Review of Belarusian Culture: Cinema (November-January '23)
REVIEW OF BELARUSIAN CULTURE: CINEMA (NOVEMBER-JANUARY '23)
REVIEW OF BELARUSIAN CULTURE: CINEMA (NOVEMBER-JANUARY '23)
REVIEW OF BELARUSIAN CULTURE: CINEMA (NOVEMBER-JANUARY '23)
REVIEW OF BELARUSIAN CULTURE: CINEMA (NOVEMBER-JANUARY '23)
REVIEW OF BELARUSIAN CULTURE: CINEMA (NOVEMBER-JANUARY '23)
REVIEW OF BELARUSIAN CULTURE: CINEMA (NOVEMBER-JANUARY '23)
REVIEW OF BELARUSIAN CULTURE: CINEMA (NOVEMBER-JANUARY '23)
REVIEW OF BELARUSIAN CULTURE: CINEMA (NOVEMBER-JANUARY '23)
REVIEW OF BELARUSIAN CULTURE: CINEMA (NOVEMBER-JANUARY '23)
REVIEW OF BELARUSIAN CULTURE: CINEMA (NOVEMBER-JANUARY '23)
Cinema: among Their Own
Trends:
Cinema: among Their Own
Trends:
- Belarusian cinema continues to split and polarize;
- The film process oscillates between "official" and "non-state" cinema;
- The age-old problem of community / shindig activities increased;
- There is an ongoing unconscious struggle for the image of Minsk.
Let's start from the end. On February 1, the creation of the Belarusian Independent Film Academy was announced, an institution that must "promote the interests of creators of independent Belarusian cinema, including on international platforms.". The entire following text can be considered an answer to the question why the founding of the film academy is a natural, ambivalent and seemingly inevitable step.
Problems of Independence
Problems of Independence
Belarusian cinema has always avoided such a boring and responsible process as institutionalization. The centralization and bureaucratization of cinema played a significant role in this: the system is framed for monopoly and futility of initiatives. But now, to stay in place, you need to run twice as fast – for basic self-preservation.
The word "independent" in the name of the film academy suggests that in the association disunity was laid by default, and now it reminds of "dependent". Names in Belarusian cinema did not particularly describe the situation before. Now, moreover, they all mean something a little different than before.
First of all, the basis, which the "independents" do not influence, has changed: after the protests and the start of the war, it is a criminal regime. In the meantime, it is true, "independent cinema" has gradually begun to turn into "émigré" and is making a lot of efforts to resist it or at least to be called something else. Other "independents" suspended their activities and were left without opportunities to make films at all (and this status also requires a new word).
"Dependents" have become significantly less abundant, but they have become totally dependent. And no more interaction – which used to be common even for "the most independent of the independent". Belarusian cinema is going through the collapse of the familiar arrangement and is trying to fix itself by rearranging names. It's hard.
Congratulating independent filmmakers on Cinema Day, Sviatłana Cichanoŭskaja added her contribution to the mythologizing of this part of the community (and, of course, strengthened the division). Among other things, Mrs. Sviatłana said: "There should be more Belarusian cinema. As in Belarus, where today censorship does not allow new things to appear, so in the whole world!"
If you are not aware, the definition of what Belarusian cinema is and whether it can be called Belarusian cinema if it is financed by another country and filmed in another country by citizens of another country – that definition has always been a trigger for the community and is still being discussed. Let's remember the suggested answer: everything is considered Belarusian. Let's see how it will be in the course of a year or two.
The word "independent" in the name of the film academy suggests that in the association disunity was laid by default, and now it reminds of "dependent". Names in Belarusian cinema did not particularly describe the situation before. Now, moreover, they all mean something a little different than before.
First of all, the basis, which the "independents" do not influence, has changed: after the protests and the start of the war, it is a criminal regime. In the meantime, it is true, "independent cinema" has gradually begun to turn into "émigré" and is making a lot of efforts to resist it or at least to be called something else. Other "independents" suspended their activities and were left without opportunities to make films at all (and this status also requires a new word).
"Dependents" have become significantly less abundant, but they have become totally dependent. And no more interaction – which used to be common even for "the most independent of the independent". Belarusian cinema is going through the collapse of the familiar arrangement and is trying to fix itself by rearranging names. It's hard.
Congratulating independent filmmakers on Cinema Day, Sviatłana Cichanoŭskaja added her contribution to the mythologizing of this part of the community (and, of course, strengthened the division). Among other things, Mrs. Sviatłana said: "There should be more Belarusian cinema. As in Belarus, where today censorship does not allow new things to appear, so in the whole world!"
If you are not aware, the definition of what Belarusian cinema is and whether it can be called Belarusian cinema if it is financed by another country and filmed in another country by citizens of another country – that definition has always been a trigger for the community and is still being discussed. Let's remember the suggested answer: everything is considered Belarusian. Let's see how it will be in the course of a year or two.
That Cosy Loyalty
That Cosy Loyalty
We live in a strange time when reality is a metaphor for itself. On the Day of Belarusian Cinema, the Investigative Committee visited the studio, indicating that the main task of cinema is not cinema, but loyalty. And it's not surprising.
This year, the loyal agenda was faithfully elaborated on by the "Listapad" film festival and became an example of the direction in which loyalty, incompetence and the desire not to be reprimanded are moving culture – so far, it turns out that it is in the direction of propaganda, resentment and the purge of Belarusian culture.
Magically, only 4 Belarusian films appeared in the not too clever festival programme – and those were animated works. The Day of Belarusian Cinema was also marked (yes, we lived to see the day when a separate day is allocated to Belarusian cinema in the programme of the Belarusian Film Festival – by the way, there was also the Day of Tajik Cinema, yep). Congratulations on this incredible result.
They compensated for the emptiness with pathos and screenings of Soviet films. In the Telegram channel of the film festival, as a monument, there is a strange staged video about the queue for the daytime screening of the Soviet children's film "The Kingfisher" in Sluck. It must testify to the finally satisfied longing for Soviet cultural values – and, of course, to the loyalty of the audience to all higher authorities that can pay them a visit. Let's wait: "We are united" is ahead.
This year, the loyal agenda was faithfully elaborated on by the "Listapad" film festival and became an example of the direction in which loyalty, incompetence and the desire not to be reprimanded are moving culture – so far, it turns out that it is in the direction of propaganda, resentment and the purge of Belarusian culture.
Magically, only 4 Belarusian films appeared in the not too clever festival programme – and those were animated works. The Day of Belarusian Cinema was also marked (yes, we lived to see the day when a separate day is allocated to Belarusian cinema in the programme of the Belarusian Film Festival – by the way, there was also the Day of Tajik Cinema, yep). Congratulations on this incredible result.
They compensated for the emptiness with pathos and screenings of Soviet films. In the Telegram channel of the film festival, as a monument, there is a strange staged video about the queue for the daytime screening of the Soviet children's film "The Kingfisher" in Sluck. It must testify to the finally satisfied longing for Soviet cultural values – and, of course, to the loyalty of the audience to all higher authorities that can pay them a visit. Let's wait: "We are united" is ahead.
Our Own, Strangers and Others
Our Own, Strangers and Others
On that background, the festivals "Paŭnočnaje źziańnie" ("Northern Lights") and "Bulbamovie" look like a continuation of the forced work of splitting – like attempts to pull cinema out of the memorial-bureaucratic framework.
Warsaw's "Bulbamovie", which last year was a festival of the filmmakers strongly protesting against violence, this year turned into an offline platform for the diaspora. "Paŭnočnaje źziańnie" announced its task of uniting the dispersed audience and organized online screenings, which are useful primarily because viewers in Belarus, who are generally deprived of Belarusian cinema, managed to watch something.
The programmes of both festivals mixed films from different times. It can be seen from them that time has changed, among other things: films dedicated to protests are still being made, but they are already being overlapped by another stream of films created or completed in exile, when the protest theme has left the agenda. We are at the point where they still interact, but we will soon pass this stage.
For now, the surrealist postdoc "Dream", a kind of dim memory of the protests from the present, is in the programme next to the unfounded teenage drama "Summer 1989" (about the holiday history of 1989, yes). The documentary "When the flowers are not silent" is focused on the testimony of the protests, with the self-contained construct "Meeting in Minsk" about post-protest Minsk. The same "Courage" by Alaksiej Pałujan – with Andrej Kuciła's new film "Baptism" after leaving Belarus.
In such a mix of protest and non-protest films, we should not lose one that does not serve either trend: the documentary "And Again Belarus" in the "Bulbamovie" programme – signed by the name "Ivan Fiodaraŭ" and the only one dedicated to the case with migrants, which passed for cinema unnoticed, because it fell into the gap between the post-protest terror and the war in Ukraine.
Apart from the actual physical danger of filming migrants, there was another, less noticeable, but perhaps the most important reason why the cinema broadcast those events: it seems that it has long since weaned itself from working with the Other, which does not exist in the local film universe anymore. The division into "own" and "others" is so impenetrable and fundamental that looking at the Other is in itself a "thought crime", especially if that Other is from the "others'" camp.
While the community is more divided than ever and is trying to somehow show solidarity by looking for "collaborators" and singling out the "addicts", "And again Belarus" masterfully highlights the scale of the space that remains out of the attention of cinema due to this fragmentation.
But cinema also has another difficult, unsolvable task, related to "own" and "others": to preserve a cultural presence, at least a symbolic one, in Ukraine. This task is gradually being solved thanks to the festival "1084. On the border", which was organized by the Belarusian human rights organization "Zviano" in Kyiv and Lviv at the end of the year, and then online. Doing work that requires great community effort is once again left to individual volunteers. This is how Belarusian cinema has always been. But isn't that why the film academy was created to finally start in a different way?
Warsaw's "Bulbamovie", which last year was a festival of the filmmakers strongly protesting against violence, this year turned into an offline platform for the diaspora. "Paŭnočnaje źziańnie" announced its task of uniting the dispersed audience and organized online screenings, which are useful primarily because viewers in Belarus, who are generally deprived of Belarusian cinema, managed to watch something.
The programmes of both festivals mixed films from different times. It can be seen from them that time has changed, among other things: films dedicated to protests are still being made, but they are already being overlapped by another stream of films created or completed in exile, when the protest theme has left the agenda. We are at the point where they still interact, but we will soon pass this stage.
For now, the surrealist postdoc "Dream", a kind of dim memory of the protests from the present, is in the programme next to the unfounded teenage drama "Summer 1989" (about the holiday history of 1989, yes). The documentary "When the flowers are not silent" is focused on the testimony of the protests, with the self-contained construct "Meeting in Minsk" about post-protest Minsk. The same "Courage" by Alaksiej Pałujan – with Andrej Kuciła's new film "Baptism" after leaving Belarus.
In such a mix of protest and non-protest films, we should not lose one that does not serve either trend: the documentary "And Again Belarus" in the "Bulbamovie" programme – signed by the name "Ivan Fiodaraŭ" and the only one dedicated to the case with migrants, which passed for cinema unnoticed, because it fell into the gap between the post-protest terror and the war in Ukraine.
Apart from the actual physical danger of filming migrants, there was another, less noticeable, but perhaps the most important reason why the cinema broadcast those events: it seems that it has long since weaned itself from working with the Other, which does not exist in the local film universe anymore. The division into "own" and "others" is so impenetrable and fundamental that looking at the Other is in itself a "thought crime", especially if that Other is from the "others'" camp.
While the community is more divided than ever and is trying to somehow show solidarity by looking for "collaborators" and singling out the "addicts", "And again Belarus" masterfully highlights the scale of the space that remains out of the attention of cinema due to this fragmentation.
But cinema also has another difficult, unsolvable task, related to "own" and "others": to preserve a cultural presence, at least a symbolic one, in Ukraine. This task is gradually being solved thanks to the festival "1084. On the border", which was organized by the Belarusian human rights organization "Zviano" in Kyiv and Lviv at the end of the year, and then online. Doing work that requires great community effort is once again left to individual volunteers. This is how Belarusian cinema has always been. But isn't that why the film academy was created to finally start in a different way?
Battle for Minsk
Battle for Minsk
At first, the feature film "It's Me, Minsk", shot at "Belarusfilm" by Andrej Hryńko i Dźmitryj Dziadok, did not appear at "Listapad" – although the intention to show it was quietly announced. Later, this film was not shown at the "Bulbamovie" festival, having been removed from the programme on the eve of the opening.
On the same "Bulbamovie" and a little earlier online, Belarusians were very angry about the film "Minsk" by Boris Huts, a stupid exploitative reconstruction of the protests "in Minsk".
I still have a dark feeling that these are parts of one hidden and unconscious process – the cinematic battle for Minsk. It seems that the image of Minsk will soon be a marker that determines the quality of the film, the audience's attitude towards it, and in general, the direction in which cinema is going.
This battle was caused by Mikita Łaŭrecki's film "Date in Minsk" (yes, exactly, with intentional exploitation right in the title), where protestant Minsk exists as a short walk in the dark to the subway at the end of a long hermetic game of billiards; and the film "The Last Summer" by Ihar Čyščenia, where Minsk appears as a very specific space inhabited by teenagers on Kamiennaja Horka.
It seems unsurprising that the film "Dream", which captures the protests in Minsk, was honored at the "Paŭnočnaje źziańnie". And the offline screenings of "Courage" on "Bulbamovie" and "If the flowers are not silent" on "Paŭnočnaje źziańnie" are also parts of the great battle for Minsk, which will probably move on to the "reconstruction of Minsk".
Mikita Łaŭrecki was the first to feel this new trend and quickly took advantage of it, filming in Berlin the Tiktok series "Murder on Alibiehava", distinguished first of all by this Minsk tag right in the title. There is Mara Tamkovič's upcoming full-length debut "Live Broadcast", which is supposed to be a reconstruction of the story of Kaciaryna Andrejeva and Minsk events. We have to wait for many more successful or not so successful reconstructions of Minsk from foreign locations.
The only thing we can be sure of is that "dependent" (better to say "bureaucratic") cinema will do everything to avoid the image of Minsk - and in general, the image "in the country". It has already delighted us with the New Year's movie "Olivie", which takes place in an apartment on Kotelnitskaya embankment in Moscow (Belarusians, even in cooperation with Russians, have perhaps never allowed themselves connotations so close to the Kremlin and such an absence of Belarusian codes).
No need to cheer us any more, that's enough, thank you.
On the same "Bulbamovie" and a little earlier online, Belarusians were very angry about the film "Minsk" by Boris Huts, a stupid exploitative reconstruction of the protests "in Minsk".
I still have a dark feeling that these are parts of one hidden and unconscious process – the cinematic battle for Minsk. It seems that the image of Minsk will soon be a marker that determines the quality of the film, the audience's attitude towards it, and in general, the direction in which cinema is going.
This battle was caused by Mikita Łaŭrecki's film "Date in Minsk" (yes, exactly, with intentional exploitation right in the title), where protestant Minsk exists as a short walk in the dark to the subway at the end of a long hermetic game of billiards; and the film "The Last Summer" by Ihar Čyščenia, where Minsk appears as a very specific space inhabited by teenagers on Kamiennaja Horka.
It seems unsurprising that the film "Dream", which captures the protests in Minsk, was honored at the "Paŭnočnaje źziańnie". And the offline screenings of "Courage" on "Bulbamovie" and "If the flowers are not silent" on "Paŭnočnaje źziańnie" are also parts of the great battle for Minsk, which will probably move on to the "reconstruction of Minsk".
Mikita Łaŭrecki was the first to feel this new trend and quickly took advantage of it, filming in Berlin the Tiktok series "Murder on Alibiehava", distinguished first of all by this Minsk tag right in the title. There is Mara Tamkovič's upcoming full-length debut "Live Broadcast", which is supposed to be a reconstruction of the story of Kaciaryna Andrejeva and Minsk events. We have to wait for many more successful or not so successful reconstructions of Minsk from foreign locations.
The only thing we can be sure of is that "dependent" (better to say "bureaucratic") cinema will do everything to avoid the image of Minsk - and in general, the image "in the country". It has already delighted us with the New Year's movie "Olivie", which takes place in an apartment on Kotelnitskaya embankment in Moscow (Belarusians, even in cooperation with Russians, have perhaps never allowed themselves connotations so close to the Kremlin and such an absence of Belarusian codes).
No need to cheer us any more, that's enough, thank you.
And Again about Our Own and Others
And Again about Our Own and Others
At the beginning of the year, the "Letapis" documentary film studio of "Belarusfilm" premiered – and even sold out: it showed Halina Adamovič's new doc "Anima" about Belarusian animation in Minsk (!). The distinctive feature of the film turned out to be no longer an offline premiere or a boring story about animators – but the kind of a hostile shindig that cinema, now divided anew into "own" and "others", will not be able to overcome. We have what we have: the Belarusian animation in the film is reduced to the current, "living", as the director said, employees of the animation studio "Belarusfilm".
The fact that many non-studio animators came to the premiere, who, due to "not logging into the system", sit without resources and without the opportunity to create "non-self-made" movies, added to the intensity of the session. Mythologizing some while silencing others, serving "own" without mentioning "others", creating an official history and displacing everything that does not fit in... the film was well caught in the process of splitting cinema. Loyal viewers don't care, but no one asked the non-system, "alien" Belarusian animators in the hall.
The fact that many non-studio animators came to the premiere, who, due to "not logging into the system", sit without resources and without the opportunity to create "non-self-made" movies, added to the intensity of the session. Mythologizing some while silencing others, serving "own" without mentioning "others", creating an official history and displacing everything that does not fit in... the film was well caught in the process of splitting cinema. Loyal viewers don't care, but no one asked the non-system, "alien" Belarusian animators in the hall.
Instead of Conclusions
Instead of Conclusions
Belarusian cinema has to do a big job: rethinking old concepts, reconfiguring broken connections. Of course, no one wants to do that. Building institutions is not only a way to start doing it, but also a way not to burden yourself with it too much. Therefore, it should be expected that the cinema will reach a new balance by inertia, will throw off unpleasant tasks such as finding the points of contact of all "own" with all "others" and will remain clearly divided.
The task of "showing Belarusian cinema in Belarus" will disappear as irrelevant and unsolvable. They will survive alone again, offering messages and images that they can express alone.
And we definitely should expect "We are united".
The task of "showing Belarusian cinema in Belarus" will disappear as irrelevant and unsolvable. They will survive alone again, offering messages and images that they can express alone.
And we definitely should expect "We are united".