FORMULACIÓN DEL PROBLEMA, IMPORTANCIA Y ALCANCES

In understanding the transnational free-floating of the postcommunist era, it is important not to forget that migration from the former Eastern bloc was of a different mould. Among the Russian filmmakers who migrated during Soviet times, are, for example, Boris Frumin and Andrei Konchalovsky. These filmmakers work within an ‘accented mode’ of production where the transnational productions is “born out of moments of autonomy that are ephemeral but sufficiently real, such as the liminality of exile” (Naficy 2001, 45). Where this informs the interstitial or artisan mode of cinematic production for the displaced filmmaker, the filmmaking of Sergei Bodrov points towards a different mode. Rather than autonomy and liminality of exile, Bodrov’s trajectory is informed by voluntary mobility in working abroad. As Dina Iordanova states, post-Cold War European filmmakers “do not qualify as bona fide ‘migrant’ or ‘diasporic’, nor are they ‘exilic’ or ‘intercultural’ filmmakers, [but] more adequately described as ‘transnationally mobile filmmakers’” (Iordanova 2009). These filmmakers’ hallmark is that they have no obligation to one nation, compatriots, or diasporic

communities, preferring to work with people they think would benefit their projects. This mode of transnational, ad-hoc cinematic production “has become their modus vivendi” (Iordanova 2009). While this sets apart the postcommunist transnational

filmmaker from the exilic and diasporic one, the process of production has the values of 








way. And I am a professional” See V. Pritulenko, “Sergei Bodrov: Ya khotel sdelat’ gumannuyu kartinu,”

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Chapter
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the European co-production, in which film companies from several national contexts work together on a project.

Thus, in accounting for the filmmaking of Bodrov and his films, the investigation will have to relate to the European co-production, as described by various film scholars (Bergfelder 2005, Eleftheriotis 2001, Jäckel, European 2003). Here the issues are collaboration, exchange and founding practices. Included in this form are

postcommunist co-productions, which arise from the film industries of the former communist countries (Iordanova 2003; Jäckel 1997). Although similar to European co- production practices, the postcommunist co-production is distinguished from the European model in its immersion in reasserting the national. This is seen, in particular, in the two latter films of Bodrov, Nomad and Mongol, where the narration of the nation happens through the transnational, or the supranational, epic film.

As has been the case since the pre-sound era of European cinema, co-production has featured prominently in the development of European cinema (Eleftheriotis 2001, 48; Forbes and Street 2000, 8). Two key features of European co-productions will be

emphasised as vital for understanding the process of representing Russians abroad in the films of Bodrov. First of all, it is important to stress the genre dimension in this mode of production. Tim Bergfelder, who analyses the German involvement in co-productions of the 1960s, says that the main genre for co-productions “was essentially international chase stories, with an emphasis less on narrative consistency, but a kaleidoscope of visual spectacles and a multitude of generic attractions” (Bergfelder 2000, 149). An example would be the James Bond films, which replicated the formula of these popular

European narratives. The genre dimension of Bodrov’s films is also important to

highlight, because if genre is preoccupied with the allocation of popular audiences, then the representations of Russians abroad, as seen in Bodrov’s filmmaking, is equally formed out of a desire to address transnational viewers. This leads into the second feature of the European co-production that should be of concern: the cross-cultural dimension being worked out in a transnational context. If the co-production cinema looks across the national framework for audiences, through adapting generic

conventions, then the expression of these productions also differs from the films that speak to a national audience.

It is here that the anthropological perspective becomes important again: who is narrating and who is the narration for? These two simple questions will reveal a third: what is being said (represented)? It is hence meaningful to examine the who’s who of the co- productions that have representations of Russians abroad, because these films are formulated with the intention of being consumed on a transnational level. In this instance, the ‘translator’or ‘informant’ is Bodrov, and what is expressed through ‘his’ films is the result of Bodrov’s and others’ collective effort in addressing issues that would appeal to viewers who are not exclusively Russian. Thus, the representation of Russians abroad has been subjected to a process of transnational vetting, which builds on a shared common denominator of ‘imaging’ the Russian. The postcolonial

perspective should not be ignored either. Bodrov’s desire to ‘escape’ the moorage of the post-Soviet Russian film industry could well be described as a desire to shed his

Russianness and inferiority complex by becoming a postcommunist cosmopolitan citizen of the world. In this way Bordrov resembles his postcommunist colleagues, such

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Chapter
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as the Hungarian Isván Szabó or the Polish Agnieszka Holland, who fluctuate between the concrete postcommunist condition, from which they arise, and transnational global filmmaking, in which they thrive.

As Iordanova has noticed, these postcommunist filmmakers were already celebrated in the West at the point of the disintegration of communist Europe, and therefore had the benefit of being in the limelight when the West came searching. Tellingly, “while migration and diasporic existence figure as topics in the films of these directors, they can barely be described as their only or primary concerns” (Iordanova 2009).

Elsewhere, she has suggested the changing funding system might have favoured more experienced filmmakers (Iordanova 2002a, 525). This is true in the case of Bodrov, who, as was mentioned earlier, was already in the public eye by the late 1980s. By the mid-1990s he was very experienced in the working processes of the co-production, and has continued to make transnational cinematic productions that surpass, or in a

postcolonial fashion gloss over, the explicit migration narratives of his films. This makes Bodrov a prime example of a postcommunist filmmaker who transcends national boundaries and who makes cosmopolitan films where Russians feature predominantly, without connoting particular Russian values. This is what sets Bodrov’s filmmaking apart from other postcommunist attempts at making Russian co-productions.