IGOR MISHIN PRESENTS
IGOR SERGEYEV
YURI TSURILO
YULIYA AUG
The day before yesterday
at a pet market in Kostroma,
I saw buntings.
VIKTOR SUKHORUKOV
I don't think I'd ever seen them before.
They are strange birds, plain.
But something from the past,
from my childhood or my dreams,
flashed and beckoned me...
... when the old man selling them
said in a flat voice, "Buntings."
Buntings.
300 rubles for the pair.
I live in Neya.
It's one of those towns
that no one remembers today.
It stands on the Neya river, lost somewhere
between the woods of Vologda and Vyatka.
SILENT SOULS- Based on the novel
The Buntings by Aist Sergeyev
The Neya, Unzha, Poksha, Vokhtoma,
the Viga, Mera, Vaya, Sogozha.
Beautiful names left behind by the Merya,
a Finnish tribe that dissolved
into the Slavs some 400years ago.
The orphaned villages, a few rites,
rivers with forgotten names,
that's all that's left of them.
SCREENWRITER
DENIS OSOKIN
Although, many people here
still think of themselves as Meryans.
These northern outskirts
always hold onto things longer.
CINEMATOGRAPHER
MIKHAIL KRICHMAN
Our people are a bit strange.
Their faces are inexpressive.
There are no passions boiling,
although sudden affections
and divorces are not uncommon.
DIRECTOR
ALEKSEI FEDORCHENKO
There is promiscuity,
but for a Meryan it's ancient,
like an ethnic rite or a custom.
You ask me why?
No one remembers anymore.
I don't remember when or why it started...
... but I wanted to know,
to understand who we are.
Why are we like this
and not like something else?
My father was a local poet.
He wrote under the pseudonym Vesa Sergeyev.
Maybe that's why I began collecting
snatches of songs, names, words.
Some I needed to look for,
and some were always right next to me.
I just hadn't written before,
so, at first, it was coming out badly.
But the biggest thing was that
I didn't know what to write about,
although my father would often tell me...
... that, if your soul hurts, you should write
about the things you see around you.
My name is Aist.
It's an uncommon name, obviously Meryan.
I'm just over 40.
I have no family.
I work at the Neya paper mill.
Thank you.
Aist!
Excuse me for a second.
Miron is calling for you.
The director's calling.
- It's working.
- Uh-huh.
Very well. Turn it off.
- Hello.
- Hi.
May I?
- Hello, Aist Vsevolodovich.
- Hello, Miron Alekseyevich.
It's made from shadberries.
It's good.
My wife, Tanya, died.
Last night.
I'm going to the rope factory
in Gorbatov to sign a contract.
Call me back tomorrow evening.
- Do you want another drink?
- No, thank you.
I'm not taking her to the morgue.
I don't want to show her to anybody.
I'd prefer to do everything just with you.
I don't want to be alone.
Let's go right now.
Please.
Well, all right.
And then I remembered about my buntings.
I might have been gone for three days.
Who would have fed them?
Anyway, I had some vague feeling
I should take them with us.
Miron Alekseyevich didn't mind.
We adorned her like a bride.
People here always dress
deceased women that way.
It's the same way girlfriends
decorate a happy bride.
In the morning,
before the wedding, they wash her,
wipe her dry
and prepare multicolored threads.
The bride lies or sits down
while her girlfriends crowd around her.
They tickle her, make jokes and lots of noise.
Then they tie the threads into her pubic hair.
That's how tomorrow's wife
will go to her husband.
And at night he will take
the threads from her hair,
tie them into a knot
and hang them on an alder tree.
We were leaving our beloved Neya.
Long ago, I read that a nation is alive...
...as long as it remembers its language
and keeps its traditions.
This rite is the last thing
that connects a Meryan with life.
What will be left if it is forgotten?
We were leaving our beloved Neya.
We didn't know then it was forever.
I married her when she was 19.
I was already close to 40.
She lived in Vokhma.
She was very shy.
She was embarrassed that
she didn't know how to use makeup...
...or how to wear interesting clothes.
But Tanya was so close to me.
She totally obeyed me.
I would tell her, "Take off your dress.
Open up this way.
Try it like this.
Stand right here.
Move your hips."
All three of Tanya's holes were working,
and it was me who unsealed them.
But everything always happened
only by my initiative.
We call this kind of talk "smoke".
It's a custom to talk about the one you love...
...as long as the body is still on the earth.
You say things you'd never
have told a stranger...
... while your beloved was still alive.
But, over the dead, you're allowed...
... because it makes your face brighter...
...and turns your grief into tenderness.
Good day.
- Where are you from?
- From Neya.
- Where are you going?
- To Mescherskaya Porosl.
- And what are you carrying?
- A veretenitsa. She died.
What are those birds?
We call our beloved women veretenitsa.
Buntings.
Of course, the lieutenant knows that.
Besides, it's not hard to see
what we're carrying.
Many people here still remember
that they are Meryan.
So those are buntings you have?
I've never seen them before.
But I always loved that word.
Buntinkina is Tanya's maiden name.
When we were young,
I always called her Buntinkina or Bunting.
Tanya loved birds very much,
but couldn't stand seeing them in cages.
I was thinking about getting her
a heron so it could stroll freely.
Another 20.
Ninety big ax handles.
200 small birch ax handles.
Twenty beech ax handles.
160 shovel handles.
None of the beech.
We'll take the rest.
Help us out, please.
Aist Vsevolodovich,
do you mind if I keep "smoking"?
Do you remember
when we celebrated my 50th?
I drank some wine,
and I wanted Tanya so badly.
I looked at her,
and she understood me,
but her eyes told me
that it was better not to right then.
I got so upset that
my stomach started to hurt.
Miron continued to tell me
how much he loved his Tanya,
but he really didn't have to.
The whole town knew about his passion,
how they hid in the local hotel,
how he washed her with vodka.
There were rumors
that Tanya didn't love him,
but Miron said nothing about it.
Dear Miron Alekseyevich!
This song is for you.
It is "The Smell of Summer"
with lyrics by Vesa Sergeyev.
I went to the pharmacy
Bought some soapwort I'd found
And some dried swamp viburnum
That I bought by the pound
I found some cudweed
And also some thyme
A heap of smooth corn silk
And knot grass so fine
Toad flax with cow berry
And young poplar leaf
Some mint, some tansy
And sage, I believe
Dandelion root
And juniper berries
More than one hundred packs
I bought in my hurry
I brought it all home
And boiled it well
I wanted so badly
That fine summer smell
Tanya worked at the same paper mill.
We liked each other.
I photographed her once,
and something flashed between us.
Something sparked
and hopelessly sped away.
Hello.
Show me the hedgehog.
- The one with the band?
- Yes. The blue one.
It blinks.
Here you go. Thirty rubles.
Press its belly.
Is it broken?
Let me exchange it.
No. It's exactly what I need.
I won't have to break it myself.
We entered Mescherskaya Porosl.
It's the Meryan name
for the town of Gorbatov.
Its emblem has a blooming apple tree.
It's a nice town on the Oka River.
And why here?
The honeymoon.
We didn't want to go too far.
Besides, it was expensive.
Tanya fell in love with Oka
when she was still in school.
We rented a house here after our wedding.
Just for a week.
The honeymoon in Mescherskaya Porosl.
We committed Tanya to the water.
People here always do that.
It's a rule.
Our cemeteries are half-empty.
Mostly newcomers lay there.
But water is the dream of every Meryan.
Drowning means to suffocate
from joy, tenderness and yearning.
If we find someone drowned,
we don't burn them.
We tie on a weight
and give them back to the water.
The water replaces their body
with a new flexible one.
Death from water
is immortality for a Meryan.
Oh, Neya River,
we know your fish by name.
Anya and Lyosha, Pasha and Kira.
Oh, Neya River.
Sleeping under the ice
is Tatyana, the pearl oyster.
Seryozha, the perch, isn't sleeping.
My father dreamed of drowning.
He was a queer fish,
that self-taught Meryan poet.
People laughed at him.
Sometimes they paid attention to his words.
Sometimes they beat him up.
His naïve poems were printed
in The Neya Lights.
The paper sold well.
It was cheap and useful for domestic chores.
But my father believed
that people needed his poems.
Once, we made a hole in the ice
and sank his most treasured possession.
He was a queer fish,
that self-taught Meryan poet.
"A Mexican toy
that my Cuban friend found...
...looks like a boot
and with water makes sound.
At the place of the heel,
is a round open space.
At the toe of the boot,
is a sad young girl's face.
My friend wrote a letter
and gave me advice:
Add water, then rock her
and stare at her eyes.
I poured in some water
and gave it a rock.
The girl started moaning.
My chair squeaked in shock.
And from out of those huge eyes,
from invisible holes"-
My mother died during childbirth
when I was in seventh grade.
After that, my father changed a lot.
He stopped behaving oddly.
He didn't "smoke" at the funeral.
Afterwards, he would often
call the river's name.
He would swim in cold weather
with pain in his heart.
He would walk drunk
on the ice that was still thin.
We committed my mom
and my still-born sister Nina to the water.
My father dreamed of drowning,
but the Meryan don't drown themselves.
It's impolite to rush to heaven,
passing by the others.
The river chooses people herself.
The water is the highest judge.
Look at the hair on my little feet.
I will do the same with you.
The two of us are sandpipers,
wearing slippers of blue.
We'll put packs on our backs
stuffed full of timothy hay.
Aist, bring the can. Aist!
And perhaps now we'll die,
dancing this Turkish Halay.
I wasn't there when my father died.
He had a bad death.
He drank contaminated alcohol.
But I knew that he died from sorrow.
On the way back to Neya, we got lost.
We ended up in Molochai.
This town has a very sad
and tender meaning for us.
It's like Paris for the Europeans.
It's a shame it doesn't exist anymore.
It dissolved into the outskirts
of another big, modern...
...and living town.
- Hi.
Do you want us?
We want you a lot.
It's so good that you exist.
The girls' names were Julia and Rima.
They were okay.
They laughed when we introduced
ourselves as Miron and Aist.
Your wife died?
Yes. Recently.
Rim!
Rim, wait!
We were very thankful
to Julia and Rima.
Because a live woman's body
is also a river that carries grief away.
It's only a shame
that you can't drown in it.
Turn it on.
- Here?
- The little triangle.
I knew that Tanya liked you.
She was sad.
I wasn't angry at her.
I loved her a lot.
We couldn't have children.
It was very hard for her.
I don't remember
what or how I answered him.
My thoughts and memories
swept over me and carried me away.
Only later, when I asked if he believed
he'd meet his Tatyana again...
... something ripped in him,
something broke down.
His expression changed,
and he stopped the car.
I felt sorry for him,
for my odd father,
for my mom, for Tanya.
Our names will be forgotten too,
just like the Meryans
have forgotten their sacred words.
A Meryan doesn't have gods,
only love for one another.
All that Miron had left now
was his love for Tanya.
All he had left to believe
was that he'd reunite with her...
... when it was his time to become ash
and be committed to the water.
The belief in this half-forgotten rite
was perhaps as naïve...
...as my desire to restore our lost culture.
If something is doomed to disappear,
then so be it.
Then so be it.
I should have let her go.
I should have let her go,
Aist Vsevolodovich.
We were going back home.
It was empty and cold, although
this November happened to be warm.
Miron was silent.
It didn't make any sense
to "smoke" anymore.
We had to make a detour.
We found ourselves back around
the same place we left Tanya.
We had returned as if an invisible force
wouldn't let us leave here.
Miron looked like he didn't notice.
He cheered up strangely,
and I, too, felt a load off my mind.
I felt sad and pure.
But the sadness didn't press on me.
It enveloped me like a mother.
Your birds are probably very smart.
Let's ask them for something.
Immortality?
Yes, I suppose.
Do you hear us?
They hear.
When we drove up
on the Kineshemsky Bridge,
Miron whispered,
"My Tanyusha is gone."
The buntings grew quiet.
Actually, too quiet.
We fell from the bridge into the Volga,
the great Meryan river.
The buntings helped us,
darting to kiss the driver's eyes.
Miron Alekseyevich immediately
went looking for Tatyana.
A s for me, I found
my father's silted typewriter...
and typed this book on the sides of dead fish.
And the water will carry Merya's secrets away.
Which ones and to where?
Everyone will find out for himself
when the time comes.
Only love has no end.