On October 3, shooting period starts of a multi-series television feature film after the novel "Doctor Zhivago" by Boris Pasternak. This is interview with the film's director, People's Artist of Russia Alexander Proshkin.

Not so long ago, when answering the question about the actors you said: "As for the actors, it is not so simple. It is very difficult to find that type of intellectual that was in Soviet cinema". Apparently, today you have found this type.

The role of Russian intellectual Yury Zhivago requires enigma of human grain. It seems to me, this is Oleg Menshikov's palette. I think, he is a really big actor and it is just right for him to compete with Sharif. However, Oleg is much closer to Zhivago than Omar Sharif. After all, this is a story of purely Russian mentality. This is a story, no matter how trivial it may sound, about the enigma of Russian intelligentsia that lives not according to clear aims or tasks but out of feelings, love. A story about Russian soul.

As for Oleg Menshikov, an interesting thing once happened. I spoke on the radio "Moscow Echo", and program presenter Vita Ramm addressed the audience with the question: "Whom would you like to see in the role of Zhivago?" There were fantastic answers, someone even saw Mikhail Aleksandrovich Ulyanov in this role - you know, many people heard about Zhivago, but few people read the novel. While a half of those familiar with Pasternak's creative work, named Oleg Menshikov. So, as you see, I am not original in this regard.

I have no experience yet working with Oleg as a grown-up man, you see, he played in the film "Mikhailo Lomonosov" being a student. He was easy-tempered, charming and very fond of music at that time. And he "bothered" me using every minute free from shooting or scoring to sit down at the piano and play something. Now I want "to make use" of Oleg's desire to play something, as Yury Zhivago plays the piano perfectly - he was taught to play in his childhood, he was brought up on this. So, Oleg will play Chopin himself.

Who else is on the cast?

Chulpan Khamatova, Varvara Andreeva, Oleg Yankovsky, Vladimir Ilyin, Sergey Garmash, Sergey Gorobchenko, Alexey Petrenko...

Where will you shoot?

We will start in Yaroslavl. Then in Kostroma and Tutaev. In November, we are coming back to Moscow to shoot location and interior scenes. And in December, we are going to shoot in Mosfilm stages. The shooting period will last till the end of March - beginning of April.

Are you shooting film or digital?

We are shooting 16 mm film. I am an advocate of new technologies and I think that it is quite natural to release digital film: finished project on a reliable medium, but in my opinion, we are not ready yet to shoot digital. Our cinematographers gave not yet mastered digital cameras, their color range and capabilities. For me and my cinematographer "Kodak" is natural, while digit is something mysterious. For television image, 16 mm is quite enough.

Will they recite poetry in your picture?

Poetry is a difficult match for a movie. And on TV, there exists quite another poetry aesthetics. There is no poetry in foreign screen versions of "Doctor Zhivago", so it is not clear at all, who he is - Yury Zhivago. Just a melodrama - married one woman, fell in love with another. Our story is more complicated: the plot is a melodrama, but, as a matter of fact, we are trying to solve the eternal question: what our life in this country is motivated by.