【译林】纪录片制作是一种绝妙的乐趣 --访谈维塔利·曼斯基

“DOCUMENTARY FILMMAKING IS AN ABSOLUTE DELIGHT”: AN INTERVIEW WITH VITALY MANSKY

纪录片制作是一种绝妙的乐趣

--访谈维塔利·曼斯基

采访者、作者：安娜斯塔西娅·科斯蒂娜（Anastasia Kostina）

来源：《电影季刊》（FILM QUARTERLY 第77卷第3期）

Vitaly Mansky is an internationally recognized documentary filmmaker whose writings, films, and programming practice  have  actively  shaped  the  Russian  documentary scene since the early 1990s. As a filmmaker, he has directed over thirty documentary productions that impress in their thematic scope and stylistic diversity. As a public figure, he has been vigorously promoting documentary cinema in his speeches and writing. As the president of the ArtDocFest film festival, Mansky gave hundreds of independent film- makers an opportunity to reach a broader audience. He took this effort even further when he established ArtDoc. Media—an online platform that contains the entire catalog of films shown at ArtDocFest, with many of them available for watching.

维塔利·曼斯基是一位国际知名的纪录片制作人，自20世纪90年代初以来，他的作品、电影和节目制作实践活动一直积极塑造着俄罗斯纪录片的形象。作为一名电影制作人，他执导了30多部纪录片，这些作品以其主题的广度和风格的多样性给人留下了深刻的印象。作为公众人物，他一直积极地通过演讲和写作的手段大力推广纪录片电影。作为ArtDocFest电影节的主席，曼斯基为数百名独立电影制作人提供了更多的和观众们接触的机会。他将这一努力进一步扩展，创立了ArtDoc.Media——一个在线平台，收录了ArtDocFest上展映的所有电影的完整目录，其中许多作品可供观看。

Born in Lviv,  Western Ukraine,  in 1963,  Mansky moved to Moscow in the early 1980s to attend the Gerasimov Institute of Cinematography  (commonly referred to as VGIK), Russia’s oldest and most prestigious film school, where he studied cinematography. Mikhail Gorbachev’s perestroika, with its massive political shifts, made Mansky pivot toward documentary cinema,a form he felt was better suited to recording the country’s rapidly changing reality. In the 1990s Mansky combined documentary film making with work in television, popularizing documentary cinema among broader audiences through television programs like Real Cinema (Realnoekino), where he discussed the concept of reality through the lens of a particular documentary film, and Cinerise (Kinopod’em), where he presented various documentaries.  Increasing media censorship under Vladimir Putin prompted him to cease working in state-sponsored television  and  instead  dedicate  himself  to  independent documentary.

维塔利·曼斯基于1963年出生于乌克兰西部的利沃夫，20世纪80年代初移居莫斯科，就读于格拉西莫夫电影学院（通常称为VGIK），这是俄罗斯最古老且最具声望的电影学院，他在那里学习电影摄影。米哈伊尔·戈尔巴乔夫的改革开放政策及其带来的巨大政治转变，使曼斯基开始转向创作纪录片电影，他认为这种形式更适合记录国家快速变化的现实。在20世纪90年代，曼斯基将纪录片制作与电视工作相结合，通过诸如《真实电影》（Realnoe kino）之类的电视节目，向更广泛的观众普及纪录片电影，在该节目中，他通过特定的纪录片电影镜头讨论现实的概念，并在《电影崛起》（Kinopod’em）节目中展示各种纪录片。在弗拉基米尔·普京领导的媒体审查日益加强的背景下，曼斯基停止了在国有企业赞助的电视台的工作，转而致力于独立纪录片制作。

Fascinated with the possibilities offered by digital technology, with lightweight, inexpensive, and easily portable digital cameras providing unprecedented accessibility, Mansky catalyzed theoretical discourse about documentary in the digital age with his “Manifesto of Real Cinema,” published in 2005 in Film Art (Iskusstvo Kino), Russia’s oldest magazine devoted to film as an art form. In the manifesto, Mansky pledged his allegiance to the ideas of  DzigaVertov, whom he holds dear. (His film studio is named after the famous Soviet documentary pioneer.) Following the teachings of Vertov, Mansky called for the rejection of scripts and reenactments in documentary cinema, clarifying that although the filmmaker may participate in the film and provoke his subjects, any staging is unacceptable. He also rejected any stylistic restrictions for the filmmaker, explain- ing that to immerse oneself in the world of the protagonist, a filmmaker is allowed to use any filming method, including observation and hidden camera. He advocated putting reality before the quality of the image, saying that “sound, lighting, camera angles, and composition can be sacrificed to capture real events,” and asserted that there should be no limits on the duration of the film. His ideas provoked a swarm of responses from prominent documentary film- makers old and new and generated a vibrant theoretical debate about the form of documentary film.

沉迷于数字技术所带来的各种可能性，也得益于轻巧、低成本且便于携带的数字相机所提供的空前易用性，曼斯基推动了关于数字时代纪录片的理论讨论，他在2005年于俄罗斯历史最悠久的，专注于电影艺术的杂志《电影艺术》上发表了《真实电影宣言》。在该宣言中，曼斯基表示他将忠实于他所深爱的吉加·维尔托夫的理念。（他的电影制片厂即以这位苏联纪录片先驱的名字命名。）遵循维尔托夫的教导，曼斯基号召纪录片电影界摒弃剧本和搬演，他阐明，尽管电影创作者可以参与影片制作并激发拍摄对象，但任何形式的摆拍都是不允许的。他还拒绝了电影创作者在风格上的任何限制，认为为了深入主人公的世界，创作者有权使用任何拍摄手段，包括观察和隐蔽拍摄。曼斯基还提倡要将现实置于影像质量之上，声称“声音、光线、摄像机角度和构图都可以为了捕捉真实事件而牺牲”，并坚持认为电影的时长不应受到限制。他的理念引发了一众知名纪录片创作者（无论是资深还是新兴的）的热切回应，并引发了一场关于纪录片电影形态的理论热议。

The body of Mansky’s documentary work is as voluminous as it is diverse. He observed the slow, meditative life of a Russian village in Bliss (Blagodat’, 1996); followed Russia’s  pop  sensations t.A.T.u. throughout the world in Anatomy of t.A.T.u. (Anatomiya t.A.T.u., 2003); investi- gated the boundaries of morality among Russian youth in Virginity (Devstvennost’, 2008); zoomed in on the first three presidents of the Russian Federation in the trilogy Gorbachev.  After  Empire  (Gorbachev.  Posle  imperii, 2001), Yeltsin. Another Life (Yeltsin. Drugaya zhizn’, 2001), and Putin.  The Leap Year  (Putin.  Visokosnyi god,  2001); addressed  the  collective  Soviet experience in  Private Chronicles. Monologue (Chastnye khroniki. Monolog,  1999) and Our Motherland (Nasha  rodina, 2005);  documentedlife along the Trans-Siberian gas pipeline in internationally acclaimed Pipeline (Truba, 2013); provided the world with a glimpse of the totalitarian regime in North Korea in Under the Sun (V luchakh solntsa, 2015); scrutinized his own family in the wake of Russian-Ukrainian tensions in Close Relations (Rodnye, 2016); and revisited Russia’s recent political history inPutin’s Witnesses (Svideteli Putina, 2018). It is hard to pin down Mansky’s specific authorial style as he works across a variety of documentary approaches. His oeuvre encompasses found-footage compilations, contemplative observational films, dynamic political exposés, and participatory documentaries. He is a versatile documentarian who is not afraid to take risks and is constantly rein- venting his documentary style.

曼斯基的纪录片作品数量庞大且种类繁多。在《幸福》（Blagodat’，1996）中，他记录了一个俄罗斯村庄缓慢而富有冥思的生活节奏；在《t.A.T.u.的解剖》（Anatomiya t.A.T.u.，2003）中，他追踪了俄罗斯流行乐坛的 sensation t.A.T.u.全球巡演的足迹；在《童贞》（Devstvennost’，2008）中，他对俄罗斯年轻人的道德边界进行了探讨；在三部曲《戈尔巴乔夫，天堂》（Gorbachev. Posle imperii，2001）、《叶利钦，另一种生活》（Yeltsin. Drugaya zhizn’，2001）和《普京，闰年》（Putin. Visokosnyi god，2001）中，他详细描绘了俄罗斯联邦前三位总统的生平；在《私人编年史，独白》（Chastnye khroniki. Monolog，1999）和《我们的祖国》（Nasha rodina，2005）中，他讲述了苏联的集体生活体验；在备受国际赞誉的《天然气管道》（Truba，2013）中，他记录了沿西伯利亚天然气管道的生活；在《太阳之下》（V luchakh solntsa，2015）中，他为世界提供了一窥朝鲜极权制度的机会；在《亲人们》（Rodnye，2016）中，他在俄罗斯与乌克兰关系紧张的背景下审视了自己的家庭关系；在《普京的见证》（Svideteli Putina，2018）中，他重新观察了俄罗斯最近的政治历史。曼斯基的创作风格多种多样，难以归类，他的作品涵盖了素材搜集汇编、沉思性观察纪录片、动态政治揭露和参与式纪录片等多种形式。他是一位多才多艺的纪录片创作者，不畏任何可能的风险，始终在探索和创新自己的纪录片风格。

In addition to his film making practice, Mansky has contributed to the development of Russian documentary cinema through festival programming. In 2007,he founded the largest independent documentary festival in the country, ArtDocFest, which became a unique discursive space chal- lenging the media hegemony of the state. Throughout the 2010s, the festival provided a showcase for films dedicated to topics either utterly absent from or misrepresented in the mainstream media, including queer youth, political opposition, the Maidan protests, the annexation of Crimea, and the military conflicts in Donetsk and Luhansk. Expanding its horizons in 2014, the festival showed several films in collaboration with the Riga International Film Festival in Latvia. Although Mansky relocated to Riga the following year, he continued to operate ArtDocFest in both Moscow and Riga. Following the Russian invasion of Ukraine in February 2022 and the subsequent crackdown on indepen- dent media,he withdrew ArtDocFest from Russia the following April.

除了电影制作实践之外，曼斯基还通过电影节策划为俄罗斯纪录片电影的发展做出了贡献。2007年，他创立了该国最大的独立纪录片电影节——ArtDocFest，该电影节成为了一个独特的辩论空间，挑战了国家主流媒体的权威。在整个2010年代，该电影节为那些在主流媒体中要么完全缺席、要么被错误表述的主题提供了展示的平台，包括性少数、政治反对派、马德里抗议活动、吞并克里米亚以及顿涅茨克和卢甘斯克的军事冲突等等。2014年，这一电影节拓展了其业务范围，与拉脱维亚里加国际电影节合作展示了多部影片。尽管曼斯基在次年搬到了里加，但他仍继续在莫斯科和里加两地运营ArtDocFest。在2022年2月俄乌交战以及官方对独立媒体的管理进一步加强之后，他于次年4月从俄罗斯撤回了ArtDocFest。

In September 2022, Mansky was put on the wanted list by Russian authorities in relation to a defamation case initiated by the pro-Kremlin film director and the president of the Moscow International Film Festival, Nikita Mikhalkov. The case is believed to have been politically motivated, as Mansky has been a vocal critic of Russian actions in Ukraine since 2014. The director currently resides in Riga (where he moved after Russia’s annexation of Crimea), dividing his time between running IDFF Artdocfest/Riga, filming two new projects, and promoting his latest documentary, Eastern Front (2023).Co-directed with the Ukrainian film- maker Yevhen Titarenko, the film follows a brigade of volunteer paramedics who work directly in the war zone, providing a graphic depiction of the drastic consequences of Russian aggression in Ukraine.

2022年9月，曼斯基因一起由亲克里姆林宫的电影导演、莫斯科国际电影节主席尼基塔·米哈尔科夫（Nikita Mikhalkov）发起的诽谤案件，被俄罗斯当局列入了通缉名单。此案据信是出于政治动机，因为自2014年以来，曼斯基一直是对俄罗斯在乌克兰行动直言不讳的批评者。目前，曼斯基居住在里加（他在俄罗斯吞并克里米亚后搬到了那里），在管理IDFF Artdocfest、里加、拍摄两个新项目以及推广他的最新纪录片《东部战线》（Eastern Front，2023）之间分配时间。这部纪录片由他与乌克兰电影导演叶夫根·季塔连科（Yevhen Titarenko）共同执导，讲述了一队在战区工作的志愿护理人员，生动地描绘了战争带给人们的灾难。

The following  interview,  which  took place in  October 2023  at  the  Re/Framing  Eastern  European  Conference  at Princeton University, was conducted in Russian and translated into English by the author.

Anastasia  Kostina: What is documentary cinema for you—its  goals,  objectives,  motivations?  Why  are you doing what you are doing?

安娜斯塔西娅·科斯蒂娜：对你来说，纪录片电影是什么——它的目标、目的、动机是什么？你为什么要做你现在做的事情？

Vitaly  MansKy: This is an exhaustive question that could be our entire conversation.  Documentary  cinema  is  the author’s interpretation of reality. About twenty years ago, I wrote the Manifesto of Real Cinema. It wasn’t intended as such a revolutionary manifesto. I just wanted to record some changes in the documentary space, which coincided with the transition to digital. And some of my colleagues took it very literally, saying that I claim to directly trans- fer reality into the space of an audiovisual work. Of course not. Any editing is already a violation of reality. I joke quite often that if the founders of cinema had turned the camera 180 degrees, the first film in history would not have been the arrival of the train, but the people meeting that train. In other words, everything, absolutely everything, depends on the perspective of the person filming, including the interpretation of that very reality.

Now to the question of why, why me, and so on. Specifically, In ever dreamed, thought, or planned to make documentary films. Moreover, having been born in the Soviet Union, and more or less understanding the doom of life behind the Iron Curtain, I was looking for forms of existence that would allow me to reconcile myself with this order, so to speak. I lived in Lviv, which was a popular location for the Soviet film industry. People constantly came there to film [scenes set in] London, Paris and Munich. I was very impressed by Georgi Yungvald-Khilkevich when he came to Lviv to film D’Artagnan and Three Musketeers [D’Artanyan itri mushketyora, 1978] during my school years. And it seemed to me that if I was unlucky enough to be born here, then musicals, Sochi, the corps de ballet would provide some kind of escape from this Soviet existence.

When I was already studying at VGIK, just before the start of perestroika, a friend and I made the film titled A Portrait from Memory [Portret popamyati, 1984]. It was based on the real story of a woman who decided to flee the Soviet Union, was caught trying to cross the border with Finland, and ultimately hanged herself. It was about the impossibility of reconciliation between an individual and the society imposed on them, about escaping totalitarianism through suicide. The institute banned the film; we were forbidden from showing it even to our fellow students in the film workshop. And then Gorbachev comes, and suddenly everything is taken off the shelves, both films that had been there for twenty years and films that had not had time to gather dust. And I saw our film, which we shot in 35 mm, on the big screen. Iremem-berthe screening vividly. It was at the Novorossiysk cinema theater on the Garden Ring,a hall with seven hundred seats, and [there were] no less than fifteen hundred people in attendance. This atmosphere, this energy—it was like a string that was about to snap. It impressed me so much that I felt that this was what I wanted to do.

And after that, there was a turning point. After that, I only made documentaries.

Documentary film making is an absolute delight. That sounds selfish enough, I understand. But it’s a pleasure. Because, unlike journalism with its very shallow connec- tions, documentary film is a deep exploration into different societies, different destinies, different circumstances, and different spaces of history. You really get to live more lives than you were given.

维塔利·曼斯基：这是一个非常复杂的问题，可能足以成为我们整个对话的内容。纪录片电影是作者对现实的解读。大约二十年前，我撰写了《真实电影宣言》。我当初并未将其看做一个革命性的宣言。我只是想记录一些在纪录片领域的变化，这些变化与电影本身转向数字化相吻合。我的某些同事仅仅从字面上理解了我的观点，他们声称我可以直接将现实转移到视听作品中。这当然不是。任何编辑都是对现实的侵犯。我经常开玩笑说，如果电影先驱们把相机旋转180度，历史上第一部电影就不会是火车的到来，而是迎接火车的人们。换句话说，一切的一切，都取决于拍摄者的视角，包括对现实的解读。

现在来谈谈为什么，为什么我决定拍摄纪录片。具体来说，我从未想过或计划过要制作纪录片电影。而且，由于我出生在苏联，并且多多少少理解在铁幕后生活的绝望，我一直在寻找，可以说，让我能够与这种冰冷的秩序和解的一种生存方式。我住在利沃夫，那里是苏联电影业的热门拍摄地点。人们不断来到那里拍摄设定在伦敦、巴黎和慕尼黑的场景。我上学的时候，乔治·容瓦尔德-希尔克维奇来到利沃夫拍摄《达尔达尼昂和三个火枪手》，给我留下了非常深刻的印象。当时我觉得，如果我不幸出生在这里，那么音乐剧、索契、芭蕾舞团可能会提供某种逃离这种苏联生活的方式。

当我在莫斯科国立电影学院学习时，就在改革开放前夕，我和一个朋友制作了一部名为《记忆中的肖像》的电影。这部电影基于一个真实故事，讲述了一位决定逃离苏联的妇女，在尝试越过与芬兰的边境时被抓获，并最终自杀。这部电影讲述了个人与强加给他们的社会之间无法和解的问题，以及通过自杀逃离极权主义。电影学院禁止了这部电影；我们甚至被禁止在电影工作坊的学生面前展示它。然后戈尔巴乔夫上台，突然之间，所有的电影都被从架子上拿下来，既有那些存放了二十年的电影，也有那些还没来得及积灰的电影。我看到我们用35毫米胶片拍摄的电影在大屏幕上播放。我记得那场放映非常清晰。那是在花园环路附近的诺夫罗西斯克电影院，一个能容纳七百人的大厅，至少有一千五百人出席。那种氛围、那种能量——就像一根即将断裂的弦。这给我留下了如此深刻的印象，以至于我觉得这就是我想做的事情。

从那以后，我的人生出现了转折。从那以后，我也只制作纪录片。

纪录片制作是一种绝对的快乐。我知道这听起来很自傲。但这确实是一件乐事。因为，与新闻媒体那种非常浅层次的联系不同，纪录片电影是对不同社会、不同命运、不同环境和不同历史空间的深入探索。你真的可以体验到比你自己本身所赋予的更多的生命价值和意义。

Kostina: Since then, you have made more than thirty documentaries, not including your work for television. They are strikingly  diverse  in their themes, subjects, and style. You filmed remote Russian villages, pop stars, heads of state, your own family, North Korea, the gas pipeline between Russia and Europe. You made  found-footage  compilations, such as Private Chronicles. Monologue; pure obser- vational documentaries, like Pipeline; films where you engage  in dialogue with your subjects, such as Gorbachev. Heaven [2020] and Close Relations. How do you choose the form for a film?

科斯蒂娜：不包括你在电视台做的工作，从那时起，你已经制作了超过三十部纪录片。它们在主题、题材和风格上都非常多样化。你拍摄了偏远的俄罗斯村庄、流行歌星、国家领导人、你自己的家庭、朝鲜和俄罗斯与欧洲之间的天然气管道。你制作了汇编纪录片，比如《私人编年史，独白》；纯粹的观察性纪录片，比如《天然气管道》；还有你与拍摄对象进行对话的电影，比如《戈尔巴乔夫，天堂》（2020年）和《亲人们》。你如何为电影选择形式？

MansKy: I am generally a very conservative person, and my wife tells me I am boring because if  I like something, I stick with it, whether it is a certain dish or a specific type of pants. But when it comes to the cinema,I would be terribly bored repeating the same thing. If I have found something, if I have reached a conclusion, and I understand the mechanism,I will move on.

曼斯基：我通常是一个非常保守的人，我的妻子告诉我我很无聊，因为如果我喜欢某样东西，我就会坚定不移地选择它，无论是某种特定的菜肴还是特定类型的裤子。但当我涉及到电影时，重复相同的事情会让我感到非常无聊。但如果我找到了某种东西，如果我得出了结论，并且我理解了机制，我就会继续前进。

Kostina: Let’s turn to particular films. I really love your Private Chronicles. Monologue, a film that has always interested me in terms of form. How did you come up with the idea of putting together home videos  and  overlaying them with  a  dramatic fictional narrative? There is a constant debate among film scholars and critics about whether or not we can consider it a documentary film. What is it to you?

科斯蒂娜：让我们来谈谈具体的影片。我真的很喜欢你的《私人编年史，独白》，这部电影在形式上一直吸引着我。你是如何想出将家庭视频拼接在一起，并叠加一个戏剧性虚构叙事的创意的？在电影学者和评论家之间，关于我们是否可以将其视为纪录片电影的争论一直存在。对你来说，这又意味着什么呢？

MansKy: It seems to me that documentary cinema is less dependent on format than fiction film. Documentary has a wider range of tools and essentially no restrictions. That’s why there is animated documentary, dramatic documentary, reenactment. I am not a hostage to the film that Ienvisioned. I ’m ready to move through the film and sometimes end up with a completely different picture.

Monologue is my favorite film, despite the fact that I didn’t shoot a single frame in it. I was thinking about making a film about Soviet wars using newsreel footage excluded  from  official  reports. Maybe due to technology, maybe to the limits on film stock, but I noticed that the footage was a very formal visualization of the events recorded. There were no shots of people ’s eyes, there were no feelings. Around the same time,a friend of mine found a reel of film in a landfill and thought it might be of use to me. I remember very well the evening when I watched the found film, which turned out to be a home video of a family. I saw an image that practically threw me against the wall because of its energy: a young woman in a robe, holding it so it does not fall open, some children around, and she is looking into the camera, but it is quite obvious that she is not just looking into the camera, but into the eyes of a loved one. And I was struck by this look and the feelings so much that I realized there was cinema in this material.

I wanted to find out what happened to these people, where they were now, so I asked [the producer] Konstantin Ernst to show this footage on Channel One. Many people from completely different parts of the country thought they recognized themselves and called in. I decided to make a film. I had no idea what it would be like; I simply began to collect home movies about the Soviet way of living.

I quickly became completely lost in the material, for- getting what reels were from where, because in this footage, in addition to its similar general technical characteristics— film stock, grain, and soon—there was also atypical way of life. The apartments, kitchens, cars, clothes—all were standardized, whether the footage  was from Tashkent or Vladivostok, Moscow or St. Petersburg. I realized that this was the story, which was the story of my life too. Igor Yarkevich, who wrote the script with me, did not watch the home videos; I watched them and told him what we had. And then with his text, I returned to editing. And this is how the story was built, which was 60 percent based on my biography, 20 percent on his, and the remaining 20 percent inspired by people in the home videos.

曼斯基：在我看来，纪录片电影不像剧情电影那样依赖于格式。纪录片有更广泛的工具，本质上没有限制。这就是为什么会有动画纪录片、戏剧纪录片、搬演纪录片。我不是我最初构想的那个电影框架的俘虏。我愿意在电影中自由移动，有时最终会得到一个完全不同的画面。

《私人编年史，独白》是我最喜欢的电影，尽管其中没有我拍摄的任何一帧画面。我原本是想用官方报告中剔除的新闻短片镜头制作一部关于苏联战争的电影。可能是因为技术原因，也可能是因为胶片库存的限制，但我注意到这些镜头是对记录事件的非常正式的视觉化。没有人们眼神的特写，没有情感。我的一个朋友在垃圾填埋场找到了这盘胶片，认为它可能对我有用。我非常清楚地记得那个晚上，我观看了这盘胶片，它实际上是一家人的家庭视频。我看到了一个画面，它所蕴含的冲击力几乎能把我撞到墙上：一个穿着浴袍的年轻女性，她紧紧抓住浴袍以防它敞开，周围有一些孩子，她看着摄像机，但很明显她不只是看着摄像机，而是在看着一个爱人的眼睛。我被这种眼神和情感深深打动，以至于我意识到这盘胶片中有电影的存在。

我想知道这些人后来发生了什么，他们现在在哪里，所以我让制作人康斯坦丁·埃尔斯特在第一频道展示这段视频。来自全国各地的许多人都认为他们认出了自己，并打来电话。我决定制作一部电影。我不知道它会是什么样子；我只是开始收集关于苏联生活方式的家庭电影。

我很快就在这些材料中完全迷失了方向，忘记了哪些胶片是从哪里来的，因为除了它类似的总技术特征——胶片库存、颗粒度之外，这些镜头中还有一种非典型的生活方式。公寓、厨房、汽车、衣服——无论这些镜头是从塔什干、符拉迪沃斯托克、莫斯科还是圣彼得堡来的，都是标准化的。我意识到这就是故事，这也是我的故事。与我一起写剧本的伊戈尔·亚尔克维奇没有看这些家庭视频；我观看了它们，并告诉他我们有什么。然后带着他的文本，进入到剪辑当中。故事就是这样构建的，它60%基于我的传记，20%基于他的文本，剩下的20%则受到了数量庞杂的家庭视频的启发。

Kostina: Your film making career has coincided with a period of dramatic political  transformation in Russia. Your recent films Under the Sun, Close Relations,  Putin’s  Witnesses, and Gorbachev. Heaven form a sort of tetralogy investigating the ideology of totalitarianism. What prompted you to take this political turn?

科斯蒂娜：你的电影制作生涯与俄罗斯巨大的政治转型时期相吻合。你最近的电影《太阳之下》、《亲人们》、《普京的见证》和《戈尔巴乔夫,天堂》形成了一种关于极权主义意识形态的调查四部曲。是什么促使你转向这种政治题材？

MansKy: I am very selfish in choosing topics and do what interests me, following the themes that worry me. After age fifty, when the milestones that used to guide you start to fade into the background, what’s the main thing? Life. You understand that life is the only thing you have, and that there is nothing more valuable than freedom. And so I began to explore the question of freedom, unfreedom, the reasons why people agree to unfreedom.In Cuba, I made a film called Motherland or Death [Rodina ilismert’, 2011], about people who were adults at the time of the Cuban revolution and thus had experienced life in Cuba prior to Communist rule. Then I made a film about North Korea. These films turned out to be political, but that is a result of current society and the agendas imposed upon them. For me, they are less about politics than about exploring a worldview. This is true even of the films about Putin and Gorbachev. I made a film about Putin’s witnesses because they interest me—their acceptance, their silence, their unwillingness to resist.

曼斯基：我在选择题材时非常自私，我只做我感兴趣的事情，跟随那些让我担忧的主题。五十岁之后，曾经指导你的主体开始逐渐淡出背景，那么对你来说最重要的东西是什么？生活。你意识到生活是你唯一拥有的东西，没有比自由更宝贵的东西。所以我开始探索有关自由和不自由的问题，以及人们为什么愿意接受不自由。在古巴，我制作了一部名为《祖国或死亡》的电影，讲述的是在古巴革命时已成熟、经历过共产主义时期之前的人们的故事。然后我又制作了一部关于朝鲜的电影。这些电影最终变成了政治电影，但那是当前社会强加给人们思想的结果。对我来说，它们更多地是关于探索世界观，而不是关于政治。即使是关于普京和戈尔巴乔夫的电影也是如此。我制作了一部关于普京见证人的电影，因为他们吸引了我——他们的接受、他们的沉默、他们不愿意抵抗。

Kostina: As a member of a younger generation,I was particularly struck by one scene in the beginning of Putin’s Witnesses. You film your family on New Year’s Eve 2000  watching the televised address when Boris Yeltsin announced his resignation and the appointment of Vladimir Putin as acting president. We hear your wife’s voice off-screen, sounding very upset and angry about the decision. It’s as if, at this very moment, she can see the future of the country for the next twenty years. Before watching this scene, I had thought that this moment of political awakening happened in 2008 with the so-called presidential swap, when Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev became president and Putin became his prime minister.

科斯蒂娜：作为年轻一代的成员，我特别被《普京的见证》开头的一个场景所打动。你拍摄了2000年除夕夜你的家人观看电视转播的场景，当时鲍里斯·叶利钦宣布辞职并任命弗拉基米尔·普京为代理总统。我们听到你妻子在屏幕外的声音，听起来非常沮丧和愤怒，对这一决定感到不满。仿佛在这一刻，她就能预见未来二十年这个国家的前景。在看这个场景之前，我曾认为这种政治觉醒的时刻应当发生在2008年所谓的总统互换时，当时总理德米特里·梅德韦杰夫成为总统，普京成为他的总理。

MansKy: People with a lot of experience in life and a different vantage point instantly realized what was happening. This is the trick of documentary cinema, and I am not only referring to the scene with my wife, but in general to the mechanism of documentary. With the passage of time, shots begin to work in a different manner, sometimes revealing a completely different meaning. For example, let’s take this famous footage from political trials during Stalin’s purges when the public screams at the enemies of the state during the court proceedings: “Let’s strangle the scum! Death to the enemies of the people!”These obviously staged scenes are valuable precisely because of this staginess. Or take just an ordinary newsreel of a Communist Party congress in the Kremlin. Look at it! The shots speak to the decay of the system much more accurately, comprehensively, and convincingly than the attempts of the most outstanding documentary masters to hint at it through the Aesopian language of their poetic documentary films.

曼斯基：那些生活经验丰富且视角不同的人立刻就明白了正在发生什么。这是纪录片电影的技巧，我不只是在提我妻子那个场景，而是在一般意义上谈纪录片的机制。随着时间的推移，镜头开始以不同的方式发挥作用，有时会揭示出完全不同的含义。例如，让我们以斯大林大清洗期间政治审判中的著名画面为例，当时公众在法庭上对国家的敌人呼喊：“绞死这些垃圾！人民公敌万岁！”这些明显是舞台表演的场景，也正是因为这种舞台性而变得有价值。或者，只需看看克里姆林宫共产党大会的普通新闻短片。看看！即使是最杰出的纪录片大师通过他们诗意纪录片的电影语言，也无法和这些镜头相比，因为它们更准确地、更全面地、更有说服力地揭示了系统的衰败。