Face To Face With Youth, or How Zhovten Cinema Was Opened

«So many people wearing yellow. This must be someone’s pre-election campaign», -«No, this is an opening of Zhovten», – women on Kontraktova Sq. are chatting. Indeed, the opening of Zhovten seemed to be expected by the entire Kyiv. And this is not a surprise – the first theater in the capital, screenings of the scandalous films, a mysterious fire, and scandal with one of the largest film festivals before opening of the new Zhovten. Anyway, many people were expected at the first screenings, and these expectations were probably justified.

There is a crowd in a park near Zhovten, and the city mayor Vitalii Klychko symbolically cuts the yellow ribbon. It is also noteworthy that lightboxes for posters on the facade of the theater are filled with political advertisements with Klitschko’s slogans – “We change our city with the real deals.” So, the mayor has consistently emphasized the importance of theater to the City Council, thanks the builders, and finally cuts the tape, allowing everyone to come inside, with a preliminary invitation, however.

Everything has really changed inside the theater – soviet interior was replaced with a more modern one, some elements were added. There are several stands in the white hall, where visitors can read the history of the cinema, and there is a special stand for the scene of the fire. It would be great if they remain here after the opening, as a reminder that the main value of Zhovten lies in its history.

The halls gradually begin to fill with spectators. They have kept their old names – Hegemon, Full House, Sweet Life, Sessions, Classic, and Moviegoer. The largest hall, where the fire started, can accommodate up to 414 spectators. Today, it will screen a documentary, and Ukrainians will be treated with free popcorn. And in the evening the second part of the opening will begin – with guests invited and party screening of the film Youth by Paolo Sorrentino, who, actually, was the cause of scandal Cinema Film Festival Youth. After all, everything is according to Zhovten’s best traditions.

There is a full house in front of the cinema. It becomes clear how important this event is for Kyiv – the guests and different celebrities are present, the press is in every corner. Despite only two people may pass inside at once, no one complains. Many guests came with elements of yellow in clothing, some with roses of similar color, chrysanthemums and gerberas. Inside, a hostess warns – everything is sold out today, the halls will be overcrowded.

Closer to the beginning of the evening, there is no room in the main hall. Even in the new cafeteria all the tables are occupied. Sometimes it becomes stuffy – for some reason a cloakroom doesn’t work, despite the presence of a woman working here, and the guests are forced or take off their clothes and carry it in their hands. The format of the event was also surprising – pints in the hands of some ladies in cocktail dresses looked grotesque and avant-garde even for the Zhovten. However, you could always order coffee in the cafeteria. The feeling that Zhovten has returned appears when you find yourself in a filled auditorium face to face with the Youth.

The fact that the film by Paolo Sorrentino certainly fitted to the updated Zhovten was obvious. A board out in Switzerland, where the main character Fred Belindzher lives his so much defined and conformist life that everyone who appears here in default ceases to feel the future and is gradually conserved in the past. Something like that director Mead, Fred’s friend, is trying to explain when showing a young screenwriter a distant mountain in two opposing lenses of binoculars. This is a comfort zone, where you can stay forever. However, the adolescence begins just outside the walls of comfortable suites, but it is too early to speculate for Fred.

As one of my colleagues after the session said, “it is the film with no single needless shot”. Indeed, some critics accuse Paolo Sorrentino of abuse of excessive use of the “beautiful pictures” because at first it may seem that these collages are totally unrelated and have only an aesthetic purpose in common. But then each shot begins to build a huge panel where everything matters. The director uses symmetric footage and still images, he plays with contrasts in everything – colors, sounds, and heroes. What a single touching relationship of Fred’s daughter and the bearded instructor of mountaineering, who is more like a good-natured bear than the new heiress gentleman composer, whose music captured the Queen, are worth.

On the background of a measured life in a board house, the director plays with surrealistic scenes, decorating brightness and symmetry, and Sorrentino adds comic episodes, such as the styling of one of the dreams of the main character’s daughter at the clip of a pop singer, whom her fiancé left her for, to the tragedy and sadness. And all this collage, all cacophony of shots is sewn with man’s one great love to music and woman, without which the music can’t exist. “Simple melodies” by Fred Belindzher pursue a viewer throughout the film and don’t let it distract from that love, which started it all. Actually, they lead protagonist back to freedom, allowing to look to the future.

This Swiss board house, where the majority of actions in the movie take place, still reminds the good old Zhovten in something – a place related to a lot of problems, which was often talked about in the context of another scandal. And looking at the new cinema, it seems that some dynamic event was exactly what it needed. Yes, it is sad that fire was such an event. But the new Zhovten is a breath of fresh air in the domestic film distribution, and yesterday’s discovery was proof of that. Youth did came to Zhovten, and not just on the screen.