Rambler's Top100

Films Dmitri Frolov's

to Leonid Fedorov's album "Winter will not"

Frost on the skin

In one of the novels of Thomas Mann so powerful a description of consumptive patients is given that it is not safe to read it - the disease threatens infection directly from the text. Such an attack awaits even when listening to the album Fedorov, who produced this record without "Auktsyon", too "correct" and cheerful for this heavy recording. "There will be no winters" is the fruit of Leonid Fedorov's collaboration with the Novozhazov musicians - bassist Volkov, guitarist Kurashov, trumpeter Parfyonov, vocalist and spiritualist Starostin. These people perform a lot of Russian folk music in its most afterlife and, to put it mildly, unconventional version - and therefore the material offered by Fedorov was perceived and arranged by them with truly otherworldly enthusiasm.

The album opens the vocal number of the choir "Sirin" - Orthodox spiritual music in their interpretation looks like the singing of Tibetan monks and generally adjusts the listener to a proper strictly twilight mode. And then Fedorov's songs begin - an acoustic sound composed of whispers, whistles, barely audible cod, scraps of sent-out phrases and interjections, knocking, groaning and mumbling.

In the album there is not a single song that would be allowed to be broadcasted on the radio, and the reasons for this are equally found in both the technical and the conceptual side of the record. If the former creations of Fedorov and Ozersky (the author of the texts) in the "Auktsion" were reduced to "normal" song verses, now only words and pieces resembling not so much Khlebnikov as Kruchenykh remained. A dark, abstruse text is as much an equal part of the music as a double bass or a rustling sound that emits into the rhythm. The last thing - and at all a fragment of the telephone conversation, a song about Lady Diana - a song that Fedorov recites to the answering machine legendary avant-garde poet Henri Volokhonsky.

Another literary association that arises in connection with this album is the prose of Andrei Platonov. Just as the "Pit" by its very existence crossed out most of the victorious socialist realism, "Winter will not be" the eerie, hopeless dislocation of songs that endlessly decay in the ears of the listener discredits most of the available Russian rock music. Fedorov cuts through the living, showing a mournful and uncomplicated thought - much of what we take for serious problems turns out to be a children's morning performance, much of what we take for rock music is in fact nothing more than a sophisticated version of "oh mother of chic ladies. "

Winter may not happen - in the presence of this album, it is simply not necessary.

Dmitry Olshansky
("Today" )

is printed on the materials of the website of Leonid Fedorov's


An interview about the creation of the video clip "Winter will not," which journalist Alena Kislitsyna conducted with director Dmitry Frolov
(listen or download))


Winter Will Not Be (2018) on IMDb


Awards

BEST EXPERIMENTAL FILM at Black Swan International Film Festival, Kolkata, India, September, 2021;
BEST EXPERIMENTAL SHORT at Global Monthly Online Film Competition, Canada, September , 2021;
BEST EXPERIMENTAL SHORT FILM at GRASS ROOT INTERNATIONAL FILM FESTIVAL, Puducherry, India, September , 2021;
Finalist at Accord Cine Fest, Mumbai, India, October, 2021;
BEST EXPERIMENTAL FILM at Madras Independent Film Festival, Chennai, India, October, 2021;
Semi-Finalist at Rome Music Video Awards, Rome, Italy, November, 2021;
FINALIST at Rome Independent Prisma Awards, Rome, Italy, December , 2021;
BEST EXPERIMENTAL FILM at Brno Film Festival, Brno, Czech Republic, December, 2021;
BEST EXPERIMENTAL DIRECTOR, BEST EXPERIMENTAL EDITING at GIMFA - Gralha International Monthly Film Awards, Curitiba, Brazil, December, 2021;
JURI AWARD - Only The Best Film (all genres) | Micro, Short or Feature Film at OTB | Only The Best Film Awards, MIAMI, United States, December, 2021;
BEST EXPERIMENTAL SHORT FILM - Hodu International film festival, Pondicherry, India, December, 2021;
BEST EXPERIMENTAL SHORT FILM - World Indie Film Awards, Chongqing, China, April, 2022;
NOMINEE - Cinemaking International Film Festival, Dhaka, Bangladesh, January, 2023;
FINALIST - Humro Cinema Film Fest, Pokhra, Nepal, November, 2023;
SPECIAL MENTION in Experimental Film - Indie World Film Festival, Naxxar, Malta, December, 2023