Art based on trust. Old Believers of the millennium in the lens of the “consonant camera”

Abstract

The article presents an attempt to comprehend the process of creation and use of the “consonant camera” methodology in video-documenting the life of Old Believer communities in different regions of Russia in 1993–2013. It reveals the objective and subjective reasons for creating the author’s method of video-documentation based on the principle of “flavertism” or synthesizing the approaches of Robert Flaherty and Dziga Vertov. Radical changes in electronic information technology and in the socio-political environment of the studied period provoked further activities based on the principles of visual anthropology. In collaboration with the archaeographic laboratory of Moscow State University and other researchers of Old Believers, a series of expeditions were conducted, during which specific techniques of filming were developed and an array of video documents created, designed for complex use. Three stories about the creation of the video portraits of Old Believers serve as illustrative examples of the artistic embodiment of the studied community’s culture