Time to read: 16 minutes(s)

Author: Andrey Filimonov

Film director Max Bessmertny and his father, artist Konstantin Bessmertny, live and work in Macau, a former Portuguese colony in southern China where Portuguese is still the official language. After the "colonialists" left in 1999, a 50-year "transition period" began. Macau is now a special administrative region of China and the world's gambling capital. People here are accustomed to living at the intersection of languages ​​and cultures. In 1992, Konstantin Bessmertny was invited to Macau and Hong Kong to participate in the "Young Artists of the Far East" exhibition. Russia was trending, and anyone coming from there, especially artists, attracted interest. Konstantin came to Macau with his wife and four-year-old son. The exhibition was a success, and the gallery offered Bessmertny a contract. He thought they would stay for a short time, "a year or two," but they ended up staying permanently. The city was changing, the family was growing accustomed to new languages ​​and habits, and Russia was receding further and further into the realm of memory.

Max Bessmertny graduated from Portuguese and English schools. For the past fifteen years, he has been making films in English with European and Chinese actors. In 2013, Max founded the production company Pontus Maximus Productions, which produces stories from Macau for international distribution and festivals. His short film Dirty laundry ("Dirty Laundry") won a prize at the 2020 Tribeca International Film Festival (New York). Max is a Portuguese citizen, as are the rest of his family. Konstantin Bessmertny represented Macau at the 2007 Venice Biennale. His paintings have been exhibited in New York, London, Lisbon, Delhi, Hong Kong, and Moscow, where he participated in a conceptual exhibition. The Wild NinetiesAfter February 24, 2022, none of the Immortals have been to Russia.

"You just have to jump into the river"

Konstantin, let's start with your move. 1992: Perestroika ended with the collapse of the USSR, Russia was in turmoil, and you were heading to the distant, unknown Macau. Were you scared to take such a leap? Or did the ease of youth help?

Konstantin: Curiosity was a powerful motivator, of course. Back home, there was complete freedom. I exhibited a lot and was graduating from the Vladivostok Institute of Arts. Then I received an offer to travel to Macau, sponsored by a gallery there, with my whole family to participate in an exhibition. It was impossible to refuse. I've always been interested in history; for me, Macau was practically synonymous with Portugal—they ruled this territory for nearly 500 years. Naturally, I wanted to see it all with my own eyes.

— You're originally from Blagoveshchensk. There probably weren't any Portuguese there, but the Chinese are certainly no stranger to you?

Konstantin: Of course. My grandmother spoke fluent Chinese. China was literally two hundred meters across the river. And I kept wondering: why couldn't my grandfather just get in a boat and sail to the other side? It was such a childish question, the kind that adults couldn't answer.

The "Young Artists of the Far East" exhibition in 92 was a success in Macau and Hong Kong, and the gallery quickly signed me to a year-long contract. It was a good start. I'm a provincial artist under 30, my wife is a pianist, and there was a real rush for us: "stay, teach, work here." Macau was a very interesting place at the time: a blend of old Portuguese culture and new Chinese art. In the early 90s, it was undergoing its own "perestroika," and we found ourselves right at its epicenter.

— So the decision to “stay” didn’t come suddenly, but matured gradually?

Konstantin: Every year we postponed our return to Russia: "Let's go next year." "Let's send Max to school and see if he speaks Portuguese." He did after three months, and it became clear that tearing him away from the Portuguese school was no longer feasible. Then I thought, "When this exhibition ends, we'll go." But the exhibitions kept coming: one, then another... The geography expanded: Hong Kong, London, New York. New acquaintances were made, unimaginable in Blagoveshchensk.

Mikhail Shemyakin talked me out of it when I was considering moving to New York. He said, "Did you know there are 10 artists living in Manhattan alone?" Yes, it's romantic—Manhattan, Montmartre. But I don't like huddling in a basement and making a living painting matryoshka dolls, like many Russian artists in Paris. I prefer my quiet, provincial Macau, where I have plenty of space and the opportunity to create.

— Do you often communicate with emigrants from Russia?

Konstantin: I met with representatives of the White émigré community in Hong Kong, New York, and Paris. I met with the second wave of the 1960s, with perestroika supporters like myself, scattered around the world. I even know a Jew from Hong Kong who is four generations removed from Russia; his ancestors fled the pogroms before the Revolution. And he, too, cherishes his "Russian memories." I've noticed that absolutely every émigré has a nostalgic piece of their homeland. Some remember borscht, some pelmeni, still others their grandmother and her fairy tales. It's from these scraps that the émigrés and their children form their image of Russia.

— Did your meetings with them teach you anything?

Konstantin: One story completely discouraged me from thinking about returning to Russia. Again in Hong Kong, I met an elderly woman from the White émigré community. The daughter of a White Guard soldier. She told me how, in the 30s, people from the USSR came to Shanghai and Hong Kong and urged the émigrés to "come back." They themselves were originally from somewhere around Lake Baikal, and their relatives wrote to them from Siberia: "Don't come, the weather is bad here." The meaning was clear between the lines. But several members of this family still succumbed to the persuasion. However, the ship that left Shanghai was sent not "home" but straight to Magadan. They all rotted there. Stories like these dispel illusions. You see how the Sharikovs and Shvonders, having seized power, mock your country.

— Were your relatives also repressed in the 1930s?

Konstantin: I was born into an all-female family. Ever since I was a child, I've wondered: where have the men gone? It's as if they've been erased: no grandfather, no uncles—no one. You ask your grandmother or aunt, and they're silent. Then, when Memorial appeared and it became possible to obtain information, I learned that all our men remained in the Gulag. My grandfather worked as the chairman of a collective farm near Blagoveshchensk. The Soviet government needed smart people to pull all these collective and state farms out of poverty. My grandfather was in good standing, he received certificates of merit. And then—a denunciation, an arrest, and he's gone. Vanished overnight. Then begins "life after." My grandmother was left alone. The children were branded "family members of an enemy of the people"—both on their father's and mother's side. That's why, as a child, I fantasized about my grandfather sailing off on a boat to China.

"I like the story of Richard Sorge."

"Max, what are your earliest memories? You spent your childhood in Macau, but you were born in the Soviet Union."

Max: My first memory is of kindergarten in Vladik: it's snowing heavily, and my mother comes to pick me up because everything is closed due to a blizzard. I don't remember anything else about Russia. My next memory: we're riding a tram in Harbin, then through Harbin to Guangzhou and on to Macau. This is my first contact with "world awareness."

But Russian culture hasn't disappeared. We spoke Russian at home, and I watched Russian cartoons. But as soon as you leave the house and "enter society," the language is Portuguese, sometimes English, and you need to know a completely different set of conversation topics. Meanwhile, Europeans often latch onto Russian classics: "Oh, you're from Russia—Dostoevsky, Crime and Punishment..."

— Max, how do you define yourself? A Russian director? Macanese? Portuguese?

Max: I grew up in Macau during the Portuguese era. I went to an English school, lived in Thailand, visited Portugal, England… I don't know how to say this without sounding pretentious, but I had an international upbringing. As a child, I wanted to play and socialize with Russian children, but it turned out that the Russian immigrants avoided each other, and there was no "Russian community" like there is with other nations. So, from an early age, I made international friends.

— If you imagined that a producer was found who would give money to a Russian story, what kind of film would you make?

Max: I'm interested in themes that take us back to the past. I was thinking about the history of Rachmaninoff and his emigration. I was thinking about Nazino "Cannibal Island," where prisoners in Stalin's camp literally ate each other. I've also always loved the story of Richard Sorge: how he lived in Japan, interacted with Germans, led a double life, and endured incredible pressure. I'm drawn to the common theme: a Russian abroad—is he an émigré or a spy? Why is Sorge so relatable to me? Because it's all about the need to "dress differently" and behave differently in order to be heard and survive. And yes, as a director, you're also a bit of an "agent": you enter a foreign environment and try to speak its language.

— Does family history and Russian emigration inspire you as a topic?

Max: My first film was slightly inspired by my father's story: a young artist comes to Macau. The character's name is Feo, essentially a version of Konstantin, though not directly. There's even a scene where my father lost a painting in Hong Kong and went to the police—a true story that inspired my film, The Violin Case. So my father's biography is present in my works, but not directly, rather in Aesopian terms.

As for films about Russia, making them is expensive and difficult—it requires reconstructing the era. But I hope to do it someday. For now, Russia is present indirectly in my films, like in The Violin Case, which was inspired by a real incident that happened to my father when he was in Hong Kong and left a painting in a taxi.

The film The Violin Case takes its cue from a true story from the life of Konstantin Bessmertny. He was transporting a sold painting to a buyer and was getting out of a taxi on a busy street when he was distracted by a ringing cell phone. A typical Hong Kong traffic jam surrounded him. Cars behind him honked, the driver was nervous, and at some point, he simply drove off with Konstantin's painting in the trunk. This almost anecdotal episode unexpectedly took shape years later as a cinematic image: rewatching Martin Scorsese's After Hours, Max Bessmertny seemed to see his future film in its entirety. In his version, the young artist loses the "violin" depicted in the painting in a taxi. Subsequent events unfold into a chain of increasingly bizarre and frightening coincidences.

The script was written and put into development. The director was seeking funding. All this took place against the backdrop of the COVID-19 lockdown, when leaving Macau was practically unthinkable: the confined space of the small city intensified the sense of anxiety and hopelessness, which became the material for the film.

Gradually, the story evolved into a statement about the tenacity of an artist who remains true to his dream. For Max himself, that dream was to make his first feature film—despite the pandemic. His film's protagonist, a "poor but free artist," resonates with the author biographically: he grew up in the art world and can't imagine any other path in life. Like an ancient Greek tragedy, the film tells of fate, which "leads the willing and drags the unwilling." But as they mature, anyone (not necessarily an artist) can abandon the role of victim and look at themselves with irony. Thus, "The Violin Affair" became a cocktail of film noir and satire on the artistic scene. A night gone wrong turned into a nightmarish pursuit of his own painting. Ultimately, the masterpiece eluded the artist, but hope and a reluctance to give up remained.

You give interviews equally well in Portuguese and English. Which culture do you prefer?

Max: The closest, of course, is Portuguese. I grew up in colonial Macau and spent every summer in Portugal. So I understand both the "lower" culture—football, jokes, songs—and the "higher" culture: Camões, Pessoa, José Saramago, Miguel Torga…

And then came a dramatic change: when I was 14, I was sent to study in England. There, I found myself in the world of Shakespeare, Eliot, and other complex writers. It was a shock: the language wasn't yours yet, much was unclear, but tomorrow you had to hand in an essay—a thousand words in English. It was really tough at first, but I got through it. Eventually, English became practically my first language.

— In multilingual Macau, is it easier to become one of the locals, regardless of your origin, or, on the contrary, do you always remain an outsider?

Max: The best position here is as an Englishman who speaks Chinese: then you're part of both global worlds. But it's difficult: you need to truly understand both cultures, not just superficially. In the 21st century, a lot is changing in Macau. And even I sometimes don't understand in what direction. I'm planning to make a film about old Macau, as it was before World War II, so people can compare and see how much has changed. Incidentally, my father wasn't the first Russian artist in this city. In the 1940s, Yuri Smirnov, an émigré who fled from Harbin to escape the Japanese occupation, worked as a set designer and costume designer at Macau's Portuguese Theatre of St. Charles.

Konstantin: Macau resembles an archipelago—there's an old colonial island where they speak Portuguese. For example, in offices. Elsewhere, you have to speak Chinese. There's also the "English Island." Chinese who come from the mainland flock to us to "Europeanize." In this sense, we remain the West in the East. Perhaps in a generation, everything will change. The next generation will become more Chinese. But for now, we're holding on and living "as we did before 2000."

"Pelmen" as a bridge

— Konstantin, you mentioned "borscht, pelmeni, grandma's tales" as examples of the warm things that form memories. You're the co-author of an illustrated book about pelmeni. The Last DumplingWhy was the dumpling chosen as the "hero"?

Konstantin: Because the pelmeni is a kind of "bridge between cultures." It unites Asia and Europe. It's my favorite theme: "West in the East" or "East in the West." We are so intertwined that the pelmeni becomes a very apt symbol of our existence. Say "dumpling" or "pelmeni," and you're understood from New York to Lisbon to Vladivostok, from China to Indonesia.

As for the title of our book, I took it from an old joke: when the last dumpling remains on the plate, the lights are turned off and everyone fights for it in the dark. The style of the book is humorous. I illustrated it, and the texts were written by a "Michelin-starred chef." Christopher Luczak, working in Singapore. So, despite the anarchic, cheerful tone, the book contains a lot of valuable culinary information.

Napoleon in Phuket: Covid, Exile, and Pop Culture

— Konstantin, in your son’s film The Violin Case You show an interesting art object, a violin with an image of Napoleon, and then a whole "Napoleoniada" emerges—ironic, comic, absurd. Where did this theme come from?

Konstantin: This is my reflection on the phenomenon of "celebrity culture." Ask anyone anywhere in the world—an African, an Eskimo—who the most famous person is. They'll likely name Napoleon. Because he's everywhere.

The idea for the Napoleonic film was born during the pandemic: we were stuck on an island in Thailand, unable to leave. I decided: okay, I have a chance to work in peace. I had a copy of "The History of Napoleon" on my bookshelf in the studio. I was thinking about how his "career" ended—in the middle of the Atlantic, on the island of Saint Helena. And then I suddenly imagined a different scenario. What if he had been exiled, say, to Thailand, to Koh Samui or Phuket?

And so here he is, among tourists and expats, getting tattoos, riding a bike, marrying a local—I even came up with a name for her: Patayon. It's absurd, of course, but it's an absurdity that reveals the meaning of life in exile or emigration: everything you had before no longer matters.

— So Napoleon and pelmeni are two things everyone knows. And you work with such "icons"?

Konstantin: This is pop culture in the best sense of the word. Something universal. Pop culture doesn't attach importance to national or ethnic roots. What matters is the universality of the image. Who cares that Andy Warhol was of Russian descent? What matters is the mark the artist leaves behind, not their background.

February 24 and the crossed out names

- As for the “trace”, you’re doing fine with it, you even represented Macau at the Venice Biennale.

— Yes, that's true. I would have loved to represent Russia at the Biennale. But I wasn't invited. Russian artists are more parochial, I guess. They always have this kind of "I support you, and you support me" kind of thing. For them, I seemed incomprehensible and an outsider. When we met during the Biennale in some Venetian palazzo, the conversation was usually in English, but as soon as I switched to Russian, I saw a hostile reaction on their faces. Like, I don't want to know you. Remember how Saltykov-Shchedrin describes a Russian abroad? He gets on a train and somewhere in Berlin, he's already ready to kiss the hand of a German train conductor. For him, a foreigner is everything, and one of his own is nothing.

"As far as I understand, in today's Russia, foreigners, especially from the West, are more of an enemy than an object of admiration. This talk of 'let's restore the Soviet Union'—how do you like it?"

Konstantin: Nonsense. Absolute nonsense. I was a pioneer myself, I even spent a shift in "Orlyonok", where they tried to explain to me that I lived in the happiest country. Standing in line for two hours for bread—that was what they called happiness? Incidentally, the Far East, where I lived, was always freer than Moscow: we had teachers who were expelled from the capital as disloyal, for example, during the 80 Olympics. And artists in Vladivostok were engaged in abstract painting, and no one was intimidated. We didn't have any "bulldozer exhibitions." This is the Russia that remained inside me—freer than today's.

— Did you stop traveling to Russia after the war started?

Konstantin: Why bother? It's technically difficult to travel by transfer. Until 22, there was a direct flight from Hong Kong to Moscow. Now it's been cancelled.

On February 24th, the first day it all started, I started calling my friends. And very quickly it turned into a terrible routine: I'd talk to them, and then I'd cross them out of my address book. One. Two. Three. And then I stopped when I reached the name of my former best friend and decided not to call him. Not because I didn't care anymore—quite the opposite. I didn't want to find out that an abyss would open up there, too.

After that, I simply closed my notebook—to avoid tormenting my memory and to preserve the good memories. I don't want to be disappointed. So I refrain from communicating with my old friends who remained in Russia. To tell the truth, I'm tired of listening to what they say now. I could start arguing with them and suddenly lose all my friends from my past life. And that's too hard. I prefer my country to exist nostalgically, like in Nabokov. For him, Russia was childhood. For me, it's youth. Let it stay there.