The Film "Heralds of Good News"

THE FILM “HERALDS OF GOOD NEWS” (BLAGOVESTNIKI)

Russian churches have no organ playing for the congregation. Instead, their belfries hold bells that ring out for the whole neighborhood. This highly complex musical instrument is made up of bells of different weights and tones — there can be up to 20 of them, weighing up to 10 tons. One of them is called the blagovest, the bell of good tidings. You will see how our bell ringers handle their bells. 

Our characters are very different. Nun Nektaria serves in a unique monastery near Voronezh carved into chalk deposits. She rarely rings on the monastery belfry, because the vibration of the bells damages the monastery walls. Bell ringer Eduard runs a school for bell ringers in Tver; he became a bell ringer while still a rock musician. One day he made a pilgrimage to Mount Athos, and his life changed dramatically. Biker and bell ringer Evgeny from Suzdal explains how the “Suzdal horn” differs from other belfries and why you have to come to terms with the bells every single time. Bell ringer Aurelia came to Russia from Belgium, where she fell in love with Russian culture and converted to Orthodoxy. Today she works in Russian television and rings the bells at one of Moscow’s major monasteries.

The ringing of bells accompanies a person’s birth and death, calls people to put out fires and sees them off to battle. Russian bell ringing is a unique cultural phenomenon — there is no other such polyphony of bells in the world. The bell came to Rus from Byzantium, and bells were cast in Germany and Belgium. Bell ringing unites the whole world, which matters especially in our difficult times of growing social, ethnic and religious intolerance. “All bells are different, and all people are different. But together they make one beautiful peal,” says our heroine Nektaria.

Our film is not a religious or an Orthodox film. Our characters are ordinary people who have found their calling in bell ringing. The film features works by outstanding Russian poets and writers Sergei Yesenin, Alexei Tolstoy, Ivan Shmelyov and Anastasia Tsvetaeva, read by well-known actors Dina Korzun and Andrey Merzlikin. It also features music by Alexei Romanov, leader of the legendary Russian rock band Voskreseniye (“Resurrection”).