Vodka Lemon

[crimson]

В последнее время несколько человек (неармяне) говорили мне про этот фильм. Причём картинка которая у меня сложилась немного противоречивая.

Мне было бы очень интересно, видел ли кто из вас этот фильм и какие впечатления уже сквозь призму восприятия человека который сам жил в это время в Армении (насколько я понял фильм про пост-Советскую Армению).

Заране благодарю. На всякий, тем кто о фильме и не слышал вот линк

http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0379577/

[Karmir]

Из газеты "Азг": http://www.azg.am/palm/?lang=RU&num=2003092707

ФИЛЬМ, СНЯТЫЙ В АРМЕНИИ, ПРИНЕС ПРЕМИЮ НА ВЕНЕЦИАНСКОМ КИНОФЕСТИВАЛЕ

Снег чувствуешь, как будто сам был на съемках фильма -Vodka Lemon-, фильм который имеет дух параджановского искусства. Этот новый фильм гражданина Франции, курда по происхождению Хинера Салема про неожиданную любовь уже пожилых людей. Лирический сюжет переплетен с самыми сложными состояниями человеческой психологии. Эта киноистория не только про курдов. В фильме армянский и курдский языки слышатся бок о бок, и порой может создаться такое впечатление, будто фильм про армянскую жизнь.

Это ошибочное восприятие стало особо замечаться в период с 27 октября по 6 сентября на Венецианском кинофестивале, где фильм «Vodka Lemon» завоевал гран-при в номинации «Обратное направление».

На фестивале и на показе этого фильма присутствовал архимандрит Ордена Мхитаристов (Венеция) Арутюн Пзтикян:

- В этом фильме было что-то светлое. Не поняли, как начался, как завершился. Титры были на итальянском, однако путались между армянским и курдским. Создалось такое впечатление, что у курдов есть красивая страна и красивые места. Я часто повторял, чтобы не путали - это Армения.

Мы же добавим, что в последнее время курды часто «путают» историческую и даже современную Армению с «Курдистаном».

Фильм был снят в курдонаселенных деревнях Апаранского района Рйа Таза и Авшен, и в съемках участвовали как курдские, так и армянские актеры - Ромик Авинян, Лала Саргсян, Рузанна Месропян, Чахал Кариелашвили и другие.

Продюсер фильма - армянская компания «Парадиз», вместе с которой в съемках фильма участвовали итальянские, швейцарские, французские компании. Фильм с 20 сентября должен был быть показан в кинотеатре «Москва».

Этот Фильм, созданный на киностудии «Dulcine-films», вероятно будет участвовать и в других известных фестивалях.

С.МЕЛКОНЯН

[Karmir]

http://www.tamtamcinema.it/film.asp?lang=eng&id=849

Snow is falling. We are in the post soviet Armenia. Hamo is a handsome sixty-something widower, living with his alcoholic son and his beautiful grand daughter. Hamo’s sole possessions on earth are seven dollars a month for military pension, an old armoire, a broken soviet television and his military suit. To be able to live, Hamo decides, with the go-ahead of his wife’s portrait hanging on the wall, to sell his old armoire. He carries the furniture on his back and heads to the village nearby to put it up for sale at the daily fair. On the road, Hamo looks like a snail man, carrying his gigantic cupboard on his back. Later, Hamo is at the cemetery, sitting on his wife’s grave. He looks at his portrait engraved on his late wife’s gravestone. The stone is only engraved on one side, waiting nothing but Hamo’s death to be completed. A little further away, Nina a beautiful fifty year old widow, is sitting on her husband’s gravestone. She looks at his portrait engraved on the stone.

In the old bus bringing them back to their villages, they are sitting only two rows apart. Hamo looks at Nina. She glances back. Then they look outside. The bus is on an endless road crossing through a huge landscape where everything is white but the stones from this country.

When returned, there is great news for Hamo ; a letter from his son from Paris is waiting for him in Yerevan. The village is buzzing ; « the envelope must be filled with 100 dollar bills ! » the villagers think. But Hamo’s thoughts are set on the beautiful stranger from the cemetery.

To go to Yerevan, Hamo must ride the side car of Romik, the village’s chief. The old soviet bike does not start and the whole village has to push behind him to make it start.

Arrived in Yerevan, the letter doesn’t contain any money...

[Karmir]

"International Herald Tribune": http://www.iht.com/cgi-bin/generic.cgi?tem...rticleId=109375

'Vodka' with a tryst, in Venice 

Roderick Conway Morris IHT

Wednesday, September 10, 2003 

 

VENICE When filming in Armenia four years ago, a refugee Iraqi Kurd director, Hiner Saleem, discovered that: "When you're told 'Problem nyet,' it means there will be a lot of problems ahead. When you're told, 'Just a minute,' it means two or three days. When you're told, 'Tomorrow,' it means never." He added: "After the first day of shooting, I promised myself that I would never come back here for professional reasons."

Saleem changed his mind, returning this year to the former Soviet Republic to make "Vodka Lemon," one of the last entries to be shown in the Upstream competition of the Venice Film Festival and which won for him the San Marco prize for best film in the category, which showcases new talent.

"Vodka Lemon," set in a Kurdish village in Armenia amid snow-covered mountains, follows the tragicomic fortunes of Hamo, a retired and widowed Red Army officer, his loser of a son and pretty granddaughter, who is to be married to a Russian. The collapse of the Soviet Union has left everybody in the village more or less destitute. As Hamo says: "Before we had everything but freedom. Now we have freedom and nothing else." Unable to support himself and a tribe of unemployed dependents on his $7-a-month pension, he begins to sell off his remaining treasured possessions.

Meanwhile, on his regular visits to his wife's grave, Hamo encounters Nina, a demure, but alluring Armenian widow, who comes to tend her husband's grave. Nina is in similarly desperate financial straits, trying to make a living tending a freezing, wind-swept roadside stall selling bottles of the "Vodka Lemon" of the film's title. Slowly, and in a most courtly manner, a romance between Hamo and Nina begins to blossom.

Saleem recruited locals to play in the film and their charm, dignity and resilience in the face of deprivation is impressive, not to mention their hitherto untapped acting abilities. The tale is often funny, without trivializing the harsh realities, and brilliantly captures those surreal vignettes familiar to any traveler to this part of the world. And despite the problems these people face, the final mood is unexpectedly uplifting and optimistic. As Saleem himself has commented: "I consider all Armenians to be magicians, as I don't understand how they succeed in surviving. I gather they don't understand either."

Another casualty of the fall of the Soviet Union was the Russian film industry, whose output has been reduced to an uncertain trickle. But Russia showed itself resoundingly back in form with "The Return." This in-competition debut full-length feature, directed by the Siberian-born Andrei Zvyagintsev, and scripted by Vladimir Moisinko and Alexander Novotosky, justifiably scooped up both the Golden Lion for Best Film and the Luigi de Laurentiis prize for best first feature.

"The Return" is the story of two young brothers, Ivan (Ivan Dobronravov) and Andrei (Vladimir Garin), whose father (Konstantin Lavronenko), absent for more than a decade, suddenly, without explanation turns up again. Where he has been and what he has been doing, we, like the boys, can only guess at. This taciturn and rather frightening figure offers to take the boys away fishing for a few days, a proposal they accept with some trepidation. Ivan, in particular, is full of resentment that this man has abandoned them for so long and, as the days go by a battle of wills develops, revealing the father's violent tendencies.

After a long drive, the three arrive at a remote lake buried deep in virgin forest, and the father fixes up an old boat mysteriously beached on the shore, as though waiting for his return to this spot, to take them to a deserted island. By this time there is a palpable sense of unease in the air, and a feeling that something untoward is about to happen.

The narrative has "film noir" elements, blended with suggestive visual references, ranging from Mantegna's "Dead Christ" to American hyperrealism, none of which, however, is overplayed. The result is an original and disturbing film. Sadly, Garin, a very promising young actor, died in an accident on the lake where the film was shot a couple of months afterward.

The Russian film's brace of prizes was an almost universally applauded choice, except among a section of the Italian film and media establishment, who had pinned their hopes on Marco Bellocchio's "Buongiorno, notte" (Good Morning, Night). Although this film was awarded a special prize for "an individual contribution of particular note" for its script, the director and a cohort of sympathizers decamped, apparently in a huff, back to Rome before the closing ceremony, leaving one of its hapless stars, the popular Luigi Lo Cascio, to collect the award.

"Travelers and Magicians," written and directed by Khyentse Norbu, was shot entirely in the wonderful scenery of the Himalayan kingdom of Bhutan, until recently accessible to very few foreigners. This delightful film, played with panache by nonprofessional actors, has the distinction of being directed by the third incarnation of the lama of one of Tibet's most important monasteries.

The story begins as a kind of Himalayan road movie, as Dondup, a dissatisfied young civil servant who has been posted to an isolated community, takes leave with the plan of emigrating to the United States, "the land of his dreams." Hitchhiking and walking, he falls into the company of an old farmer, a Buddhist monk, a maker of rice paper and his pretty daughter.

When this party stops to rest, the monk relates an intriguing legend, artfully framed to make Dondup reconsider whether he will really find fulfillment and happiness beyond the land of his birth.

The ironies of a young man already living in what many would see as one of the last real oases of peace and harmony on earth imagining America as his Shangri-La, are nicely and humorously elaborated. And perhaps we, like Dondup, can pick up a little wisdom along the way.

[Karmir]

http://www.noyan-tapan.am/eng/armenianstod...ue04-10-eng.htm

"VODKA LEMON" FILM OF KURDISH FILM-MAKER HINER SALEM SHOWN IN "MOSCOW" MOVIE-HOUSE FOR THE FIRST TIME

YEREVAN, February 9 (Noyan Tapan).  The premiere of the "Vodka Lemon" film of Kurdish film-maker Hiner Salem was shown at the "Moscow" movie-house for the first time on February 8. The film was awarded with the "San Marko" grand prix in the "Against the Stream" nomination during the 60th international cinema festival that was held in Venice in 2003.

Taguhi Karapetian, the Deputy Director of the Movie-House, said that the "Vodka Lemon" film was first shown in Venice and was the object of attentions of cinema critics.  The European press spoke about this film many times.

Film-maker Hiner Salem mentioned that first he was in Armenia in 1990, when he shot his "Hope Traders" film, and the scenario of the "Vodka Lemon" film was written about Armenia.

"Armenia is like my Homeland - Kurdistan, which I also want to see soon after so many years. The heroin of the film is like my mother. I think all the Armenians are miracle-workers, because I can't realize how they manage to survive. I think they also don't realize. They also see their life in optimistically," said Hiner Salem. He mentioned that he loves Armenia and will continue to shoot films about Armenia and Armenians.

The film was shot in Armenia, France, Italy and Switzerland. Actors Romik Avinian, Lala Sargsian, Ivan Franek, Armen Marutian, Ruzanna Mesropian, Aramo and Vahagn Simonian are stars of the film.

The fill will be on at the "Moscow" movie-house for two weeks. "Vodka Lemon" will be shown in the Scandinavian countries at the end of the month. It will also be shown in Russia, the Czech Republic, in South America in spring.

[Karmir]

http://2003.novayagazeta.ru/nomer/2003/67n/n67n-s26.shtml

…Первый кадр. По ледяной дороге едет кровать с железными шишечками. На ней — больной старик под одеялом, в меховой шапке. Доехав до места, достает дудку, начинает играть нечто заунывное. Это похороны. Так начинается лента «Лимонная водка». В значительной части фильма говорят на русском. Курдский режиссер Хинер Салим снял фильм про постсоветскую Армению, полагая, что она как две капли воды походит на его родину. Это абсурдистский реализм. Или реалистический абсурд. Как хотите. Это сегодняшняя действительность.

      История про вымерзающую, голодающую деревню, потерянную в снежных горах некогда благополучной страны. Главный продукт изобилия — лимонная водка, которая тоже скоро закончится вместе со светом и газом. По укатанной дороге ездит единственный разбитый автобус, водитель которого вместе с Сальватором Адамо распевает «Падает снег». Вся деревня ждет денежной помощи от сына одного из селян, уехавшего в счастливую жизнь: в Париж. Все надеются на эти сто долларов, как на манну небесную. А пока герои потихоньку распродают все, что осталось у них от прошлой жизни.

      В финале приходит письмо из Франции. На фото — счастливое лицо юноши на фоне Эйфелевой башни. В письме он просит у старика отца… денег. Будет и эпилог. Герои раздумают продавать последнее, что у них осталось: пианино. И уедут, наигрывая что-то ностальгическое, по ледяной дороге. Будет и «манна небесная» — густой снег, как в песне Сальватора Адамо, как в заповеди Рене Клера: «Кино — лишь то, что не может быть рассказано».

[LeoMins]

Режиссер этого фильма Курд живуший в Париже и фильм про курдов. Хотья актеры в основном армяне. Он уже снял один фильм в Армени, это второи. Первое назiвалось : Le Passeur de reve.