Moscow is hosting the XI international documentary film festival about a new culture Beat Film Festival. The festival became the first major cinematic event in the city after the lifting of quarantine restrictions. Among the heroes of the festival tapes — the composer Max Richter, the group of Swans and Throbbing Gristle, the leader of INXS, Michael Hutchence, artist Banksy, writer Truman Capote, meme “frog Pepe”, etc. Yesterday in the Beat Film Festival premiere of the film Andrey Airapetov “Fili. The story of a record label,” summing up the first 30 years of life independent of the Moscow musical company FeeLee. The film looked Boris Barabanov.Music company FeeLee started to work as an independent publisher and organizer of concerts on the sunset of the USSR, when the self-supporting show business is still just “tested the water with my foot.” In 1989 thanks to the efforts FeeLee came to Russia now-forgotten British World Domination Enterprises and the most radical at that time, American indie band Sonic Youth, which then went crazy, the leader of the group Nirvana Kurt Cobain. “It was 1989, but the tastes of the Soviet people remained at the level of 1979,” recalls in “Fili. The story of a record label,” Sonic Youth guitarist Lee Ranaldo. Many of our fans 1989 is associated with a Grand tour of the classics of Pink Floyd, but FeeLee once took a course on current Western music. By the way, Sonic Youth they brought in the USSR two months before the Pink Floyd concert.The company FeeLee not made a single project, has not released a single album, which now could be put the stigma of “naphthalene”. However, the age was not for FeeLee “wild”. “I don’t remember the 90s as a gangster, says in the film, the head of the company Igor Thin. Somehow we have created around ourselves a field of good, enthusiastic, interesting people.” Hard to believe, but the company, which has consistently promoted the creativity of the punk rockers and hard-core bands, that is, musicians who handed slaps public taste left and right, managed to avoid serious conflicts with the toxic business and governmental environment and to survive to the present day.Part of Filyovsky Park where the Gorbunov Palace of culture, the gathering of peloponisos and the market for pirated CD, was obviously a tasty morsel for a variety of criminal organizations, but the people of FeeLee were able to create almost their own state with special laws, a place where adults music lovers and young nonconformists of all sorts could feel at home. And punks who helped FeeLee, was special. For example, the radio program and the festival “Learn to swim”, created by Alexander F. Sklyar with the assistance of his American colleagues, Henry Rollins, preached a healthy way of life, as they said in those days — “straight edge”. As just noticed in the movie, it was in the midst of an epidemic of heroin Naraddiction, which gripped Moscow. For that alone FeeLee deserved a few kind words from the government. But they were not told.Unless the young folk singer Pelageya has earned the personal endorsement of Boris Yeltsin. But he is unlikely to associate it with a record company. In General, many concerts and releases that are mentioned in the film, the masses are not associated with the organizers or publishers. But the historical significance of the concerts of Rage Against The Machine, David Byrne, nick cave and The Smashing Pumpkins or the albums of Depeche Mode and The Prodigy is obvious to all.The release of the first album, Pelagia is standing in the same row. Before that Russian folklore is perceived in the country as kind of boring and imposed on the TV thing. And here is a 12-year-old girl with an outstanding voice, while genuinely loving, for example, the group Laibach. The film has many warm nostalgic fragments, but when Pelageya in a white dress with angel wings singing “Home” Depeche Mode my throat gets com and it seems that the beautiful future of Russia looks exactly like that.The characters in the film are musicians, journalists, producers,— Recalling the draft FeeLee, often utter phrases like “we do not believe their eyes”, “we could not dream”, “it was impossible”. And closer to the final there is a clear feeling that the 1990s was a time, when really everything was possible. On the one hand, collapsed the dictates of Communist ideology, on the other — not a time of spiritual braces, hurt feelings and resentment all global at all. The future is here, albeit briefly.
