Remembering Alexei German

The life of legendary film director Alexei German is celebrated by his friends and colleagues.

By Galina Stolyarova

The St. Petersburg Times

Published: February 27, 2013 (Issue # 1748)

ALEXANDER BELENKY / SPT A younger Alexei German in the offices of the LenFilm studios.

Renowned St. Petersburg film director Alexei German, who was a legend in his own time, died in the Military Medical Academy Hospital on Feb. 21 after a lengthy illness. He was 74.

Hundreds of people attended the secular memorial service at the Lenfilm studio and the subsequent funeral at St. Petersburg’s Bogoslovskoye cemetery on Sunday. They were there to bid farewell to the man behind the films “The Trial of the Road,” “Khrustalyov, My Car!” and “My Friend Ivan Lapshin.”

Alexei German was among the most revered figures in Russian cultural circles, whose courage, uncompromising attitude, unorthodox opinions and independent thinking won him the admiration of both colleagues and audiences alike.

“Alexei German’s art did not know the self-imposed boundaries that hamper the creativity of so many talented artists; the amazing inner liberty that this director possessed enabled him to create films that nobody else would ever dare to make,” said prominent Russian actor Oleg Basilashvili, speaking at the director’s funeral Sunday.

“If a director is able to produce even ten minutes of the quality of footage that Alexei German treated us to, that would already win them profound respect from the country’s cultural community,” said celebrated Russian actor Leonid Yarmolnik, who also attended the funeral Sunday. “To make a complete film of the caliber of Alexei German, one ought to be, well, another German.”

Alexei German made a mere handful of films, yet each and every one of them became a classic that made history.

One of his most famous works, “My Friend Ivan Lapshin,” is set in the1930s and is loosely based on the stories of his father, the Stalin-era writer Yury German, whose prose documented Soviet realities.

“I am not nearly as talented as my father; but my father was, well, flexible, and I am stubborn, and this makes all the difference,” Alexei German once said about his father.

Unlike his writer father, who survived by poeticizing the Soviet regime, Alexei German would often find himself in a state of opposition to the authorities.

When the elder German was trying to persuade his son to join the Communist Party, Alexei would offer tough resistance and fire back with words like, “The Communist Party has already taken the most precious thing that I have — you!”

In the past decade of his life, Alexei German often went against the grain and confronted the authorities with criticism of their bungling cultural policies and plans to deliver Lenfilm — Russia’s oldest and perhaps most venerable film studio — into private hands. German backed the plan that saw Lenfilm’s revival as an important studio making serious art films. The director’s crusade against the destruction of the studio, in which he was joined by directors Alexander Sokurov, Viktor Buturlin and others, succeeded largely owing to German’s perseverance.

Alexei German was at the heart of the creation of the St. Petersburg Kinoforum film festival, which he described as “a charger for the soul,” and was the event’s president in 2011.

“Art is the most important thing that humankind has,” German told The St. Petersburg Times in 2011. “Without it, people turn into a bunch of evil-minded communities that exist only to reproduce, fight and destroy nature.”

“The art of filmmaking is essentially the art of dreams. These dreams can contain anything: Love, horror, addiction, courage or humility. Anything is possible in this world but the most important thing is that films must be true to their mission, which is to make people’s hearts more sensitive, to enable them to be empathetic. A true film always speaks directly to the spectator’s heart, and it is for this opportunity that I am out there.”

Alexei German never completed his last film, “It is Hard To Be A God,” based on the fantasy novel by the St. Petersburg writers Arkady and Boris Strugatsky.

“He was a perfectionist, and he took time to finish his films. Yet perfectionism was not the main reason for the lengthy production process — he sought to show the truth,” said Lev Dodin, a prominent St. Petersburg director for the stage and the artistic director of the Maly Drama Theater, in his obituary for the German published in Ogonyok magazine. “This last work will still shine. But this will be a beauty of a particular kind — the grandness of an unfinished cathedral.”