“Not at war! Russian director Kirill Serebrennikov was launched on Wednesday at the Cannes Film Festival, at the end of the presentation of his film Tchaikovsky’s wifein the run for the Palme d’Or.
I am fully convinced that the people of the culture have the ability to stop this war. in Ukraine, he continued to loud applause, surrounded by his actors and actresses after the screening that opened the competition in Cannes.
It will come, this end, it will come at a point and it will be peacehe added hiding behind his sunglasses.
A symbolic ascent of the stairs
Two and a half hours ago, the filmmaker and his team walked the red carpet, a very sober and highly symbolic ascent of the steps in the context of the war in Ukraine.
Last year, under house arrest in Moscow, Kirill Serebrennikov did not arrive in Cannes to defend Petrov feveralready in competition, or his film on Soviet rock in the 80s, Letoin 2018.
Known for his outrageous creations and his support of LGBTQ+ people, Kirill Serebrennikov, also a theater director, inaugurated the Cannes competition in a work that offers an intimate insight into the disastrous marriage of composer Piotr Ilitch Tchaikovsky.
Classic invoice
The film explores for 2 hours 23 minutes the life and suffering of Antonina Milioukova (played by a newcomer, Alena Mikhailova).
More classic than that Petrov feverbut without returning the spirit of Letothe film carries a truly romantic breath and a brilliant realization.
This is not a biography film, [Tchaïkovski] is not the main character. It is a film about some stage of his life and about a woman obsessed with himKirill Serebrennikov explained in an interview conducted in April in Berlin, where he is now based.
It shows her version of events and it is interesting, because Antonina Miliukova is a completely forgotten character.continues the director to whom this film belongs beginning of the long journey in the world of the composer of Swan Lake.
Resistance to the Sovietization of History
A few years ago, when Kirill Serebrennikov was looking for public funding for Tchaikovsky’s wifethe former Minister of Culture, Vladimir Medinsky (current head of the Russian delegation to the negotiations in Ukraine), We want to follow the soviet version of the composer’s life, he says. But this version is a terrible lie.
According to Soviet teaching, Tchaikovsky is a monument that has not suffered, with no private life, he says. For her, her intimate life remains the Russians do not know like [celle de] Chekhov, Dostoyevsky or Tolstoy.
If the composer’s homosexuality has been known for a long time, excerpts from Tchaikovsky’s letters, published without censorship for the first time in 2018, express his grief or his desires for men.
Antonina Miliukova’s role was reassessed
These passages were censored after his death, first by his brothers, then during the Soviet era.
Until now, many people did not believe in it and considered it an attempt to destroy the reputation of Russia’s best composer.said Marina Kostalevsky, professor of Russian at Bard College, New York, who co -published a collection of letters.
According to him, Tchaikovsky married Antonina Miliukova, a former student of the Moscow Conservatory, because he wants to be normal in the eyes of society.
For a long time, biographers blamed all of Tchaikovsky’s suffering on his wife, who called him mad – he himself called him a cobra – but now, the research is more nuanced.
Despite the brevity of their union – they will never separate – during this time the composer created one of his masterpieces, the opera. Eugene Onegininfluenced by this impossible relationship.
Source: Radio-Canada
