The independent creativity, as it is known, does not know taboo subjects. Authors only have a right to decide, how they will investigate at this time, what methods and up to what limits. A concerning to existence of such approach to work may be different, but even the most furious denying be unable to cancel of a fact, that some our contemporaries decide to work so.
Dmitry Frolov and his team have shot a film on evangelic motif. How they have dared? It is obvious, as usual – they have taken and have made. And what has turned out? What… They made a cinema! And there is easy bewilderment: how can it be, that, on the one hand, somebodies accuse them of blasphemous and heresy, and on the other hand, of religious fanaticism. What here it is possible to tell? If D.Frolov could be the fanatic, he could not shoot cinema, because of widespread clerical opinion that the film director's work is not good job for "a pious Christian". The other extreme is a widespread hostility to an opportunity to touch the Testament by means of cinematograph, supported by the ferro-concrete argument reduced to eternal "it is impossible because it is impossible". Any image of Christ, except for an icon, is blasphemous by definition, a cinema-shooting is a sin, and the really satanism is an opinion to permit the artist to be judged from his own laws. But, as a matter of fact, the Church is not so aggressive at relations to arts, as some of its adherents. "There is something in each creativity (idea, science, applied art), that contains in itself a seed of eternity, "a seed logos", which make it related with the primary Source of knowledge, with the Original Logos. And this eternal creation of human hands and will proceed to eternity in imperishable, the changed shape and it will stay in the Not-dark Day of the Reign. As the ideas, sounds, words, lines mysteriously have appeared in creative mind of the man from somewhere, from any menthal-understanding world, so they, we trust, mysteriously changed, will leave in eternity for infinite life... There is any sense, any logos of creativity, which is for us invisible and incomprehensible. To deny it would be greatest absurdity. It would mean to take away divine sense of the assignment of the man". The author of these words is the father Kiprian (Kern), the orthodox archimandrite. Certainly, there is a dark art, and nobody calls for the announcement of any creativity as a pleasing of God. But what is blasphemous in effect? It is a conscious act of will of the man, which rebels against the Creator. In "The Granny's Apocrypha" the revolt is not present. Not running in false and from that - blasphemous pathos, D.Frolov initially refuses an attempt to screen the Gospel. On the screen is not Christ, but child's ideas about Him: naive, sketchy and ergo - especially touching. The authors of film at all had no ambitions to show us the world of the Christ and Apostles with the help of means of author's cinema. They perfectly understood, that this task really excessive. Yes, idea that the actor diligently "will enter into an image" of Christ, is not possible for the believing man. But in consciousness of each Christian there is a certain notion about Him, moreover - this idea can be, and, ergo, would be an attempt to reproduce it on the screen. D.Frolov shot film not about Christ, not about the Christianity, but about the man, beginning a way of the Christian, about sources of Christian faith. He managed to find that way, which allowed the actors to not try anything to play, to live or to feel, because the transformation into vague images, flashing in mind of the small girl, is impossible. "The Granny's Apocrypha" is "a cheap popular print" or child's figure, but not the icon.
Indisputable success is design of the film as the set of pictures, episodes, movings; bright, colourful, and, at the same time, escaping our attention, as children's memoirs. The fishermen sit among almost unnatural huge burdocks - and in this case the truth of childhood is exist, when everything seems more than it is. The usual fishing tackles instead of nets and boats, which was used by inhabitants of ancient Judea, send a spectator to his childhood too: when he, naive, could imagine a fisherman only with a fishing tackle, because he did not know how somebody can catch a fish by other way. The world of impressions of the child is reflected in film with surprising accuracy. The work of the costume designer (in this role unexpectedly is interesting the graduate of workshop of G.Kozlov has acted, nowadays actor of Theatre on Liteyny, Alexander Bezrukov) - precisely observing a silhouette of a costume of those times, he does not aspire to complete reliability, consciously strengthening sensation of cheap popular print, maskness, childness.
Today already few men are exist who remember, that it could be seen decades back in rural houses near to icons cheap popular prints on religious motifs. They finally have disappeared from uses only in 60 years of the last century. Certainly, their founders were not professional icon-painters or connoisseurs of divinity. They drew, as were able, as they felt, not knowing neither rules, nor canons. The simple uneducated people, persons of natural gifts, aspired to glorify the God by the creativity, that found the response in souls of the same peasants or artisans, as they were. D.Frolov makes the same, but instead of paints he used a film. Nobody managed to shoot a film-icon, maybe, it will appear impossible, though if to recollect such definitions of an icon-painting as "divinity in paints" and of an icon as "a window in other world", it is not necessary to deny opportunity of realization of idea "of divinity on a film", eventually everybodies perfectly remember film of A.Tarkovsky "Andrey Roubliov", which is safely possible to name as hagiography. The authors of "The Granny's Apocrypha", certainly, did not put before themselves of so high tasks, they drew the cheap popular print, which, not directing up there, simply heats heart. And they succeeded in it.

N.Legkova (Translated into English from Russian by Ignaz Bobtschuk)