Exhibition "My Heart Is Full of Pity"

About exhibition

The exhibition is dedicated to Aleksei German’s film Hard to Be a God. It allows visitors to see the 'inside' of the world the director built over 14 long years together with the film crew while working on his opus magnum. Costume ensembles, sketches, household items, on-set photographs — all these are components of the environment in which one of contemporary cinema's most distinctive films was formed. The basis for the exhibition was a collection of about 1,000 items donated to the Film Museum by the film's creators. "It is important that the project opens at the start of the 'Russia' exhibition-forum, because German's films are unquestionably part of the heritage of Soviet and Russian cinema, its semantic dominant. Aleksei Yuryevich is one of the greatest directors in the history of cinema, with a singular vision and an unmistakable authorial signature, with an intonation that cannot be reproduced. For the master's memory this is a significant year, and on the map of celebrations of Aleksei German's 85th anniversary the exhibition will become the final chord. For the exhibits that became the core of the project and an integral part of the collections, the Film Museum thanks Aleksei Alekseyevich German and the film's producer, Rushan Nasibulin. We are convinced that authentic objects from the film's universe will help create for museum visitors a sense of presence on the other side of the screen," emphasizes Larisa Bazhenova, director of the Film Museum. In addition to the rich collection of artifacts, the exhibition is complemented by multimedia and sound accompaniment and excerpts from the film, which allows for maximum engagement with the film's aesthetic concept and an immersive effect. Terrifying hyperrealism as a method was chosen here for a reason. This is how German himself, meticulously refining the naturalistic texture of the characters and spaces, immersed the viewer in a 'Bosch-like' Middle Ages that became the context for the characters' fates. The result is an anti-dream film, an approaching austere inevitability. The exhibition's curator, film historian Stanislav Lugovoy, comments on the idea behind the exhibition's title: "When choosing the actor for the lead role of Rumata, Aleksei German searched for a long time for the single right intonation with which the film's key line had to be delivered: 'My heart is full of pity. I cannot do this.' In this phrase, written by the Strugatskys, lies the absolute and bitter humanism of a generation that passed through the millstones of the 20th century, stood firm, became hardened, but did not lose its sense of conscience. And for the director the theme of moral responsibility always remained paramount."