Russian Documentary at the Turn of the 21st Century

Abstract

The essay analyzes creative problems of the screen language
of Russian documentaries at the turn of the 21st century in the context of the
changed system of film production and promotion, as well as the changed
paradigm of relations between the author and the hero and the evolution of the
expressive methods of the documentary film which took place in that period.
The essay reflects on the problems of the development of Russian documentaries
at a crucial time when the issues of the survival of the documentary, so acute
in the 1990s, have been overcome and are now bringing to the fore creative
searches exploring essential contemporary phenomena. The author sees these
innovations in the new concept of the documentary hero and in the formation
of other authorial tasks and techniques aimed at capturing the uniqueness of
the philosophy of human existence in the circumstances of a new social and
psychological reality. Analysis of such films as Passengers of the Last Century,
Solzhenitsyn. Life Is Not a Lie, Starling, David, Sorry for Living, Just Life, Live and
Rejoice and others reveals the problems of the “homo historicus”, the relationship
between the author and the hero, the new interrelationship between the ethical
and the aesthetic, and the specifics of a human being’s self-realization in a
dialogue with the author. At the same time, the essay emphasizes the continuity
of the creative searches by documentary filmmakers of different generations in
mastering the "human material" of the new reality