The creative group of Serhii Lysenko plans to finish the work on the movie before December 2013 when the centennial of Mykola Amosov will be marked. The date has been included in the UNESCO calendar.
Serhii Lysenko, a graduate of the Dnipropetrovsk University and Karpenko-Kary Institute, belongs to the young generation of Ukrainian cinematographers, but he has already managed to shoot five films: three documentaries and two live-action films. The cycle of his exploration and its originality gave way to a new idea. After familiarizing herself with them, Kateryna Amosova arranged a meeting with Lysenko to discuss the contours of possible cooperation. This is not the first movie about Mykola Amosov, however, it is supposed to show his life path in an absolutely fresh aspect. Their vision of what the fundamentals of this truthful chronicle, actually a parable of the 20th century, should be has seamlessly closed, and the content thread of the future film suggested by the director, events – time – eternity, has become its code. For the phenomenon of academician Amosov, a Russian zealot who became the pride and symbol of Ukrainian cardiac surgery, practically coincides with the lights of his unusual destiny. The movie, which uses rare videos from the depository and wide range of shootings, is quite an expensive project. However, it is funded completely from private sources. Professor Kateryna Amosova and the creative team are financing the work on an equal footing.
Recently Serhii Lysenko, the movie cameraman Andrii Lysetsky, and other enthusiasts of the team have returned from the first cinematographic travel across the milestones of the screenplay. They started with what Amosov began.
“We have captured many spots in Bryansk, Moscow, Cherepovets, and Arkhangelsk, we have recorded conceptually important interviews,” Lysenko explained, “We set out from Kyiv on a special roomy automobile with equipment and went to Bryansk where surgeon Amosov in his courageous radicalism of lung surgeries, actually, became the great Amosov we know. In particular, he worked in after-war Bryansk as a head of a surgery department together with Shalimov and Malakhova in the oblast hospital. This new-type institution is currently located in a different place, but the building that is significant for us is housing now the city children’s hospital. Apparently, it looks now somewhat different than in those years, but it is still a symbol of time. The old-timers showed us a small house located very close to the hospital where the young surgeon resided. Our conversation with Anna Irkaeva, former surgery nurse with whom Amosov operated for over four years was especially interesting. Irkaeva is 89 now. According to her, Amosov was practically spending days and nights in the hospital, taking only several minutes of rest at home. He chose Irkaeva as his assistant from the hospital additional staff, because complicated tense surgeries on lunges were being implemented in the background of traditional surgeries, so he needed an extra pair of hands and patience for long hours. Irkaeva turned out to be namely this kind of employee.
“For sure, as an oblast surgeon, Amosov frequently went on plane to Bryansk region areas for urgent surgeries. And one of our interlocutors, a local male nurse at the time,” Lysenko went on, “recalled the following episode. As soon as Mykola Amosov came, he immediately started to operate – and suddenly the light went out. Amosov did not stop for a minute and finished the life-saving work successfully at the light of flash-lights.
“In Bryansk Amosov is greatly honored, he is presented in very touching way in the museum of the new oblast hospital. Incidentally, there we saw on display the photo of Amosov’s fellow doctor who told him in 1953 already in Kyiv that in Bryansk the notorious ‘doctors’ case’ was supposed to be brought up and he was accused of killing patients during lung surgeries, whereas in reality he was saving their lives.
“Moscow was the next point of our pre-scheduled meetings,” Lysenko went on, “We had a very interesting talk with Rada Adzhubey who for a long while worked as deputy editor-in-chief of the magazine Science and Life. Namely this magazine its million pressruns brought legendary popularity to Amosov’s pen by publishing his novelette Thoughts and Heart and later other works by Amosov. We heard penetrating words about Amosov as a talented and courageous ringleader in cardiac surgery in the conversation between him and director of famous Bakuliov Institute, academician Leo Bokeria: the minutes in front of the camera in this institute will become a kind of a backbone in the movement of meanings of the film and its philosophy.
“Compared with the mid-1940s, these days everything looks differently in the Sklifosovsky Institute. But the team was still lucky to make some shooting. Incidentally, the 10-minute film of famous surgeon S. S. Yudin where he shows his method of operating on an injured knee-joint has been preserved. Of course, the living mentioning about Yudin, this colossus of surgery, owing to whom Amosov got to Sklifosofka, is a real finding for us.”
Apparently, Cherepovets has become a kind of emotional core in what you have seen and shot during the trip?
“You are right. In this old picturesque town Amosov entered the river of his life twice: there he continued his school studies after four forms of a primary school in native Olkhovo, and later – came there to study at the electromagnetic vocational school. And he also returned there at the beginning of the 1940s already as a doctor, he became a surgeon. Anticipating your logical question whether we visited Olkhovo, I will answer: the village is buried on the bottom of Rybinskoe Sea. And we recreated the first facts of Amosov’s life, image of his mother, a heroic village paramedic-midwife only with the help of a few photos. However, Cherepovets has given us much both in terms of motivation and shooting material for our idea. Amosov is remembered here well both with the help of a museum, his old school, the vocational school, and the hospital. We have found the house where Amosov resided when he was already a doctor. His room was in the first floor and he taught surgery and other subjects in the second floor where a medical school was located.
“Arkhangelsk, too, is proud of Amosov. Of course, his medical institute (there many people said by the way that they would be glad if the medical premises are named after him to mark his centennial), and electric station where Amosov worked after the vocational school. An interesting feature – about Amosov and about the time, all of a sudden it became clear from the documents we had to familiarize ourselves with that Amosov got a passport when he already was a student of an institute. And before that he in a sense was a Soviet serf, like all who came from the countryside.”
So, you did not visit your milestones without a reason.
“Aside from the plot lines, they also give a historical background, its authenticity. We have a special approach to this aspect of work, in which the audience seems to plunge visually – after looking through many materials in the cinema archives in Krasnogorsk near Moscow we have found the needed cinema retrospective.”
And surely, the intense work awaits you in Kyiv.
“Hopefully, Borys Paton, who has agreed in advance to take part in the film, will say something innermost and unique about our hero. The dialogues with pupils and fellows of Amosov in the institute of cardiovascular surgery named after him are important too, starting with head of the institute, Amosov’s successor, academician Hennadii Knyshov. There will be scheduled shootings in the Old Crimea, in the sanatorium where Amosov and later his pupil Praskovia Sobko implemented surgical treatment of cavernous lung tuberculosis.”
The authenticity of atmosphere is probably supposed to become one of the peculiarities of the film?
“And this is one of our super tasks. But the film will also present a variety of documents about the Amosov marathon. For example, the copy of his graduation diploma from Correspondence Industrial Institute in Moscow. As is known, the diploma paper included a project of a steam-power plant.
“There are many things we need to tell about in the 1.5-hour-long film, but at the same time it should be perceived as an integral momentum and a kind of revelation, where everyone will to some extent see themselves. But we will try to finish the film before the deadline,” Lysenko resumes, “The film will have two versions, Ukrainian and Russian. There is a great interest to it, including television companies. There is one more cardinal moment: the materials of the work which are one of it long-lasting guidelines will probably make it possible to create an Internet resource about our hero, including a virtual Amosov museum. Here he will be talking to us again.”
