By Vestnik Kavkaza
The first run of the film ‘Rasul Gamzatov. My Dagestan. A confession’ was held in the Moscow House of Cinema. The idea of creating a film based on the famous book by the poet 'My Dagestan' belongs to the head of the republic, Ramazan Abdulatipov. Before the run, the head of Dagestan admitted that he was looking forward to the premiere, despite the fact that he had watched the movie 13 times. “The main problem of modern Russia, and not only Russia, is the fight between culture and ignorance. And the development of Dagestan, Russia and the whole world depends on the winner of the fight. My Dagestani people have always been highly cultured people. They gave birth not only to Rasul Gamzatov, but dozens, hundreds of talented poets. Dagestan is a country of poets. If Azerbaijan is a country of singers, Russia is a country of poets. And being in a country like Russia, one needs great talent to become one of the best poets. We rob ourselves sometimes. We divide talented people, according to their nationalities, religions. It is wrong. It should not be like this. All these people are the legacy of our Russia, our culture," Ramazan Abdulatipov said.
The former head of North Ossetia Alexander Dzasohov (Gamzatov called him simply "my Sasha") said: “Everything that he said as a thinker, as a great poet, is extremely important for our life today. The Dagestanis appreciate their outstanding sons, for that we love Dagestan and love our great compatriot Rasul Gamzatov."
The Azerbaijani national writer, dramatist Rustam Ibrahimbekov, worked on the script together with Ramazan Abdulatipov. According to him, "it is very important that a broad audience will realize and feel how the great poet lived and how he viewed the time and the new time in which he lived for quite a long time. For me it is clear that if a country remembers its poets, then not everything is lost."
Work on the 90-minute film was started in 2003. Shooting took place in the poet’s native village of Tsada, as well as in Dagestan and Makhachkala. Directors and screenwriters created a film of confession of the great writer. The story is told in the first person and immerses the audience into the deep world of the outstanding thinker. The film is a discourse about the past and the present days of the Caucasus, about war and peace, about a person and Homeland. Gamzatov’s memories about his childhood, parents, first steps in literature are organically intertwined. People's Artist of the USSR Vasily Lanovoi, who was a friend of Rasul Gamzatov for many years, reads the narration.
The philosophical film met a deep response from the audience. "The most important thing is that your soul and your heart are involved, and you start to think about many things. So, many thanks to everybody who participated in this film," actress Regina Temir-Bulat told Vestnik Kavkaza.
"The associative array constantly brought me back to the present day and, not surprisingly, this parallel of Hadji Murad and Tolstoy about how people are really international, the soul is international. Today we saw the implementation of this international soul that knows no religious hatred or human enmity, it is much higher than that. The film urges this,” interpreter Ekaterina Sokhalskaya told Vestnik Kavkaza.
