‘The Left-hander’/‘Der Linkshander’ is a film about Hitler's childhood. Screenwriter and director Yuri Kuzin. 1999/2024.

16 июля 202416 июл 2024

8 мин

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Wounds that sting...
Attention!
It is prohibited to copy and publicly post the film "LEFTY" ("Der Linkshander"/"Left-hander") 1999 and 2024 editions on any media, devices, websites, platforms, clouds, social networks, as well as posting links to the film on the Internet without the written consent of the copyright holder - the author of the script, director and the producer of the film is Yuri Vladimirovich's cousin

Ladies and gentlemen!

Let me bring to your attention the anniversary reissue of the short film "Lefty" ("Der Linkshander" ("Left-hander") about Adolf Hitler's childhood in Linz, Austria. The author of the script, director and producer Yuri Kuzin. The 1999 film was re-released by the author in 2024. In addition to changes in editing, sound, and titles, image quality has improved by removing footlights at the places of frame gluing and abandoning the 3/4 frame format and replacing it with a more modern "screen porridge" with a ratio of 16:9. The film was released in two versions: in German with Russian [29] and English [30] titles and subtitles. The Russian premiere of the short film took place on October 2, 2024 in the White Hall of the Cinema House, 12 Karavannaya Street, in St. Petersburg [33].

Brief synopsis

Adi is not accepted to school. The reason is that the boy is left-handed. The teacher suggests the father to change his son from left-handed to right-handed over the summer. All would be nothing if the maiden name of the boy's grandmother was not Schicklgruber.....

Unfolded synopsis

All children are angels. But some, when they grow up, become "terrible parents" whose sons will not miss an opportunity to drink blood from the mother of their children.

I made a sketch about humiliation and insults, which hurt, but also give fantasy. A child is beaten! For what? And why does God fail to act? Hitler interested me, but least of all psychoanalysis, which viewed the dictator's destructiveness from the angle of the Oedipus complex. I decided to investigate the obstruction of the marginalised, and to put an end to speculation about the nature of evil with the drama of left-handed children. I took up the defence of genes whose breakdowns supposedly lead to hard-heartedness. My film didn't absolve the maniac of guilt, but it didn't allow liberals to flash their heels either. Besides, I shunned the beaten track and the autobahn of Fritz Dietz, the paving stones of Kukryniksy preferred the narrow gauge railway with rumbling express trains, the wheels of which would make silverware dance in Clara Hitler's kitchen cupboard. There was also the Chaplin way. But I dismissed it, seeing laughter as a bearish favour to the tyrant.

What if we don't stigmatise evil, but listen? What if the devil is laid on the couch - isn't that what Freud, Jung, Adler and Karen Horney did? Wouldn't Lucifer, having blown off steam, lay his cards on the table?

The painting was expected. But the appearance of the ogoltsy surprised even the hardened critics. The idea that monsters have childhoods too, it was shocking. Of course, happy growing up with slightly burnt cakes, a papier-mâché paradise, a mahogany crucifix and Shrovetide festivities in colourful carnival costumes will not make the viewer cry. But the more convincingly Addy suffered from the leather crag with which the customs officer Alois strapped his left arm to his son's thigh, the more difficult it was for the audience to demonise Hitler. The villain was being humanised! The attack only sharpened its claws ...

At the beginning of the film, clutching a pencil in his left hand, the first-grader writes "Adolf Schicklgruber" in Sütterlin script (German Gothic italics), but in the final scene, with the fingers of his plastered right hand, he writes "Adolf Hitler". Before that, Addy had blown his father's office to smithereens and fallen on the rubble, in which the future ruins of cities were vaguely guessed. Father a tyrant, mother a slave, teacher a sociopath - what a breeding ground for the birth of a monster.

The heart-touching theme of native ashes, of a homeland forever lost but no less desirable, is embodied in the film by the leitmotif ‘Va, pensiero’ - the chorus of captive Jews from the third act of Giuseppe Verdi's opera Nabucco (1842).

Wounds that sting...

To get off with a joke, I often ask myself the question: how many people worked on your film, I answer: two, Yuri Kuzin and the Lord God. The first worked as a director, screenwriter, cameraman, artist, sound engineer, editor, producer and performer of the main role. The second one was the one who casts a shadow into the frame, but always stays behind the scenes.

I entered VGIK in 1994 on the 8th attempt. I was expelled from the student body twice: the first time for financial debts. The second one is for low academic performance, although I have always been among the best students…The real reason was something else. After learning that the institute was secretly selling Lefty, bypassing the screenwriter and director, whose copyrights would be violated, I banned the deal, threatening to sue the perpetrators. And soon I was expelled for the second time for failing, but I won prizes at film festivals and was even sent for an internship with Andrzej Wajda in Krakow. I made a film about Hitler's childhood in auditorium No. 218, where I built the decoration of the apartment of Alois Hitler, Adolf's father. At night, when the institute was closed, I climbed into a stone niche two meters above the floor. I spent three winter months in this coffin. And one day, when I was having dinner and rattling plates, the guards decided to check the classroom. They broke in. And I, like a tree beetle, huddled in a crack under the ceiling. The hunt has begun. And when swearing and threats failed to lure me out of hiding, the guards staged a "psychic attack." Lining up in a chain, they slowly walked around the auditorium, crowbarring furniture and promising to skin the one who ran but got stuck in a rabbit hole. I almost gave up the ghost from fear. But God averted the trouble! Why? Yes, so that after 25 years I would shoot "Heidegger".

Title: ‘The Left-Hander’ (‘Der Linkshander’/‘Left-hander’).

Year: 1999/2024 author's re-release of the film in 2024 with updated editing, sound, credits.

Director: Screenwriter, director and producer Yuri Kuzin

Age: 61

Country/city: Russia/St. Petersburg

Production: Yury Kuzin, VGIK, Metso Igitian

Nomination: short feature film (fiction) film

Duration: 19 minutes

Age limit: 12+

Genre: historical fantasy about Adolf Hitler's (Adi) childhood years in Linz, Austria.

Script writer: Yuri Kuzin

The plot of the short film is based on the short story ‘Summer without honey’ - the course work of the student Yuri Kuzin on the subject ‘film writing’, which was conducted by L.N.Nehoroshev (editor on the film ‘Stalker’ directed by Andrei Tarkovsky) at VGIK for Vladimir Khotinenko's workshop.

Cameraman: Artak Igitian

Artist: Yuri Kuzin

Sound engineer: Yury Kuzin

Sound engineer: Pyotr Gumenyuk

Editor:Nina Romanovskaya

Starring:

Adi - Nikita Sailor

Alois Hitler - Evgeny Kindinov

Clara Hitler - Tatiana Kiseleva.

Teacher - Andrei I (Khoroshev)

Composer: Giuseppe Verdi

A painful theme of native ashes, of a country forever lost but no less desirable, is embodied in the film by the leitmotif ‘Va, pensiero’ - the chorus from the third act of the opera ‘Nabucco’ (1842).

According to a number of critics, "Left—handed" is a truly unique film, striking primarily in that it managed to capture through decadence and Biedermeier a cast of nostalgia for the lost image of High Art Nouveau, realizing this doomed plan at the most unfavorable time for the emergence of such art. "Having chosen a deliberately losing and dangerous strategy to return to modernity during the apogee of postmodernity with the resulting provisions for the deconstruction of authorship and the radical abolition of the fundamental system of object-subject relations, Kuzin managed to emerge as an absolute winner, creating a truly powerful, authentic and grounded work in his chosen cultural tradition"[12]

Participation in film festivals:

Second Prize of the IFF ‘Saint Anna’, ‘Centaur’ prize for the best debut at the IFF ‘Message to Man’ in St. Petersburg, ‘Rolan Bykov Foundation’ prize at the IFF ‘Kinoshock’, prize for feature film direction at the XIX IFF VGIK for the film ‘Lefty’, screening of ‘Lefty’ as part of the Cinefondation section at the 1999 Cannes Film Festival

The story of how VGIK put a stick in the wheels of the author of "Left-handed"

The story of how VGIK put a spoke in the wheels of the author of "Lefty" In 2022, Kuzin wrote and published the novel "Luciferiada", which was included in the Long List of the Moscow Literary Prize (MLP-Biennale 2022-2024) and in the long List of the International Literary Prize named after Fazil Iskander, established by the Interregional Public Organization of Writers Russian PEN-the center[23]. The story, which is set in Moscow in the 90s, tells about a VGIK student shooting a short film about Hitler's childhood. Everything would be fine if it weren't for the obsession of Lucifer, who volunteered to help…

At the same time, the story of demons throwing parties at the VGIK educational film studio was lucky to be born twice: what was published by "Moscow" (No. 3, 2022)[17], a kind of "Urfaust" with cumbersome poetics and numerous philosophical digressions, which later formed the corpus of the "Trinocular", the same thing that was printed by "Russian Field" in No. 1, 2023 — actually "Faust"[18]. The full text of two treatises and a novel, significantly fictionalized and dynamic, is posted by Kuzin on the Internet[19].