Yuri Feklistov captured the last days of the Cinema House and its legendary film mechanic

Yuri Feklistov began his career in the magazine “Ogonyok” in the late 1980s, that is, he worked there in the perestroika years. His most famous shot was made in the White House on the night of August 21-22, 1991: an unknown guy nipped on Mstislav Rostropovich’s shoulder. Together with his son, aspiring producer Grigory Feklistov, he shot a small, less than half-hour film. The voiceover text is completely disinterested and at the first call was recorded by Leonid Yarmolnik. Composer Yuri Poteenko provided free music that had never been heard before. Nadezhda Maidanskaya provided photos of Mikola Gnisyuk - a whole chronicle of the deceased Cinema House with its regulars.

Yuri Leechkis, who worked there for about thirty years, was well known and appreciated by filmmakers. He worked at the MIFF, the Sochi Kinotavr, the Spirit of Fire in Khanty-Mansiysk, was familiar with the stars of not only domestic but also world cinema. He was thanked for the excellent quality of the show by people of the rank of Fellini, and Juliet Mazina even hugged in gratitude. Francis Ford Coppola wrote thanks after his film was barely launched during a Moscow screening, delaying the session. Only the skill and resourcefulness of Lejechkis saved the situation. He always had knives in his pocket, all sorts of improvised means to prevent the stalemate situation. If Yuri Leechkis is a film mechanic in the booth, there was no doubt that the session would go well.

He was an extremely modest intelligent man, wearing an unchanging vest with many pockets or a denim jacket. It was only necessary to cross the threshold of the Cinema House, as he immediately approached, greeted you as a native person, shared his impressions of the articles he read, told stories about the stars, and not some gossip, but unique testimonies that were worth recording.

He died a year after the forced closure of the Cinema House. He watched as his equipment was taken out of the building, the chairs in the auditorium were ruthlessly uprooted

After the screening of Yuri Feklistov’s film, many compared Yuri Petrovich to Chekhov’s Firs and Mr. Föst from Alla Surikov’s Man from the Boulevard of Capuchins (in the film Leonid Yarmolnik talks about this).

Yuri Petrovich never talked about himself, and for many in the film will be a lot of discoveries. In the photos provided by his son Vadim, he is young and handsome - just handsome. Leechkis Sr. was born in Leningrad, where his parents worked at a film equipment factory. They assembled a 16-millimeter projector and showed a movie in the yard of the house. Viewers from all over the area gathered for open-air sessions. Remember the Lumière brothers, whose choice of profession was also predetermined by their parents, in particular their father, who had a factory for processing photographic materials. When you walk around their house in Lyon, you look at optical equipment, flasks with chemical mixtures, the continuity becomes obvious.

From besieged Leningrad, Yuru and his mother were evacuated to Samarkand, and his father continued to work in the besieged city and survived, according to Leechkis, only thanks to an elephant killed during the bombing on the territory of the zoo. After the war, the family went to Odessa, where his son went to the first class, entered the machine tool college, and then - in the Polytechnic, organized an amateur film studio there, directed the production of film cameras at the factory. And then he returned to Leningrad, entered the Institute of Film Engineers. In 1966 he became a Muscovite after meeting the girl of his dreams.

In recent years, after the death of his wife, Yuri Petrovich lived alone. His son Vadim Leechkis came to the screening of the film about his father in the lecture hall “Straight speech”.

“Home” is also a farewell to the Cinema House, the last look at its cinema hall with the remains of the fallen chairs, a restaurant where premieres were celebrated, a conference room with photos of outstanding filmmakers, stained-glass windows by Fernand Leger ... The camera captured the moment of breaking the walls, dismantling the projection equipment, which is observed by Yuri Leechkis. His son once went to the cinema house. There was that.

Yuri Petrovich recalls a meeting with Alain Delon, who had to be taken out by secret trails to save from fans. There is a picture of him standing behind the back of a French idol. Another photo shows Leechkis with Mikhail Gorbachev, who, at the request of security, was also secretly taken out into the street.

At the premiere came Leonid Yarmolnik, Alla Surikova with daughter Kira, Lyudmila Maksakova, who called the film a requiem, farewell to the great era of domestic cinema.

In the final shots, Yuri Leechkis talks about what remains for him after the demolition of the Cinema House: “To go about your business and get acquainted with the ceiling. I used to work my whole life.”.

When the film was created, the sad news came: Yuri Petrovich died. He was 88 years old.

We see him climbing the stairs in an empty auditorium, before he's dismantled. The voice of Leonid Yarmolnik reports: “The House of Cinema did not become – and Yuri Petrovich Leechkis did not. They probably couldn't live without each other.”.