The great river Amur

I was born and grew up on the shore of Amur river. During all my school years and later, in University, from 1980 to 1995, I was spending 10-11 months in Khabarovsk and in the summer I used to go to Blagoveshensk where my grandmother lived. Both cities are situated completely on one shore of the river, but there are different reasons for that. Near Khabarovsk Amur is too wide to allow the city to grow over other side. And in Blagoveshensk the state border follows the river, and there is a Chinese city on other shore, Heihe. So the river always divided the space at “known” and “unknown” in mi mind. Chines shore seemed to be completely inaccessible, I could not imagine that one day I would find myself there. The left shore of Amur in Khabarovsk was not inaccessible, in theory, but in reality I crossed Amur only once a year, on a train going to Blagoveshensk. But I often visited the big island, which you can found just near Khabarovsk in the middle of the Amur River, because there were dachas, summer kithen-gardens which used to had each russian family.

So quite naturally in mi mind formed a model of an inhabited place, how it should be constructed: a city on a shore of a big river, some mysterious place on the other shore and river as a border. Later when I lived in some other cities which are constructed in other way I always have a feeling that something important is missing. And a river became for me the symbol of a border in general, an other shore of a river – the symbol of something mysterious and otherworldly, and island – the symbol of the strange magical space in-between.

In the mean time there is indeed the border between China and Russia which follows Amur all the way from Blagoveshensk to Khabarovsk, and this border isn't impenetrable anymore. Now it's possible to pass along both sides of the river and compare how people live there. 30 years have passed and many thing changed since then. In 80-th when I visited Blagoveshensk I always paid attention to an old steamboat with the wheels on both sides, such boats were widely use in Russia in 30-th. This ghost of the past was surfing from Heihe down the river and back, you could watch it almost each day. In the end of 80-th they changed it to mere new steamer, which was made in America in 50-th, with one wheel on the back side. Heihe at that time was a very little town. Now he has grown to a city with 1,5 mln population. In the same time Blagoveshensk has barely changed.

For me this work isn't just a documentary exploring of the river which at the same time connects and divides two countries. It's also an hommage to my own childhood and the symbolic ruver which flows between two shores of my own inner space.