Ironic-conspiracy visionary Sergei Debizhev

2024 Author: Leah Sherlock | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-17 05:25

In the late 80s - early 90s of the last century, a new generation of young visionaries joined the ranks of Russian cinema, sometimes without compulsory film education. Among the budding debutant directors was Sergey Debizhev, a certified designer. Not limited by academic postulates, he created several initial works - documentaries, boldly handling pre-revolutionary and early Soviet newsreel.

Seeking a creative calling

The future director Sergei Debizhev was born at the beginning of the last summer month of 1957 in the resort town of Essentuki. The first mentor in the field of art education is Aleksey Ignatievich Kabantsov, who gravitated towards abstractionism in his work. Therefore, Sergei Debizhev's craving for the avant-garde is quite understandable.

Trying to realize himself as a creative person, driven by youthful maximalism, he leaves his native land and enters the Leningrad Art School named after V. A. Serov, majoring in design graphics. Some time after graduation, a recent studenttaught composition at the school. Serov. And only by the mid-80s did he enter the film industry, initially working as an artist when creating A. Sokurov's documentaries.

Best among clip makers

Also, Sergey Debizhev was directly involved in the artistic design of the albums of the musical groups "Aquarium" and the performer S. Kuryokhin "Day of Silver", "Equinox".

For a certain period of his creative career, Debizhev tried his hand at clip-making, filmed music videos for domestic rock musicians B. Grebenshchikov (“Polar explorers”, “Moscow Oktyabrskaya”), Y. Shevchuk (“Love”). Currently, he has firmly established the status of one of the most talented and sought-after clip makers in Russia.

Provocateur director

As director Sergei Debyuzhev made his debut in 1989, his first works "Thirst", "You Calm Me", "Red on Red", "Two-faced Janus" caused a controversial reaction among domestic art historians. For example, "Golden Dream", a film about how nudist naturalists defeated the communists, was warmly received by the audience, but was severely criticized in the Pravda newspaper.

Next Sergey Debizhev, whose filmography consists of projects created in an unusual form or genre policy, is shooting a full-length parody film "Two Captains-2". Despite the fact that the project is absurdist-musical, it was filmed in a documentary-historical style. The picture, which was released in 1992, aroused sincere interest among the audience and furiousrejection by domestic film critics. It is not known for certain what exactly attracted the attention of the public to this project: a non-trivial form, an ironic conspiracy plot or the opportunity to see on the screen B. Grebenshchikov, S. Kuryokhin, T. Novikov, S. Bugaev "Africa" and other well-known people of the St. Petersburg underground.

In search of pure expression

In the second half of the 90s, Sergei Debizhev practically did not make films. He focused on working together with Oleg Gazmanov. The performer, to put it mildly, differed from the director's usual circle of friends - bohemian artists and St. Petersburg rock musicians, nevertheless, the creative tandem took place. Debizhev became the author of many of Gazmanov's music videos created in the imperial-Soviet style. For the cultural elite, this was unexpected, but Sergey Debizhev could always surprise others, boldly experimenting with the content, style and form of his work.

After the esthete and formalist, Debizhev plunged headlong into the search for pure expressiveness, backed by sufficient funding.

Traveling the world

The next discovery of the visionary and the reason for the astonishment of the public was the next project of Sergei Debizhev, which had the working title "Rainy Season". The idea of the picture originated with the creator during his travels to different parts of the world. A trip to Cambodia was the result of his travels and the starting point for the creation of the project. Ultimately, the film was called "Goldensection." Critics called the picture a combination of The Da Vinci Code and The Fifth Element. In fact, the tape is a philosophical multi-level work. The director acted in this work as a screenwriter, having managed to combine in the cinema a lot of different themes and ideas that are popular in the modern world. He touched on freemasonry, espionage, downshifting, glamour, and everyday human life. Sergei Debizhev, wishing to achieve the strongest impact on the viewer, deliberately invited many Russian stars to the production of the tape. Among the cast of the film are Ksenia Rappoport, Alexei Serebryakov - one of the leaders of domestic distribution, the favorite of the public Renata Litvinova, the generally recognized master of cinema Mikhail Efremov and Sergey Bugaev ("Africa").

Debizhev Sergey did not stop his creative delights at this, among his latest works of authorship are the films "Russian Dream", "The Last Knight of the Empire" and "Hot Chaos".