Film critic Zara Abdullaeva has a sharp and soaring mind. 

She doesn’t give direct answers but tries to motivate her readers and those with whom she’s speaking to think about (to criticize, protect) together the painful issues that arise in both Russia’s and Armenia’s media and art.

According to Abdullaeva, what’s important is to be interesting to yourself and not to adapt to the audience, the artist, or (god forbid) those paying for art. But that is the most difficult. She admits that in today’s Russia, that media that tries to generate ideas, in particular, is in a very difficult situation. While art that moves minds is confronted with direct or indirect barriers. 

Obviously, cultural and critical analyses have been greatly reduced in Russian media (it’s the same in Armenia). Why is art, in particular, considered unimportant?

In Russia now, it’s not possible even to print articles, as the entire media industry is controlled. In many newspapers, the culture sections are either compressed or removed. Those magazines and websites that try to offer serious cultural critique might be called kamikazes. The monthly magazine Kinoart, for example, survives only because the chief editor every day battles a struggle that seems will be the final struggle of [his] life. 

The reason is quite simple: a reflexive, critical view is dangerous for the ruling authorities. 

All the platforms writing about art in Russia are barely breathing; some websites survive through crowdfunding, but the majority is forced to shut down. While the culture sections of major newspapers are being reduced. People don’t know where they can publish their articles. 

Say you write a text about the Venice festival, but it turns out that the conventional Alla Pugacheva has once again married or divorced, and you discover that your text was reduced, while that news was considered the top story. 

It’s strange that all cultural projects that generate energy and discourse are lost in the abyss and leave no mark on the public. It’s the same in Armenia but more pronounced in Russia. 

Yes, unfortunately, that’s true. Now in Russia, only propaganda is viable. A few days ago, I discovered which documentary film productions the Ministry of Culture will fund next year. I was stunned. Do you realize that the ministry’s list includes special subsections that explain what is patriotic cinema? Just last year, no one could even imagine that we would find ourself in such a foolish position.

“If there’s no demand for ideals, ideals become not only useless, but also ridiculous. Ideals rot, becoming either conjuncture or ambiguous attachments.”

Can’t the myth that a film might be bad but have value since it’s patriotic be dismantled through critical texts?

Idle talk is so great that it seems the important things are lost. 

I made an interesting observation after watching the documentary Hero Pioneers. Few in Russia liked the film because it seems to most people that it’s based on nostalgia, but actually it’s about something completely different. An idea.  

The 35–40–year-old generation, which is successful but at the same time lives with a feeling of evasive emptiness. As background, shown is how these people were pioneers [members of the Young Pioneer organization of the Soviet Union] when they were young and dreamt of heroic deeds.

Many said that was a lie, but this film is about not only Soviet, but also general ideals. Actually, there’s nothing more horrific than shooting idiot patriotic films. What’s interesting was this approach, which followed the existence and disintegration of personal ideals. Yes, this is not a documentary, but rather a mythicized film. But if film viewers at least read Turgenev’s Mumu, they will sense the film’s subtext.

You realize that if there’s no demand for ideals, ideals become not only useless, but also ridiculous. Ideals rot, becoming either conjuncture or ambiguous attachments. 

To what extent are access to information and freedom of the internet able to alleviate mighty Russian propaganda?

Of course, the internet is a free space, in which you can throw, fill, or pour whatever you want, but that freedom is an illusion because it’s directed. The internet is a polyphonic flood to such a degree that deciding or choosing what’s important is impossible without being guided (even unwittingly). It’s the same garbage bin…

And I think the internet didn’t justify the expectations we all had. Don’t you think?

It seems to us that the internet is the railway, the tunnel — in a word, the place — where emissions won’t pollute but, the opposite, contribute to cleaning the air. But that didn’t happen.

Of course, god forbid, the internet becomes blocked in Russia as it is, say, in China. Already, being at different festivals, I hear the same question from fine educated and talented youths: didn’t they block your internet yet? Can you imagine, they don’t rule that out. And after that question, I feel like a crude monster because even if you haven’t done anything wrong, you’re still responsible. 

You’re responsible because you’re part of that space, and if you have at least one fold in your brain and your heart muscle still works, you can’t not feel responsibility for those disgraceful things that happen in your country. That’s how it seems to me. But, perhaps, not everyone thinks like that. 

For us, a fresh source is the diaspora, which is diverse, multilingual, and multicultural. 

“What is horrifying is that Russia’s ruling authorities, putting pressure and censoring performances, films, and books, deprive us of the right to critique. They put pressure on artists while we perverse [them]”

There’s the impression that the dialogue between the diaspora and Armenia isn’t as smooth — whether you like it or not, there are cultural cliches. 

It’s wonderful, if directing the diaspora’s potential toward projects that Armenia needs works.

Let it not seem strange, but it would be good if in countries with Armenian diasporas you have your own agencies, which can engage in dialogue and attract people on an intellectual level. Of course, without money it’s difficult, but I assure you, though money is a good thing, it’s not defining. Nonprofit projects might be much more effective.  

To do this in Russia now is impossible. Recently discussed at Sochi’s Kinotavr [Film] Festival was how the classics should be interpreted in cinema. Everyone was attacking new and not-standard critics. I was sitting down, listening, and it seemed that I was in the year 1937. I said, of course, we all understand that the culture minister and all the other buddies are not immortal, but what was horrifying was that they, putting pressure and censoring performances, films, and books, deprive us of the right to critique. And it turns out that we, critics, begin to defend artists who have been pressured [by the authorities]; meanwhile, we would criticize them with great pleasure. But we can’t, since we place ourselves on a completely different level.  

You are forced to defend [them]?

Yes, they put pressure on artists while we perverse [them, ruin them by not being able to critique them]. We are now in this strange and abnormal situation: we defend someone only because he’s progressive and not mean.

In a normal situation, we definitely would analyze and classify their work differently. But the ruling authorities deprive us of a critical position, and that’s why everything is more complicated than it seems at first glance. It seems it’s very easy — defend [them]. But… you don’t want to.

Recently, I watched a performance by a theater director who was being pressured [by the authorities]. Instinctively, I supposed that it’s possible that the work will be weak, but the result was simply horrible. And what do you think? Not a single critical word was said because everyone thought that it’s not proper — inhumane, so to speak — to criticize a director who’s being oppressed.

In other words, the standards deviate?

But they don’t deviate just like that (say, because of a change in climate), but they deviate according to certain trends. These deviations by their nature are answers that are born, in a general sense, from the smell and sound of time; that is, from political and social issues. 

Is there always a choice, or do you sometimes come against a wall?

There’s always a choice. But that is the most difficult. As my dear Lev Nikolayevich [Leo Tolstoy] said, do what you have to and let happen that which will happen. Roughly speaking (or more precisely, honing), all healthy people must read Tolstoy. And read in general. 

Though, of course, now it seems people read only those texts that appear on Facebook. That’s frightful, since information changes very quickly in Facebook: being updated every second and appearing in front of your eyes in short fragments. And we don’t have time to think: more and more waves of information sweep away and take with them that which was written and discussed a moment earlier. 

Interview by Nune Hakhverdyan.