If we do not take into consideration so called "eternal" human values, which carry implications for the individual and not for the mass, then art for society as a real work of art becomes memory. Modem art loses its punctiform characteristics and it gains stereoscopic ones. With other words, what we listen to is not an opus but music in general. What we look at is not a canvas but painting in the interior. And what we watch is not a film as such but a melodrama, an action film, a thriller, in general "we watch TV',. Art ceases to be something concrete, it is replaced by the so called "environment".

However it is true only for comrnon knowledge. Usually where something old disappears and something new is born there is always a possibility for "devil's intrigues". For example, intellectuals are disappointed in their calculations when they expect film art to leave the mass and find new ways of intercourse with the individual first of all because of the desire of the individual to be listened to by the mass.

Aesthetics have become fully independent and socially neutral due to the comfort which was given to it by democratic society. At the same time the healthy organism of the society seems to suffer from the lack of socially meaningful gestures, even stress and it also sutters from their over abundance. Surely we cannot be participants of full value in a life - a regulated and standardized life - unless we realise actions or at least take part in them.

Only the theatre would not be forced into the list of arts set aside by social life. It is still saved by its notorious coat-rack where you are supposed to hang your coat, then take your seat in the stalls or in the dress-circle, have a chat with your acquaintances in the interval - you are supposed to do the ritual. While it is still within the framework of a town, a festival grows too big for it.

The festival is a unique occasion to compare yourself with the world, to see your reflection in its eyes, to learn how you are judged, you are either confirmed or humiliated - this is the essence of an international film festival,

It is not films which are the most important but the fact that society keeps changing from festival to festival more rapidly than it can be followed by the "criminal of the celebration" - film art. Our society, fffst of all the part we belong to is in an uproar and it badly needs reorganisation. Or rather the reorganised society needs affrrrnation, publicity, and the presentation of the new epoch and the new hierarchy. Whether you like it or not we witness the birth of a new socially active art, where people are present not only on the ceremony, but they have a leading part or a secondary one in a real performance.

Casting is rather amusing on the festivals of the post soviet tern-tory. Statesmen try to participate, mainly during the electoral campaign - perhaps just like in a Shakespearean tragedy. While formerly the state elite represented the ideological guideline of the Moscow International Film Festival, today it represents the new social structure. And your place in the festival and in the social hierarchy too depends on how close your seat is to the seat of the prime minister. Cannes does not allow the Marseillaise to be played on the official opening and closing ceremony yet, but the hierarchy of money determines its social system.

Film art as such plays a compensatory part on the festival - it demonstrates eternal human values in a strict social structure. Without entering particulars all the values above are conveyed in one word, which is talent.

When speaking about the total indifference to the art movie Krzysztof Zanussi exclaims with grief. ,,We try to identify ourselves with culture and not with modem people." How often we appeal to ethics, politics and sociology for help when choosing among various criteria! At the same time aesthetics rots in our hands like a hundred year old relic.

Concerning our everyday audience on the festival, who drops m a semi-dark auditorium rarely and not on every festival as a matter of fact, well, both he and his fellow cinema goer in any other auditorium happen to fmd themselves in an over refined yet ifinctionally over simplified world, and they want to be raped by a simple, clear and touching story. A film of such kind is very rare, it is a gift on a festival. Surely this is the only issue they all agree on: captious critics, film makers spitting on authorities, and distlibutors rnshing around.

Two big aspects of film dram aturgy, violence and compassion are less and less used to raise up film art from its miserable conditions. The dividing lines and levels of these two notions are ifi constant change and the answer to cynicism is naive sentimentalism. Trash is becoming the king of all genres in film art- Trash is the most convenient aesthetic form for film people and experts. First, in case of failure the answer can always be: ,,We were just assing about!"

Secondly: nobody will blame yOu for being biased when choosing or insisting on one aesthetic category because trash is outside any aesthetic category. Therefore, when trying not to be left behind the century the movie necessairily must live on the intonations of people.

Film festivals are very similar to presentations, varnishing days, handing over of academic prizes - they are parties. All these occasions have become ways of compensation of individuals in our modem society for their loneliness in an overcrowded world. However we can consider a festival to be a regulator of commumcation between people only on certain conditions. You are not likely to taik to someone personally on the festival. First, you are supposed to talk, not to one person, but to everyone. Secondly, you should talk about a topic which is not very difficult to continue if you are interrupted, or it need not be continued at all. In such situations you are always saved by humour, irony, the ability to turn your partner's attention laying stresses to other subjects and changing them like a juggler. On such occasions it is difficult. to understand what is going on. What is clear is that new social formations are established. They do not depend on the possession of means of production but on the principle of their own circles, filling in the given social niche. The abundance of such programmes is the evidence of the fact that the social stmcture of the society is in an active development. And it is also true the other way round, their absence is the evidence of the immobility and conservatism of society.

,,The Moscow Film Festival is an occasion where prizes and presents are distributed among relatives and yourselves exposed to the public gaze" - this is the anecdote of a well known soviet film critic, Victor Demin, paraphrasing a well-known table. T think this anecdote is still of the fact that the social structure of society is in an active development. And it is also thie the other way round, their absence is the evidence of the innnobility and conservatism of the society.

,,The Moscow Film Festival is an occasion where prizes and presents are distributed among relatives and yourselves exposed to the public gaze" - this is the anecdote of a well known soviet film critic, Victor Demin, paraphrasing a well-known fable. I think this anecdote is still topical. The difference is that we would like Richard Gere and Regie Varniere to be our relatives. And concerning the modest place we reserve for our film art in this country, we do believe that it is impossible to earn money with our films.

There is a unique atmosphere on the Kiev Film Festival called "Youth". You can not feel the influence of ideology and politics of the past any more and there is no power of money and new political trends yet. And without paying compliments to film art we can probably say that you do feel the power of the new generation, which wants to go its own way.

Undoubtedly, film art will survive lots of generations, and I would like to believe that it will do a lot of good to dying film art. What can we wish film an, the object of celebration? Let us believe in the optimistic words of A. Chekhov: ,,New forms in literature are always followed by new forms in life", and I hope not the other way round!