Exposed Film Tom Birchenough | Moscow Times A rare selection of contemporary Russian documentaries will be shown from Wednesday to Feb. 28 in an event almost unprecedented for Moscow. The Kinoteatr.doc festival will take place in the small theater Teatr.doc, which, marking its third anniversary, has decided to branch out into film screenings. The overlap of interests is obvious. Teatr.doc began as a location where stage works were created and performed with an obvious connection to, and basis in, everyday social reality. In part, this connection was inspired by the theater's loose associations with other European venues, such as the Royal Court Theater in London. For Yelena Gremina, one of Teatr.doc's founders, the connection between theater and film is logical. "It's a reflection on what is happening now, perhaps a first step to change," said Gremina. "We need to know where we are now, and from that we may learn how to change society." Given that documentary film is very rarely screened, the event should be very interesting -- and not least because each screening of the 50 works in the program will be followed by a discussion between the filmmakers and the audience. This is the kind of contact that in Moscow to date has been largely limited to professional circles, such as Dom Kino. Elsewhere -- for instance, at the annual documentary festival in Yekaterinburg -- interest in the genre has long made for packed houses. The festival's program mixes documentaries and features. While this may seem paradoxical at first glance, a closer examination of the program reveals a natural connection between the two kinds of films. According to Alyona Solntseva, a Moscow critic who helped put together the program, the unifying thread is an orientation around social issues, often realized on a very small budget. It is no accident, then, that Solntseva's collaborator on the program is Boris Khlebnikov, the co-director of the acclaimed 2003 feature "Koktebel" -- which brilliantly combined a rural setting, a cast of little-known actors and a quiet, observant focus on basic human emotions. Their program features filmmakers who straddle the border between features and documentaries. For instance, one film being screened is Marina Razbezhkina's short documentary "Just Life" (Prosto Zhizn). Razbezhkina's first feature, "Harvest Time" (Vremya Zhatvy), played in last summer's Moscow International Film Festival, where it attracted considerable critical acclaim. For Solntseva, a key element in many of the works is new technology -- specifically, the fact that inexpensive digital cameras are now accessible to budding directors, obviating the need for elaborate pre-production planning. Sometimes, the results are impressive. From the features, one example is Pavel Ruminov's 55-minute film "Deadline," which has earned considerable international plaudits despite its minimal budget. From documentaries, the same is true of Pavel Kostomarov's "A Life in Peace" (Mirnaya Zhizn), co-directed by Antoine Cattin of Switzerland. The film, which has already been reviewed in these pages, depicts Chechen refugees in the Pskov region. "The characters inevitably live in a war atmosphere, even if they are physically removed from the conflict," Solntseva said. "A Life in Peace" fits naturally into "War," one of five categories in the festival's program. The "War" category also includes works like Alexander Rastorguyev's "Washing Thursday" (Chisty Chetverg) which captures the everyday life of conscript soldiers through the prism of their weekly bathing day. For Solntseva, the film shows the world of a particular generation -- a world that is aggressive and inevitably controlled by financial status. Yet the film avoids direct political comment: "We see how an individual has to dress up in uniform and pick up a weapon," Solntseva said. Besides "War," the other categories are "Women," "Work," "Home" and "Choice." Some political element is inevitable in each film, even though it is often tangential. "We were interested in the social position of the works, not their political or ideological position," Solntseva said. As an example, she cites Alyona Polunina's "Yes, Death" (Da, Smert), a portrait of the young members of Eduard Limonov's National Bolshevik Party. The filmmaker's interest is not in the party itself, but in the psychology of those drawn to it, and the relation of party members to their leader. Whether oppositional or not, almost all of the works in the program share one quality: They won't be appearing in a theater "near you," and the chances of television screenings are equally minimal. For Solntseva, this was something of a deliberate choice. But the interest of Russian television in documentaries has long been limited, with a few encouraging exceptions, especially state-owned Rossia. For now, the place to catch the pulse of the nation, especially as seen through the eyes of its younger generation, is in the basement of a Moscow theater. The fact that the festival's screenings are free is not important; the fact that they are necessary is.