Interview by Oleg Kusov. Exclusively to Vestnik Kavkaza
Interesting guests are always welcomed by Vestnik Kavkaza. Oleg Kusov talks to them not only about the Caucasus. Take My Word is a program which is recorded in video, audio and text formats.
- Today our guest is the film director, producer and scriptwriter Akim Salbiyev. Hello!
-Hello, Oleg!
-You came to this studio basically from the airport. You were flying from Vladikavkaz. I suspect you were not flying home to Ossetia for a vacation.
-I never spend vacations at home. I go there to do some work projects. This time I directed a performance on the main stage of the Vladimir Thappsayev North-Ossetian Academic Theater - it was "Solo for the Clock" by Oswald Zagradnik. It was my long-time dream. Oleg Efremov staged it in Moscow 40 years ago with the "stars" - Yanshin, Stanitsin, Gribov, Prudkin, Olga Androvskaya and very young then Irina Miroshnichenko and Vsevolod Abdulov. I had this idea for years. But now times are different and the problems of old people are of little interest in contemporary Russia, I had the chance to do it in Vladikavkaz. Zagradnik was translated into Ossetian. And his play was performed in Ossetian on the stage of an Ossetian theater and with French music.
- It is important that it is for an Ossetian audience.
- Not exclusively at all. For many years we have synchronous translation into Russian. So everyone could see it. There have been several performances already.
- I must admit that, although I am Ossetian myself, I used a translation. It is bad.
- Why, I also use a translation once in a while.
- I know our mother tongue much worse than you.
- When I am watching a historical play, and it is not the everyday Ossetian language, I use a translation because I want to know the exact meaning of the sentences.
- Is it your first experience? Your first work in the theater?
- You could say so, but you could say differently too. While at university, I took part in performances. Back then I staged Pushkin's "Mozart and Salieri", then "Oedipus Rex", "Horsefly" by Voynich, "Hadzhi-Murat", so I had some experience, but it was 20 years ago.
- And now you have a professional stage, professional actors and a picky audience. I am interested in how a director moves from film to theater. They are quite different.
- Yes, they are different muses. Cinema is the tenth muse and theater is theater. The thing is that current Russian cinema is not always interesting for me. The movies that are on at prime time on TV, what kind of Russia do they show? I don't know a Russia like this, people like this, stories like this. It is clear that the TV channels just use the money. And in the theater you are a director, you have a play and actors. Just like we are in the studio now.
- You can see through.
- And nobody can interfere, I don't have problems. We read the play many times, talk it through and then go on stage and play. This requires much less money, but you can see the director much better. The audiences judge you every evening, and you can feel whether the energy is going or not. And the movie is shot, cut, assembled and shown.
- And something is added on the computer.
- And I don't like this, because it is not a piece of art for me. And you will never know what the reaction was in this or that city. Theater is more difficult and you need to work like this in the cinema. The director has to work with actors before the shooting. There are many common things, but I think that theater provides more opportunities. Your performance can be bright, voluminous, different, but in film... Cinema is cinema.
- You mentioned a reaction. What was the reaction to your performance in Ossetia?
- It feels a little awkward to speak of it myself, but nobody else in the studio saw my performance...
- You have no choice.
- I have to say. First of all, I changed the name of the play, with the permission of the author. The playwright Oswald Zagradnik is alive and lives in Bratislava. He was very happy that I had decided to stage it. I called it "The Tower of Hope" because the story is about hope. Every Friday old people around 80 years old gather in the house of their friend Frantisek Abel to remember their past, invent different stories, they understand that someone cannot come next time. They want to know whom pani Konti will choose from all those people. She understands that life is coming to an end and they just want to stay together as long as possible. That is why I decided to call it "The Tower of Hope". At first I was thinking about "The Island of Hope" because the house of Abel is like an island, but it is nicer to look above, that is why I chose the tower. The reviews were good, professionals said so.
But the audience is more important to me. The audience spoke very sincere words. Today theater, like cinema, is about entertainment, that is why there are so many comedies in Russian theaters. But mine is not a comedy, it is a psychological drama with some melodramatic and comic elements. The audience was attentive, and this is important today. You can eat popcorn in the movies, or candies in the theater. But this was not the case. There was also a continuation. The theater proposed I do another performance. I think I will agree, because with my ideas it is difficult to find producers. Producers are interested in other movies that tell something unusual about Russia so that you can go to some festival in Europe where you will get your prize shaped like a fork or a pan, because Europe gives you money.
- And to watch the films about geographers who drank away their globes…
The full version of the interview with Akim Salbiyev can be seen in “Video”.
