktura 10« . In its framework this year, under the leadership of Kuzma, ten projects to support Ukrainian culture will be implemented. Among them, the retrospective of Kira Muratova in the Lincoln-Center, which Kuzma covers with Ivan Kozlenko. Thanks to the involvement in the organization of the Odessa and the brilliant specialist in the history.

“Sketches of chaos” – One of the largest films in Kira Muratova’s films in history – a similar event was only in Rotterdam in 2013. The average retrospective of the director usually includes five to seven tapes, but this time the Lincoln Center is shown as much as sixteen-almost all of Muratova filmography except two works. The project was implemented with the support of Alexander Dovzhenko National Center.

The rights and copies of almost all films created after 1990 were given to the organizers by Criterion – the leader of the DVD and movie restoration industry. Fortunately, before the war, the company bought the right to Muratova films from the Russians. It is because of this that New York managed to carry out such a large retrospective. Especially for the event at the Lincoln Center, Criterion experts have restored the movies « Asthenic Syndrome » and « Among Gray Stones », and a year earlier-« Short Meetings » and « Long Wires ». They were released on the DVD, which was heated to Muratova’s interest in the West.

Frame from the movie « Asthenic Syndrome »

The retrospective of Kira Muratova opened a fresh restored « asthenic syndrome ». It is an extremely deep, aesthetic tape that captures the condition of a person who faces the collapse of the usual world. This feeling of inevitability of dramatic changes is familiar to Americans today.

The presence of major Ukrainian events in New York is now as urgent as ever. Two years ago, Ukraine was in America in all his mouth, but gradually almost disappeared from the radars. During his stay in the Soffita News, Ukrainian culture still gained many friends. At the opening of retrospectives it was crowded. It is difficult to say what is drawing to the cinema of Muratov’s average New York viewer. However, visitors were returning, watching several films in a row. Even at the show of such a seemingly tight and incomprehensible one from the Odessa linguistic and cultural specificity, the viewer tapes as a « sensitive militiaman » in the hall was heard laughter and live emotion.

Frame from the movie « Two in one »

The decision of the curators to show the American public not something more straightforward, but the works of the inconvenient Muratova proved to be appropriate. The Lincoln Center’s audience is accustomed to such an experimental, extravagant cinema. Muratova’s works, despite her specificity, are understood by international moviegoers, she speaks the same language with the outstanding directors of the present.

The shows were accompanied by an important intellectual event. On May 17, a discussion dedicated to Muratova and its inheritance was held at the Ukrainian Institute of America. In addition to Martha Kuzma and Ivan Kozlenko, she was attended by the President of Shevchenko Scientific Society in America, Kansas University Professor Vitaliy Chernetsky, as well as researchers David Molina from Chicago University, Victoria Paranyuk from University of Payis and Irina Schultz from Munich University. The guests of the meeting discussed the difficult status of Muratova in the history of Ukrainian cinema.

Indeed, it is not easy to analyze Kira Muratova’s inheritance in the context of modern Ukrainian events. The director is difficult to call the icon of national output. Despite the fact that most of her life (since 1962 until his death in 2018), Muratov lived in Odessa, she was always a little outsider and had little friends with. She did not possess literary Ukrainian and was not very interested in politics. Her early films are rooted in the Soviet cinematic tradition, and the late ones are quite critical remarks about the atmosphere of post -Soviet Odessa. Kira Muratov was not a simple person, and it is also difficult to call her movie unambiguous.

Frame from the movie Changing Destiny

Under the influence of trauma to a full-scale war, we sometimes have the temptation to choose simple scenarios and prefer black and white thinking. This leads to logic like: « Who did not speak Ukrainian – he did not create Ukrainian culture », « who literally did not glorify Ukraine, not part of the Ukrainian heritage. »

The movies and figure of Kira Muratova often find themselves on the line of fire in such discussions. However, the reality of our pre -war culture is more complex and nuances. For example, you do not have to go far: artist Alexander Roitburd made a tremendous contribution to the Ukrainian revival of Odessa, although it remained Russian by the end of life.

Frame from the movie « Eternal Return »

Speaking of Muratov and its identity, one should also take into account the fact that in the later years of life after 2014, the political and civic position of the director underwent a significant transformation. In an interview and public speaking, she repeatedly emphasized Ukraine’s support, condemned the Russian policy in solving war in the East and in fact She was a political Ukrainian. However, the most important – These are movies. And they are invaluable documents of the era of radical transformations, they live and breathe informal Odesa, a city that does not always fit into the official request for uniqueness.

Indeed, if you want to go beyond the cliché in the perception of the past and to give the purpose of remembering what Odesa was in the storm for the first decades after the collapse of the USSR – Muratova’s films are useful. The heroes of these tapes, and truth, do not speak Ukrainian, but instead live in a bizarre mix of Russian, local Odessa dialect, Ukrainian and sometimes foreign languages.

Kira Muratov may not have been the most optimistic or nationally conscious person, but she was very honest in her work, was able to listen and look into the city where she lived. Her characters are a kaleidoscope of weirdo, who do not fit into the ideological requirements of any regime. It is the truth of art and a holistic author’s world. It is best to look into it in the mode of retrospectives – because that is how the features of the Murat artistic language and outlook become especially obvious.

Frame from the movie « Eternal Return »

It is no coincidence that the star international curator and former dean of one of the most prestigious US art-spins, Marta Kuzma from all over the Ukrainian cin, was interested in Kira Muratova’s work. The director’s creativity is still awaiting his analysis in the context of development of progressive fine arts in Ukraine.

In many ways, its aesthetics resonates with modern artistic, video art, Odessa performances of the late 1980s-early 1990s. Muratova had personal reasons not very friendly to the Odessa Art Tusal, but as the author, she subtly felt the nerve of time and willingly included elements of the language of contemporary art in her art universe, which, apparently, seemed relevant and interesting.

Frame from the movie « Asthenic Syndrome »

Today, when active debates on Odessa and its identity continue, Kira Muratova’s revision and discussion of works, not only in the United States but also in Ukraine, continue. I would like to believe that after a loud retrospective at the Lincoln Center there will be events of a similar scale in Kyiv, Lviv, Kharkiv.

After all, paradoxically, there was still no full screening of Muratova films in Ukraine. And, of course, I would like to see a large retrospective in Odessa, where a second man still lives and in fact a Muratova spiritual, a person who is due to his unique atmosphere all the late work of the director – the artist, screenwriter and director Yevgen Golubenko.

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