Original-Cin Hot Docs Chat: Director Maxim Derevianko on Ai Weiwei's Turandot
By Jim Slotek
In documentary filmmaking, every movie is two movies. There’s the film you set out to make, and the one you end up with after the future unfolds – say, in the form of a pandemic or a Russian invasion of a neighbouring country.
Maxim Derevianko, the resident commercial filmmaker at the Rome Opera House, had a bumpy ride en route to making the documentary Ai Weiwei’s Turandot, which opens at Hot Docs on Friday.
“I was working at the Rome Opera House already, since five or six years, before doing this documentary,” he said in a Zoom call from Rome. “And the reason I wanted to do it was my great grandfather, in 1922, became first violinist of the Rome Opera House orchestra.
“I would ask myself, is it just by chance I am here after 100 years? Is it destiny, is there any kind of link between me and my great grandfather?”
(Derevianko’s classical bloodlines also include his father Vladimir, a Bolshoi ballet dancer who left the Soviet Union for the West in 1982).
“So, I said, ‘I would like to do a documentary, but not just a documentary about the Rome Opera House. I want to do a documentary about the people and the lives they bring onstage to every show.’”
Derevianko and his writing partner Michele Cogo set about looking for a unique production around which to wrap his idea, and were taken by an upcoming production of Puccini’s Turandot, scheduled for 2020, which was to be directed by the Chinese artist, activist and erstwhile political prisoner Ai Weiwei.
It was a strange hire, since Ai knew nothing about opera, but he knew socially conscious subtext when he read it in a libretto.
And in a scene showing his first words to the amused assembled cast, Ai admits his limitations, saying, “I like to do things I’m not good at.”
“That first sentence opened my mind literally,” Derevianko says. “It’s so powerful when he said, ‘I don’t like opera. I don’t listen to music. But if you criticize, you should add something.” It’s very fascinating that sentence.
“It was a fun moment. I think that’s Ai Weiwei challenging himself.”
The lure for Ai was a reunion with a lifelong friend, choreographer Chiang Ching, who knew him since he was a child, and later, ironically, cast him as an extra in a production of Turandot by the New York Metropolitan Opera.
Director Ai immediately set about globalizing the opera, which was set in China, about a stateless ex-Royal Persian in love with the harsh princess Turandot.
The artist adapted a piece he’d once created, a world map, rendered topographically with blocks and squares. The re-envisioned stage had characters standing at different heights according to their status.
But about that pandemic.
“So, we had a documentary that was to be about the creative process of Ai Weiwei and this opera. And not even two weeks into production, COVID arrived. And the theatre had to close, everything disappeared. Theatres, cinemas, museums, everything that was about art was supposed to shut down.”
And oddly, Derevianko eventually found himself busy. He made a documentary called Origen, about the struggles of major artists and arts groups – including the Paris Ballet, the Vienna Staatsoper and the Zurich Ballet – to return from lockdown.
“That year (2020) was crazy for me. I shot three documentaries.
“It was an incredible moment to tell stories, especially about art and the balance of life completely changing.
“And that’s what changed in this movie. It was no longer about the creative process of Ai Weiwei. It was about, why are we doing art, and why do we need it? Just as human beings, why do we express ourselves this way?”
Eventually, in 2022, Ai Weiwei’s Turandot went back into production. But not without one more complication before the finish line.
“We have a conductor (Oksana Lyniv) and the singer who plays Turandot (Oksana Dyka). They were both from Ukraine, and the war started one week before the premiere of the show in 2022. That moment was hard for everyone. The conductor and the title role, and they didn’t know if they had to go back.
“There was incredible tension before opening night.”
For his part, Derevianko had one more obstacle as well, one that saw Julian Lennon (son of… well, you know) step in as an investor/executive producer.
“He arrived when we had already a final cut, when the movie was basically finished and we were searching for funds to close post-production, everything. And he’s an activist too, he fights a lot for human rights.
“I have his email when he saw the documentary for the first time. He’d never got into opera that much because he couldn’t understand it very well. But thanks to this documentary, he opened up to the genre.
“I think it’s because of the interpretation of Ai Weiwei, because he used the stage as a reflection of reality, of what was outside the theatre.”
Ai Weiwei’s Turandot debuts at Hot Docs Friday, April 25 at 6:30 p.m. at the Hot Docs Ted Rogers Cinema. Director Maxim Derevianko and tenor Michael Fabiano will attend for a Q&A.