An image opens Vostok nº20, French production by director Elisabeth Silveiro included in the Amalgama section of the La Cabina festival that opens this Wednesday's program 21/11. That image is of a train tracks. Vostok nº20 narrates life on a train that, for several days, covers the route between Moscow, the russian capital, y Beijing, in neighboring China. All kinds of characters meet on that train, a kaleidoscope of stories that serve as an intimate metaphor for a country very little known to most of us. And as companions on this journey, the voices of the passengers, the silence of a lonely landscape and the words of the poet of Russian origin Marina Tsevetaïeva (1892-1941) that in the voice of the actress Fanny Ardant they tell us about the distance, weather, of shadows and walls, of oceans that should not be disturbed. GERARDO LEON
How or why do you decide to enter the space of this train that guides your film?
Bueno, I was born in Russia, my father is Cuban and my mother is Russian, but I was born in Leningrad (Saint Petersburg, now). So, I met him because I went to the sea with my mother every summer and we spent three days on the train. I was little and I was fascinated by all the people who gathered there; how they spend three days sharing everything, playing guitar, etc. That had stayed in my head and, after, When I went to France at fourteen I always had this memory. At first, What fascinated me are the women who work on this train because they spend their entire lives there.. I made my dossier on this which gave me help in France, a small amount of money to start the project. With this I went with my camera operator and a sound girl to Russia.. At first I was thinking of recording a little, to see, but in the end we made the journey from Moscow to Beijing and with what I recorded I realized that I couldn't make the film about women because there was very little material.. But I also saw that I could do something more with those images, and there came the idea of poetry and everything else.
Wheels in a very narrow space. When I saw the images, I was thinking about those movies that take place inside a submarine. How did that space condition the filming?? for what you say, I understand that it was a very small team..
three people, Yeah. Yo, the sound girl and the camera operator. We live in these wagons 52 camas, very narrow. The space was very small, but the people were very used to us because we lived there, we slept there, etc. It was very difficult for the cameraman because we didn't have much space and that's why almost all the shots are fixed.. Bueno, I think there are two planes in which we follow someone, but nothing more. You had to choose the plane and not move.
And what was the relationship like with the people in that narrow space??
It's just that all the people wanted to talk, which to me was a bit strange because I thought Russians didn't have a good reputation as open people. But all the people wanted to talk about everything, express your thoughts. Sometimes we had to go from one car to another and it took us about three hours because a lot of people wanted to talk., they stopped us. In the end, I chose these characters that appear in the movie, but there were many more. They were the ones that had touched me the most.
Your film makes a social portrait of this world. Regarding the last thing you mentioned, What made you select some characters over others??
What I liked is that these characters have a kind of contradiction. For example, the woman who says she doesn't understand why people like to travel abroad, but in the end it is she who cannot travel. I liked that about these characters. Almost everyone has a double face because they have their own contradictions and I liked to show them.. Everyone talks about Russia in their own way and for me those portraits show a little what Russia is like., how they see it.
In your film you manage to establish a fairly intimate relationship with the characters. How do you get to that close intimacy?? Is it something as spontaneous as you tell me or is it something you worked on??
How we live on this train, people were not afraid of us because we were with them. Every morning I went to the toilet to wait in line and that means that on this train you get very close to people very quickly because you live with them., you share that train with them. I do not know, it's like a feeling. For example, The woman who says she has never left Russia lived in the upper bed and I was in the lower bed and when we had to go eat or something she would keep our things for us.. We had that neighborly relationship with her. The truth is that there was very easy contact. It may be because we were three young people and that gave them confidence..
The relationship between the passengers and the train equipment is very interesting.. You told me that your first impulse was to portray those people. I am struck by the relationship they have with a space in which they practically live..
The first impulse to make this film was the question, How can these women spend their entire lives on the train? Because they work like twelve days, They come home for a week and then leave again. That fascinated me about them.. I think they have a very strange relationship with the train because it is like a house and it gives this impression of freedom.. There was a woman who said (this is not in the movie): I get up and work, and at the same time it is my home; I don't want to get up and go to an office.. That gave him like a freedom, in that sense. Although it is also very difficult to work like this. I say women because there are very few men.. They have to do everything, They have to do the cooking for themselves in conditions that do not allow it to be done, they have to clean everything, they do a man's job, very physical and, at the same time, They have to have this relationship of respect with the passengers because there are very drunk men, For example. They have multiple facets and that was fascinating to me..
The film makes a kind of portrait of Putin's Russia. In fact, There is a character who says something like this when he claims that nothing has changed since Gorbachev, after the fall of the USSR. Was that something you were particularly interested in??
No, I think what interested me was this nostalgia because this train doesn't change.. For example, I showed this film at another festival and a French woman told me that she had taken the train fifty years ago, and looking at my film he told me that nothing had changed in that time. I think this train has something timeless, which was what interested me. But the truth is that I don't know Putin's Russia very much because I left Russia just when Putin came to power.. What I think about today's Russia scares me a little with nationalism and all those things that arise, censorship. But on the train I didn't feel Putin's Russia, I felt something else, something timeless.
Within that timelessness, little by little the characters are drawing a kind of essence of the Russian character. A character that has something surreal. For example, when those characters tell how in the middle of the steppe a woman can appear with shopping bags and you don't know where the supermarket is.
I like paradoxes and Russia is a country of paradoxes. On this train you can see how the law works. Normally you can't smoke, you can't drink, but everyone does it. What I liked were those paradoxes, it's not logical.
I get the feeling that your camera is like a visitor's vision.. There is an intimacy in what you tell, but at the same time you keep your distance from those passing by.
It may have been the assembly that established this distance. I wanted poetry [recited] in French because I wanted those poems to express what I feel about Russia, the questions I have or the feelings. But of course, I can't write that well and I loved what this poet had done.. And for me it was very important to establish this distance because the French made the film not Russian., Russian. In the assembly we have assembled this puzzle. as you say, this distance and, at the same time, that proximity, It has to do with the way of editing the images that has caused that sensation.
Tell us about the relationship between words and images. Why did you choose those specific poems and this author?? What were you looking for with that relationship??
This poet was exiled, He lived in Paris and when he returned to Russia he committed suicide because it was Stalin's Russia.. For me this woman represents freedom and I find her words very interesting.. They talk about very universal things, but, at the same time, they are about freedom, of love, of nostalgia, and I liked that. With this I did not want to respond to the interviews. At first I wanted to express the thoughts of the passengers, but then I realized that what I wanted to do was express my own thoughts through this poetry. So, poems do not answer what people say, It's more like a philosophical reflection that sometimes goes with the images. For example, when a poem talks about windows, we add the windows to the image. But there are poems that do not tell the image.
What was working with Fanny Ardant like when reciting those poems??
I sent her my dossier telling her that I wanted to do this with her and she said yes immediately.. We worked on emotions. I knew more or less what images I wanted to put over these words and we worked on the rhythm. I told her faster or she told me I could do it faster or slower.. We did like an acting job. What I mean is that you can read a poem in a thousand ways and we did many tests to obtain that rhythm. Fanny Ardant is a very generous woman. She gives many options, He made me many proposals and then I could choose the one I liked the most.. For example, In one case I told him to think that, if I had Stalin in front of me, how would the poem say. It's the last poem about nostalgia. Fanny was excited by this poem. I can't say that I directed Fanny Ardant. I went with my ideas and Fanny made me many proposals and, then, in the assembly, I had the rhythm options.
Since you mention it, I would like you to tell us about the sound work. Your movie has something like a long musical theme. There are almost stanzas, the voice of the characters, then you go outdoors where you can't hear anything.
For me, sound is very important because it gives the structure of the film.. With the sound editor we did this job of separating the environments, There are silences in which you cannot hear the train, There are parts in which we worked on the sound like a dream and we could invent things. The train was like music. A music that changes because time changes, things change. That train music was very important. At the same time, There are also these spaces in the train where we played to create an atmosphere. With poetry we found it very interesting to leave the real world to go somewhere else.. We have done a lot of work on the sound, make assembly of things that did not exist. For example, There is a woman who is reading a magazine. There is a glass that moves and we played the sound of that glass. That gives life to the plan.. It was a job of contributing the small sounds that create life on the train to create this universe.. Not always being in reality, escape from her.
As you have told me before, your film has already been through other festivals. What has been the public reaction??
People are very enthusiastic. People like the movie or, at least, makes you think, reflect. Each time the questions that arise are very different. Bueno, There are two or three questions that always come up, but then everyone asks their own things, depends on the festival. For example, people tell me they want to travel on this train, there are people who ask you what to eat; people ask me things like that, non-functional, but they want to go and they want to know how things happen, and that makes me laugh because my film wants to talk about other things. It's fun to see how interested everyone is.. For example, There are economics people who ask me things about the economy in my film or why I haven't filmed the Chinese much.. Everyone has their concern.
Apart from that curiosity you had about that world of women who work on the train, once the movie is over and without revealing anything, What would you say is the core?, the center, what you wanted to express? That is to say, one thing is the object, what you show, the facts and the characters. But, What is that general impression that attracted you to that world that is above everything and that you wanted to highlight especially??
I think he wanted to talk about the weather. When I say that my film is timeless, I believe that what is felt in the film is time.. The time that passes and the things that happen. That's why when the movie opens it's in motion and when it ends it's also in motion.. This time until we reached the destination is what interested me. If I talk about my film like this, I think this is the issue: how we pass the time. I am the first editor of the film and I had not felt the time because, for me, there were very obvious things. After, my editor told me that those things were very obvious to me, but they were not for the people because they do not know that train. So, we did all that work on time, because of the pace of the movie, but also as a metaphor for the passage of time.
