During the quarantine and isolation couriers were the main people — they bravely moved through the deserted cities and did not allow life to stop them. Improving the status, however, did not affect the increase in living standards during recent strikes by couriers, it became clear that many of them are already two months did not get wages, and some are forced to sleep on the street. It’s a strange situation — at the same time and the most important part in city life, and her outsider — always gave the figure of the courier special appeal. Weekend found out what was depicted couriers in the past 70 years and that in different years attracted particular animaniacs: Maria Bessmertnaya as a war hero “Bag of the diplomatic courier” Directed by Alexander Dovzhenko, 1927Фото: Workaction preserved Dovzhenko film — fictionalized story of the last days of the life of a diplomat Teodor Nette, member of the Civil war on the southern front and of the diplomatic courier Commissariat of the USSR, who was killed in 1926 in a train Moscow—Riga the transport of dippity. Dovzhenko, who ordered the film just a year after the assassination of the net on the wave of an international scandal (the Soviet leadership regarded the incident as a political provocation, a perfect white emigre circles, Mayakovsky wrote a famous poem “to Comrade Nette, the steamship and the man”), required to adore the net and at the same time to enter the way of the Soviet diplomatic courier in the European centralize. Both jobs he did: “diplomatic courier Bag”, in which Dovzhenko very liberties with historical facts, shot in the genre of adventure Thriller, and the protagonist, the courier of the diplomatic service, dying valiantly, protecting state secrets,— the prototype of all future Stirlitz, shot in the style of German expressionism.Courier as a carrier of the unknown “Alien” Director Ridley Scott, 1979Фото: Twentieth Century-Fox ProductionsЖанр fiction in American cinema flourished during the Cold war: films about aliens was the only untouched territory, where you vengeance to criticize foreign and domestic policy of the United States. Figure space of the researcher, followed by the smuggler and the courier got in the genre of extra symbolic value (together with them, got their “freight”). Couriers, virtually anonymous agents of the unknown, uninterested carriers have become a universal metaphor. In “Alien”, Ridley Scott team space tug “Nostromo”, which was supposed to Land and processing complex designed for processing ore, but instead brought a deadly alien creature that kills everything in its path, was the epitome of about all the problems the English-speaking world in the second half of the twentieth veka: post-traumatic syndrome in Vietnam veterans, the war in Afghanistan and the beginning of three years after the premiere of the film of the HIV epidemic in the United States.Courier as an observer of the collapse of the Soviet Union “the Courier” Directed by Karen Shakhnazarov, 1986Фото: Mobiletoones film restructuring, with the final internal collapse of the Soviet project through the eyes like a cynical teenager. Character played by Fyodor Dunayevsky, the courier of the magazine “Questions of cognition” Ivan Miroshnikov, “the assemblage point” for a society that has ceased to exist, but doesn’t know it yet. Mobility and the ability to enter any house turns the protagonist into the perfect witness: he is a stranger and as amended, among street youth, and in decent homes, but sees better their lives. In weird positions reflected a generational conflict: the older generation sees it as a challenge built their society, but the hero, obviously, this is not in a hurry to throw the challenge.The courier as the leader of civil resistance “Do the right thing” Director spike Lee, 1989Фото: 40 Acres & a Mule FilmworksСюжет this: in new York on the hottest day of summer and everyone is on edge. No exception and the main character of the Flour, the courier in an Italian pizzeria located in the middle of the African-American district Bedford Stuyvesant in Brooklyn. Apolitical lazy Flour (starring spike Lee himself), which the audience will live the same day and whose eyes will see the life of the area— in fact the main key to prosperity pizzerias and microsommite, which is built around it. There is the classic “wall of fame” there is no black. Young visitors require photos of Martin Luther king and Michael Jordan, owners paternalistic (read — racist) ignore the claims and Sinatra to withdraw in a hurry. After the owner of the restaurant becomes an indirect cause of the murder of one of the visitors (strangling the hero, of course, the police), namely the Flour, as the superintendent of the district that pizza in hand guarantees a ticket to every home, throws in the display window and the trash can begins a massive pogrom and thus prevents the murder of the owner of the pizzeria. In 1989, for “Do”, dedicated to the memory of Michael Griffith, who was killed in 1986 by a group of racists, Lee was accused of inciting the riots, in 2020 against the background of protests by supporters of the movement Black Lives Matter, he’s called the seer.Courier as a symbol of emancipation “Kiki’s delivery service” Directed by Hayao Miyazaki, 1989Фото: Nihon Television Network; Studio GhibliЭкранизация the same name of the classic Japanese children’s novel by Eiko Kadono — the story of the witch Kiki, who after his 13-year anniversary, according to the witches code, must leave her home and spend a year in another city without parental help. To earn money, she traditionally must use his magical talents, but the main character of their no — besides flying on a broom. Your lack of magical strength she makes up for the perfect business plan: Kiki opens a delivery service and become the fastest in the city by courier. Miyazaki, a master of packaging a political statement in a cartoon form for children, rewrote the plot, shifted the emphasis and made this story a feminist Manifesto. Kiki after the premiere of the cartoon absolutely deservedly became for Japanese teenage girls a new role model. She was able to master the “not female” in Japan the profession and not to upset the elders.Courier as a chronicler of post-apocalyptic world “Prayer of the roller” Directed by Rick king, 1990Фото: DIOMEDIAКурьер as the ideal figure of the observer were in a post-apocalyptic Thriller, which, thanks to the “Mad max” George Miller since the late 1970s, took popular culture niche relevant and Greyhound political commentary. The action of “Prayer of the roller”, the cult film of the 1990s, takes place in a future where Germany has bought Poland, the Vatican has hired the Israeli army for “cleaning” in Northern Ireland, and in Los Angeles there’s a group of Nazis drug dealers on roller skates, whose leaders, according to rumors, is the great grandson of Adolf Hitler. No change there, it seems that only the life of the food carriers — the main character, spying on rollers that develop a plan to seize power in the country and the organization of a racially pure state, operates as a pizza delivery boy, and so know all the town gossip — he immediately reported to the police. “The skaters” was put into production after a series of high-profile crimes against the black population in America, and the Director of king when shooting remembering his youth in the 1970s, “when the drugs were delivered to the door along with Coca-Cola, and messengers prayed to as saints.”Courier as an emblem of urbanization “Beijing Bicycle” Director Wang Xiaoshuai, 2000Фото: Beijing Film Studio; Pyramide ProductionsМанифест “sixth generation” of Chinese cinema, the Directors of which, unlike its predecessors, abandoned the costume historical epics and focused on the problems of modern China. “Beijing Bicycle”, the homage “Thieves of bicycles” Vittorio De sica, was banned in China government censorship, in circumvention of the ban sent to the Berlin film festival, where it received the jury prize and turned Director Xiaoshuai, who was in the black list of Chinese officials to an international star. The plot of the film is this: 16-year-old Gueye who had just moved to Beijing from the village, gets a job in a courier company, which in the loan provides him a bike. In that moment, when the young man almost finishes to pay his contributions, the bike to steal and resell. The buyer is a student from low-income families, which��the bike needs for status (Beijing has just experienced another rush of love for bikes, and in the days of youth and Xiaoshuai is considered a sign of consistency and with a clock, a radio and a sewing machine was part of the big four “standard” high standard of living in China). Further history could be political grandstanding about the class struggle, but became an anthem of humanism, friendship and responsible consumption. A real bike can and divide, and to answer the question that in the modern metropolis more important, the real or social capital, can not even Chinese filmmakers dissidents.Courier as a diagnostician of Millennials “Rush delivery” Creators Katja Bleachfield, Ben Sinclair, 2016Фото: Noshow HBO, in which a serene and nameless huckster named Dude on the bike goes round in new York the grass, and simultaneously enters into complex relationships with its customers. For them he is both the dealer and the therapist is the only person with whom they can be honest (at least five minutes, or until paid off). The Creator of the show actor and Director Ben Sinclair describes the exceptional situation of the hero: “the Only person you can let into his house,— a dealer who sells a remedy for depression, lurking in a dark corner of your life.” Customers Dude — all the main types of lonely citizens and the so-called artistic Bohemia, and their problems — a parade of all the pain points of residents of the city in the twenty-first century: abusive relations, dependence on social networking, bouts of depression and unemployment. The show, like any other work about the city of neurotics, of course, inherits woody Allen. And Allen, and Sinclair placed his hero in an ideal position: they are simultaneously participants and observers. The alvey singer from “Annie Hall” was not a stand-up comic, and a pizza delivery boy.Courier as a slave of the XXI century “Sorry, we have not found the” Director Ken loach, 2019Фото: BBC Films; Canal+; Wild Wipsen loach, for sixty years, residing in the status of the conscience of mankind — the worst leftist, a pioneer of the English “kitchen realism” by which the screens and literature came the heroes of the working class, and the irrepressible political activist (he cares about everything — starting with the situation in Israel and ending with the problems of Chechnya), one of the first drew attention to the dreadful situation of couriers in modern capitalism. “I’m sorry, we don’t caught”, the latest film Loach,— history of the English handyman, which after the financial crisis of 2008 cannot find work and eventually becomes the hostage of service delivery where a courier is arranged. Loach, who has spent his career dedicated to the most marginalized sections of society, “Excuse me…” detail and soberly demonstrates how the costs of modern��th labor law, economic system and political system has created in Europe a new slavery. The British press wrote about the painting that it is “a horror film in the spirit of Dickens or memo to everyone who leaves a tip.”Courier as a witness to the pandemic, “the Courier” directed by Daria demur and Alexander Elkan, 2020Фото: Daria demur; Alexander Alcanede of the first documentary evidence of life during the epidemic COVID-19 — a short film by graduates of the film School of Marina Razbezhkina, a part of the project “Radio Liberty”, “Signs of life”, in which journalists and filmmakers go to Russia in search of unobvious characters. Guide through the empty city became a 22-year-old courier service “Yandex.Food”, who came to work in Moscow from Uzbekistan and simply can’t afford to follow a policy of self-isolation. The maximum mobility (so that the application that distributes the orders, saw the courier, he must constantly be in motion) rhymes with a complete lack of economic mobility. In the center of the film is rather monstrous working conditions of labour migrants in Russia — a six-day work week, ten hours a day on a bike two thousand rubles earnings per day, the famous Moscow rudeness and permanent health risks. The film Demur and Elkana is one of the first attempts to fix, who, along with doctors and workers of municipal services that ensured the well-being of Muscovites during the epidemic COVID-19. And if undoubted professional and human feat in the first situation of the epidemic are obvious to everyone, the couriers still waiting on his present heroic epic.
