Taita Yunusova was released a mere nineteen
hours after she was abducted. She would know better than most how fortunate she
was. Yunusova is one of four middle-aged women independently documenting the
horrors of the Chechen Wars and the subsequent human rights violations of Putin’s
puppet, Ramzan Kadyrov. Although no longer held captive, you wouldn’t exactly
say Yunusova and her colleagues are “safe.” However, by selecting Nicola Bellucci’s
Grozny Blues, in which they
prominently appear, for their fifteen film documentary shortlist, the European
Film Academy will help spread awareness of the activists and the constant
danger they face. Fittingly, Grozny Blues
(clip here) screens
this coming Wednesday at the Riga International Film Festival, as one of the
ArtDocFest selections programmer Vitaly Mansky doubted he could present in
Moscow under the current regime.
Yunusova, Zargan Makhadzhieva, Tais Titieva,
and the exiled Zainap Gaishaeva do not look like independent filmmakers, but
they document the devastation of their country and the oral history of grieving
family members, because someone has to do it. In many ways, they are living in
a hostile environment. Like a lord currying favor with his emperor, Kadyrov
demands Chechens kowtow to the despised Putin. Increasingly, he uses stringent Islamification
policies to maintain control, even while Putin uses the specter of Islamic
terror to justify his harsh pacification campaigns. Chechnya is a man’s world,
affording little rights to the four citizen archivists, but it is an old man’s
world, since most of the younger generations were wiped out in the Chechen
Wars.
Frankly, Bellucci’s approach is less authoritative
than that of his subjects. Instead of facts and figures, he prefers to give viewers
an impressionistic sense of life in Grozny and the surrounding provinces. It
was probably quite picturesque once, but the many bombed out buildings and the massive
public portraits of Kadyrov and Putin are an ever-present blight on the
country.
We also get to meet the Chechen Archive’s
neighbor, the Blues Brothers Café. Arguably, the proprietor is just as idealistic
and even more impractical than Yunusova and company. After all, he is trying to
run a legit, no heavy metal or grunge, blue club in Grozny. Of course, the
system is stacked against him too. He has discovered a promising young talent,
but as a woman, she cannot perform in his club after five o’clock.
You might say Bellucci’s style is
observational and maybe even a little roundabout, but he clearly understands
what he is seeing. When you listen to the women explain their trials and
tribulations, including a shotgun marriage to avoid legal problems, it exposes
Putin’s rhetoric as the propaganda it is. There is definitely terrorism going
on, but most of it is conducted by the Kayrov’s militias. Likewise, since the
dramatic Grozny-City Towers fire seen briefly in the film was attributed to
safety violations, it probably can also be traced back to the notoriously corrupt
regime.
