How they lived: at the “New Earth” film festival showed films about Dovlatov, Brodsky and Vagrich

Photo: russianamericanfoundation.org

How a World War II sapper conquered Hollywood, why many immigrants were not allowed into the United States in the late 80s, and how the brilliant Dovlatov lived overseas. During the three days of the Novaya Zemlya film festival, it was possible to get answers to all these questions. The main theme is the third wave of immigration to the United States, and each of the directors (both Russian and those who have been living in America for a long time) presented their documentary work about outstanding representatives of that era.

I wanted to understand my own history from childhood, but I made a whole chronology of immigration. Stateless is director Michael Drob's first film. He is a programmer by profession and has never made any documentaries before. He says that video has always been his hobby, and after a successful romantic film about his own wedding, it was also a part-time job.

His family immigrated from Riga to the USA when the boy was ten. But they were unable to get overseas right away - and for almost a year, Michael and his parents lived in Italy and waited until they finally received permission to enter the States. “People often ask me why I decided to make this particular film. This is my “White Card, in which I am recorded as a stateless person,” says Michael Drob.

Document 11-year-old Michael Droba. Photo: from the personal archive

Michael says that 20 years later, already in the USA, he was still wondering why they were not allowed into America for so long. And since there were many such cases, one big story began to come together on its own.

“I won a grant, with the money I was able to make a film. The amount was small, but there was enough money, because I did everything myself, only friends and my wife helped,” says Michael Drob.

Michael never received an answer to his original question. He says that during the third wave of immigration there were many times more people wishing to leave the Soviet Union than in previous periods, which is why migration officers had to issue refusals. “It turned out that refusals then simply depended on who conducted the interview - whether he liked you or not,” says the director.

If Michael Drob's work is a dozen stories of immigrants of the late 80s, then the rest of the films in the festival program were about specific characters. On the first day of “New Land” they showed Andrei Zagdansky’s film “Vagrich and the Black Square” (about the artist Vagrich Bakhchanyan) and the film “Demarche of an Enthusiast” by Sergei Kokovkin (about Sergei Dovlatov and his newspaper “The New American”). Next came the films of Edward Staroselsky and the work of David Grubin “Ilya and Emilia Kabakov.”

Both films are dedicated to the actors. “These are the pies” (about Mikhail Fishgoit) - an intelligence officer who, after the war, spent eight years in a Gulag camp, and after rehabilitation worked at the Moscow Art Theater School and at the Gorky Studio. And “Bob - the big dramatic sapper” tells about Boris Leskin, a Soviet sapper who, after immigrating to the United States, managed to conquer Hollywood.

Edward Staroselsky says that both actors now live in New York, like himself, so the films were shot in America.

“New Land” has been held in New York for the fourth year in a row, as part of the Russian Heritage festival. Films are selected in accordance with the overall theme of the entire festival.

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