The film "Into the Great Odessa" (2018) will participate in the special program of the Odessa International Film Festival.

director Alexander Brunkovsky script Alexander Brunkovsky, Susanna Alperina producer Susanna Alperina cameramen Irina Uralskaya, Violetta Agapova-Leonavichute, Viktor Yachmenev composers Vladimir Martynov, Dmitry Noskov Unspeakable - the first word for the story about the film "Into the Great Odessa" by Alexander Brunkovsky. The silence with which the documentary begins begins is a silent overture. Apparently, it was conceived that in the musical and verbal mosaic of the city the viewer did not lose the sound balance - the guarding letter of Odessa.

Odessa - one of the wonders of the world. This is the place where cicadas sing and, in spite of everything, the gardens bloom. Even before watching the movie, you go through how the beads, words and, unable to find the right one, ask the question: are the people of Odessa a nation or community? !! Here we have born Odessa citizens, scattered across different cities and countries: mysteriously watching, smiling, joking and remembering the city in which they breathed freedom and the spirit of friendship. Odessa - Tsarskoe Selo for the Intelligentsia. We must live in this city in order to gain Pushkin's love of life, and then, like the stone Atlanteans, stoically cherish memories of it either in Paris, Naples, Tripolis, or Moscow ... In the Moscow theater "Hermitage" you can also hear the intonation of Odessa : scenes from the play of Odessa Levite Michael "King Lear" - is the past, passed through the Odessa mentality of people who have to break away from Arcadia and watch the city from afar. To be a copter who looks at the city frankly, like Odessa, who is important that another laughs, admired and contacted the interlocutor.

Unusual view of the city and famous people who are reopened in the film: Mikhail Zhvanetsky, surrounded by readers, Eugene Golubovsky in the garden of the literary museum, Evelina Shats in the studio of her father-artist, Olga Ilnitskaya at the colonnade of the Vorontsov Palace, Oksana Fandera on the Black Sea boulevard ... On the Mediterranean coast, we see the performance of the artist Irina Ozarinskaya. Her performance is the blurring of boundaries. But Odessa citizens around the world are doing just this, connecting people and coming into contact with them through music, words and humor. The experience experienced in Odessa helps them to rush, like in the Antelope Gnu, freely, uninhibited and seek an answer to the question: "What is there beyond the sea? "The voices of Odessa citizens from different cities of the world sing praises to the place in which their roots. The intonation of their stories is reminiscent of an old instrument of stray musicians. Sharmanka twice flashes on the screen as a symbol of a self-learning tool for songbirds, reminiscent of Arcadia.

There are many sights in the city, but today, when there was a turning point in the life of Odessa, the director stops looking at the sculpture "Laokoon and his sons": the snakes try to capture the body in their arms, but the sealed moment of resistance gives hope. So gives hope and an olive grove - a symbol of peace and unity - planted by the people of Odessa in the Holy Land.

Send the untold words - apparently, this is the task set by the director Alexander Brunkovsky. This is the nature of this movie. Through an unusual combination of images, through the atmosphere of the city, through sounds, noises, music that sound from different parts of the city's oecumene.

As the heroine of the film, Dora Schwarzberg, says, people like notes are each in its own key, but must necessarily be related to others. By effort and result: touching notes, like people, are collected in the piercing symphony of the beloved city.

Alexander Brunkovsky was able to show the intersection with Odessa of the whole world space. This is acutely felt at the moment when the camera shoots Odessa citizens, whirling in dance in different parts of the globe. There is in this harmony and pacification.

Olga Ladokhina Photos courtesy of the author.