The name of Dmitry Dolinin is well known among film lovers and filmmakers. A great cameraman and a real professional who managed to work with such venerable directors as Ilya Averbakh, Gleb Panfilov, Vitaly Melnikov, Dinara Asanova and Joseph Heifitz. The author of a wonderful textbook “Cinema for Dummies”, which is included in the training program of students of VGIKA and SBGUKIT. Photographer and teacher.
He also tried himself in the role of director, making his debut in the eighties with the television film “Three Years” based on the novel by Anton Chekhov. However, it is worth saying that this picture was created in collaboration with the famous actor Stanislav Lyubshin. The first completely independent directorial work was the film “Sentimental Journey to Potatoes”.
The script for the film was written by Andrei Smirnov, a cult personality in domestic cinema. And the main role of a young first-year student was performed by the future director of “State Counselor” Philip Jankovsky.
In this film, Dolinina, there is something from the cinema of Dinara Asanova, who shot piercing poetic tapes about the life of the younger generation. The film tells about yesterday’s schoolboy named Kartashov. He, entering the university, goes with his new classmates to the countryside in order to harvest potatoes in a certain period of time.
Before the eyes of a young man, another unfamiliar world of the outback opens up, where the hero is destined to undergo the rite of initiation and learn the other side of life. The young man will have to overcome the line that separates him from his independent existence.
“Sentimental Journey to Potatoes” seems to be the most reliable film, truthfully depicting the era of the late USSR. Realistic lighting, gray tones and field shootings of provincial landscapes immerse the viewer in the unsightly life of domestic reality. But even in this inhospitable space of the film, the director somehow magically creates a poetic atmosphere of kind sadness, which breaks into the given parameters of the composition.
The deceptive simplicity of the picture dissipates in the last twenty minutes of timekeeping. The hero changes his attitude towards himself and the world around him. He's growing up. This rainy summer, his childhood ended. The bus, breaking through the dirty textures of the Soviet village, brings the hero to a new life.