In The Red Scarf, director Peter Mostovoy, an 85-year veteran of Soviet, Russian and Israeli documentaries, looks back at important milestones in his life and career.His film is an autobiography, visualized with archival chronicle frames, mostly author photographs, dramatizations with actors, and hand-drawn animations. The director himself was the narrator.“The events and characters in this film are not made up by the writers,” the opening credits read. “That’s really how it happened.”A boy who experienced the cramped conditions of a room in a Soviet communal apartment, where he slept on the dining table. A young man who was kicked out of his fifth year at the institute for ‘promoting the American way of life’: he and a friend sold a foreign-made sweater at a flea market, drawing a poster advertising. Director of photography and documentary filmmaker, one of the most brilliant representatives of the “Leningrad wave” of the 1960s and 1970s, who, despite the slings of censorship, tried to tell the truth in his films and to look for new characters and new themes.Petr Mostovoy was born in Vladivostok. He graduated from the Leningrad Electrotechnical Institute, began to work in a research institute. After the amateur film “Water of Life”, which earned him numerous international awards, he left his scientific career and entered the VGIK in 1965. At the same time, he begins to work in the Leningrad news studio. Later he was admitted to the Central Studio of Documentary Films in Moscow. As a director and cinematographer, he has made more than 40 documentaries and two feature films for television.
At the start of the journey. courtesy picture
Since 1993 he has lived and worked in Israel, where he has made several documentaries. The movie Red Scarf is available on YouTube.The correspondent for the Russian media service spoke by telephone with Petr Mostov, who is in Israel.Oleg Sulkin: This picture, “Red Scarf”, you did for a long time. For what?Petr Mostovoy: When you are looking for money for a film, it takes a lot of time. Applications, requests, refusal. Yes, yes, no, no. And so, quite unexpectedly for us, the first Israeli television channel agreed to finance the film. And another organization also donated money. I started shooting in January 2019.OS Covid didn’t get in the way?PM: I was finishing early 2020, then the coronavirus arrived. And after him – the war in Ukraine, which shifted everything, confused everything, changed everything in our lives. When I started sending the film to different festivals and distributors, I immediately felt that the criteria had changed. After all, I have a touching and sweet story, with all the ugliness and absurdities of Soviet life. But does anyone need it today, when shots rumble, alarms sound, civilians are killed, Ukrainian children are kidnapped? It is what reflects the specifics of the moment, it is what is requested in the first place. In addition, our hero speaks Russian, and today this is also a problematic factor.OS: Do you think these are temporary phenomena?PM: I don’t know. I’ve been working in the cinema for fifty years, but I’m not a politician at all, I’m not interested in political cinema. I like human subjects, so that there are feelings, sincerity.
“Red Scarf”. Movie frame. courtesy picture
OS: Your painting is autobiographical and basically follows the timeline of your life. Looks like you’re about to take stock. It’s true?PM: I’m not very young, but I wasn’t going to summarize the results at all. I am not interested. I like to make films that interest the public. On my first film, Look at the Face, I was the cameraman and the director was Pavel Kogan. For me it is important not only what to film, but also how to film. It seems to me that today the art factor takes second place, it doesn’t bother the filmmakers too much.OS: In the new tape, you remember your films and quote them. I found it curious that the hidden camera you pioneered in Look at the Face was used just over a decade later by the excellent documentary maker Hertz Frank in his film 10 Minutes Older. You alone have a camera that peers through a slit into the faces of Hermitage visitors standing in front of Leonardo’s painting, while at Frank’s we watch the face of a young spectator at a puppet show. How do you feel about the ideas that someone comes up with, colleagues use in their work?PM: You invent something, you borrow something. This is a normal and unpredictable creative process. For example, I was discouraged from using actors for episodes staged with Soviet officials with whom life brought me closer.OS: I just wanted to ask about that. The head of Goskino, the director of the Lenin Museum and other important people turned out to be very convincing. Where did you find the actors for these roles?PM: I wanted to tell the details of Soviet life, so that it would be interesting for the public. I was looking for the truth, the authenticity. Not an easy task. It was difficult to find Russian-speaking and Russian-looking actors in Israel. But I found them and was very happy with them. A viewer asked where I had found real Soviet officials. She couldn’t believe they were actors.OS: The Soviet system broke those who did not want to respect its rules. In the film, you talk about those times in your life when you had to compromise. Is there anything you regretted later?
“Red Scarf”. Movie frame. courtesy picture
PM: I tried to separate what I was doing for me, for the soul, and what the practice of the studio ordered me to do. As much as possible, I tried to avoid official orders. There is an episode in the film where we are persuaded to shoot a film about the Lenin Museum with a hidden camera, like following the success of the film Look at the Face. We will select reliable and proven viewers for filming, the museum director promised. We dodged as best we could and insisted we couldn’t change the premise – we only film real people. You can’t do otherwise, and that’s it. Then it worked, we were left behind.OS: You remember that you weren’t allowed to enter capitalist countries for a long time. For what? What did you do wrong?PM: After receiving the main “Golden Dragon” prize at the Krakow Film Festival for the film “Just Three Lessons”, the Minister of Culture of Poland invited me to shoot a film in their country. I learned the language, the film crew was entirely Polish. I was young, single, and had an affair with a Polish girl, who became known to “who needs it.” I finished the film, I received an award at the film festival. But then when I wanted to go on tour overseas, they wouldn’t let me in. I wrote letters, complained to various authorities, to the Central CommitteeCPSU. It was then that I was called to Goskino, to the department of external relations. The official told me bluntly: you are a Soviet person and you are having an affair with a foreigner. What if she was a spy? So before perestroika, they wouldn’t let me go to the West.OS: Why did you decide to go to Israel?PM: In the early 90s, everything seemed to be going well. They started letting me go to the West, I became the head of a film studio. But when the putsch took place in August 1991, my wife said to me: you are going to be imprisoned, you talk too much. My wife, Marina Stolbova, worked all her life in television, was the editor-in-chief of the Ekran art studio. And we decided: that if the power can return, it is probably better that we leave. And look – the years have passed and, indeed, that power has returned.
“Red Scarf”. Movie frame. courtesy picture
OS: Do you think you achieved what you wanted in Israel?PM: Here I got the main thing – you can’t freeze in place. You always have to look for something new.OS: Did you manage to integrate into Israeli society?PM: No. But I managed not to lock myself into lifelong immigrant status. I made several films, including the film “Scene” about Russian-speaking actors who audition in an Israeli theater. It seems to me that everything is fine for me.OS: The end of the film is very touching, a sad New Year’s fairy tale about a boy who was in a hurry, but who was late for the Christmas tree.PM: This is not a fairy tale, but a true story that happened to me in my childhood. My daughter graduated from the film department of the university. By the way, my son is an operator, he graduated from VGIK, just like me. So, the girl was assigned to the university to come up with a short story. I told her the story of a boy and a Christmas tree, but she refused, the story seemed uninteresting to her. And when I discussed the script for The Red Scarf with my co-writer Volodya Beider, I firmly decided to include this story in the film. And, in my opinion, did not lose. It turned out touching, many cry at the end.OS: You actively use animation. What prompted you to contact her?PM: Without animation and without actors, the dramatizations would be boring and monotonous. Animation adds emotion and humor, enhances entertainment.
