The life of the director Asya Nikolayeva, famous for her videos for Boris Grebenshchikov, the «Счастливые люди» band, Sergey Babkin and Dima Bilan, could make a fascinating series. Over the past ten years, she managed to get two higher education diplomas, give birth to two daughters, change her country of residence three times, and then, having turned up in California, find a production company and release «Левгений/Levgeniy». At the same time, Asya affirms Hollywood was never her dream.

One could say that the starting point of your career was the video for Sergey Babkin&#39;s song &quot;Bear&quot;, but how and when did you realize that you wanted to become a film director?

When I was a little girl, everyone used to say that my life would be full of creativity. My mother opened the first municipal gallery in Ukraine, and I grew up surrounded by artists, in their workshops, at openings of exhibitions and performances. When I was in seventh grade, I went to a casting and became a presenter on Kharkov TV. After that I went to Kiev with the intention to enter the Institute of Cinema and Television. But only those who spoke Ukrainian were accepted to become TV hosts.

As a result, I entered the directing department and ended up &quot;on the other side of the camera.&quot; I think, that was definitely fortunate. It is incredibly cool to realize that you can create a new universe from scratch, having a whole world in your hands, a world that you can transfer to the screen with the help of imagination, a talented team and technology, allowing other people to see and feel it. The director&#39;s ability to tell stories and create characters and situations is a real gift from above.

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After Ukraine you studied at The&nbsp;Advanced Course for Screenwriters and Film Directors&nbsp; at VGIK in Moscow, and then lived for a couple of years in Riga. What brings you here?

While still living in Ukraine, having received a master&#39;s degree and starting to shoot commercials and videos, I met my husband on the set. Our first daughter was born, and we decided to move to my husband&rsquo;s hometown, Riga for a while. Here I met talented people with whom we made projects. But after six months of living in Latvia, however comfortable it was, I started feeling restricted. I had to move on. Thus began the Moscow stage of life and training in the studio of director Vladimir Khotinenko. But Riga and Jurmala will always remain my special &quot;places of power.&quot; My family and I go here every summer, and from time to time I work with the wonderful Latvian cameraman Ritvars Bluka.

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Why did you decide to move to California? Hollywood attracted you with its opportunities?

My husband is a startup developer, and he received an offer from San Francisco. We first decided to go and sound out the situation, but then the eldest daughter went to school here, we made friends, and all of a sudden we found ourselves already living in the USA. In order to better understand the local film industry, I again went to university for four years, at the same time creating my own production company.

I never considered moving to the USA, although I had different projects here. I didn&rsquo;t dream of the &ldquo;American dream,&rdquo; but it just fell into my hands out of nowhere. For a long time I was very homesick, and then I went to study and accepted everything that life could give me here. America mainly teaches you how to work. And the pragmatism that filmmakers learn here helps to balance an excessive &ldquo;airiness&rdquo; in a career. Thanks to the local approach, you learn to use real skills to make real money.

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Historically, director and producer are both &ldquo;male&rdquo; professions. Even today, there are many times fewer women in the film industry. In your opinion, what is the main reason?

Being in the film industry requires special qualities - grip, perseverance, quick reaction, that&#39;s why there are more men among producers and directors. Gender stereotypes are also still present, but my five year experience of life in San Francisco gives me a new perspective of this issue. Men set clearer goals and achieve them without frittering away their energy, wihtout justifying themselves by mood swings. Just think of how a subtle and dramatically talented man can depict female nature on the screen? Was at least one woman able to convey its depth in such a way as did, for example, Ingmar Bergman? At the same time, there are more women producers than women directors. In terms of negotiations, they are very flexible and able to resolve issues more elegantly and make profitable deals.

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Don&#39;t you think that in the USA today any &ldquo;dish&rdquo; is being served with the &ldquo;sauce&rdquo; of feminism? Speaking of the film industry, hasn&#39;t the #MeToo movement gone too far, choosing Weinstein for a demonstrative execution?

This topic has long been the subject of my inner discussions. Has the feminist movement seeking justice gone too far? Weinstein is punished for what he is guilty of, but at the same time, he is a person without whom a big number of Tarantino&#39;s and other directors&#39; movies wouldn&#39;t have been made.

There are dark corners and skeletons in almost every big Hollywood producer&#39;s biography. But is a witch hunt really necessary? For example, in my opinion, what they did to actor Kevin Spacey was unfair, they simply &ldquo;erased&rdquo; him, made him disappear, although later he was acquitted in many respects. But his career will never be the same. Thinking people have mixed feelings about these cases. Feminism today is often not about achieving truly equal rights for women, but a way to make certain statements on this subject for the sake of doing that.

On the other hand, comparing life in Russia, Ukraine, Latvia, England and America, I can definitely say that only in San Francisco did I come to realize that I could have been infringed on my rights and &ldquo;stereotyped&rdquo; before. I like to feel like a woman, I don&#39;t mind belonging to the &ldquo;weaker sex&rdquo;, but it&rsquo;s important for me to know that I can freely follow my dream, say and do what I want.

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How does the American film industry treat foreigners trying to make their way?

At first it seemed to me that everything was going easier here, that I could do everything right away, but the feeling was deceiving. Everything changes very dramatically when serious things begin like signing contracts. Although the United States is a country of immigrants, in such moments it is very clear that you are a newcomer. To become &quot;one of them&quot;, you need to go through a series of different challenges. But if you are a workaholic and not afraid of failures, if you are ready to get up after every downfall, trying to conquer your peak again and again, then you will be noticed in America and you will have people&#39;s support.

One of the most amazing things is the ability of Americans to be sincerely happy for the success of others. It does not all come down to likes and comments, but goes on with real actions. There are, of course, subtleties of the mental code and language imperfections that complicate integration, but you just need to work with this.

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Of all countries, where did you enjoy shooting the most? Are there projects that are especially dear to your heart?

San Francisco is incredible in terms of cinematicity. It is very various - gray, foggy, or green, bright, next to the ocean or downtown. Here you can find any location you need. Probably, the works created over several years of my life here are the dearest ones.

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Tell us about the idea of the film &ldquo; Левгений / Levgeniy&rdquo;.

&quot;Levgeniy / Levgeniy&quot; fits perfectly into the series of the spontaneous events that my move to the USA initiated. Once, my business partner, cameraman Pavel Fedorov and I went to a meeting with the lead singer of the &laquo;Счастливые люди&raquo; band, Denis Rzhavsky. He took us to the roof of a former Catholic cathedral in downtown San Francisco. There we met an amazing Ukrainian artist Yevgeny Lapchenko, who was working on a big project in the cathedral . For some time we watched Zhenya work, and everything that was happening under the bell of that cathedral was so surreal that we had no choice but to film it.

Zhenya was 100% our hero. His manner of speaking, his spontaneity, his amazing life story and talent &mdash; you fall in love with that immediately. &ldquo;Levgeniy&rdquo; is a film about a man of difficult fate, who came to the USA for his dream and experienced many ups and downs: from spending the night on a park bench to meeting Richard Branson, from plans to open a personal exhibition in MoMA to the threat of deportation. But the film is actually not only about Zhenya. He became a collective image and gradually turned into a &ldquo;hero of our time&rdquo;. The film is about each one of us, about all the dreamers, their contradictory and passionate nature, about overcoming difficulties, emigration and many other issues that a person in a creative search and in another country may face.

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Did you finally find yourself in America? Have you understood the formula for success?

I believe that I am still very far from success, but in my opinion you shouldn&#39;t set it as a goal. I think that for a dream to come true, there must be something good in its core, as pathetic as it may sound. In my case, it is my desire to share my perceptions with others, to inspire them. It&rsquo;s very important for me to know that my work can help someone. Of course, I want my audience to grow, and their feedback gives me the strength to move on. It makes no sense to sit and wait for success, you just need to take at least a few real steps in its direction every day.

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In your professional &ldquo;baggage&rdquo; there are a lot of advertisements and video clips, and now also a documentary. What is left for the future? A big film?

We have a lot of ambitions and different projects under development. We have been working with European musicians and DJs creating intelligent electronic music for several years, and soon we will be shooting a video for the German musician Christian Loffler, who makes his music in a hut overlooking the sea. Before that, we made one of my favorite videos for the duo ASTRONATA, it featured ballet dancer Vlad Kozlov, who moved from Moscow to San Francisco. Loffler liked this work and we decided to cooperate. Lockdown paused shooting, but did not stop us. We have ideas about a web-series based on the Levgeniy project, in which we would depict lives of other talented people. Our plans also include the concept of a big movie - a psychological thriller that reveals the dark sides of a person&rsquo;s consciousness and the mechanism that made him commit a cruel crime. A movie about a Raskolnikov of our time. The main thing I want to achieve in all projects is to tell the audience a story that would reach their hearts.

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Photo: Anastasia Blackmann, Pavel Fedorov

The "random" American dream of Asya Nikolaeva

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