NYJFF ’13: How to Re-Establish a Vodka Empire

Who has a harder time adjusting to the capitalist system: a former Soviet republic or a documentary filmmaker?  Needless to say, it is the latter, but he still has his mind set on importing Ukrainian vodka into the British marketplace.  He feels a special connection to the distillery, because his family used to own it, up until the 1917 Revolution.  Soviet, Ukrainian, and even Northern Irish history are explored from a decidedly personal perspective in Dan Edelstyn & Hilary Powell’s How to Re-Establish a Vodka Empire (trailer here), which screens during the 2013 New York Jewish Film Festival, co-presented by the Jewish Museum and the Film Society of Lincoln Center.

Edelstyn knew little of his father’s side of the family, because he died when the filmmaker was quite young.  His first real introduction to his Ukrainian heritage came through the letters and journals of his grandmother, Maroussia Zorokovich, shunted away in his mother’s attic.  He discovered his grandmother was the progressive daughter of a well-to-do land-owning family.  Regrettably, all her efforts teaching the local peasantry to read and write meant little to the conquering Bolsheviks.

Zorokovich’s story is truly remarkable, including stints entertaining the White resistance forces as a dancer, which is how she met Edelstyn’s grandfather.  From her diaries, Edelstyn gleaned a sense of the family’s house and sugar factory.  Drawn to his roots, Edelstyn was disappointed to find them in a state of disrepair and off-limits.  However, he discovered another family holding that was still up and running—a vodka distillery.

Zorokovich never mentioned the family vodka empire, but with good reason Edelstyn presumes.  Communist propaganda often demonized Jewish Russians as predatory purveyors of alcohol, constantly tempting the stolid peasants into drunkenness.  It would be a lot easier for the Jewish Zorokoviches to identify themselves with the sugar plant rather than a booze pipeline.

Disurbed by the town’s economic stagnation in the wake of the sugar factory’s closure, Edelstyn takes it upon himself to become the vodka company’s British agent.  Of course, he knows nothing about importing spirits, but how hard can it be?

Edelstyn might be ridiculously naïve throughout Empire, but his instincts on how to help his ancestral Ukrainian home are surprisingly on-target.  It is too bad he and his wife Powell were the ones behind the camera though, because there was probably considerably more comedy to be mined from his attempts to navigate British customs bureaucracy.

As a result, probably the strongest sequences involve Grandmother Zorokovich.  Blending various styles of animation with family heirloom photos, Edelstyn & Powell craft some Guy Maddinesque dramatic recreations of Zorokovich’s life.  To their credit, they bring home the fear and arbitrary violence of Lenin’s reign of terror (that is Lenin, not the subsequent tyrant, Stalin) with full force, as well as chronicle the Zorokovich’s complicated years in Belfast.  It is an epic story that they do justice.

While Edelstyn undeniably went out on a limb on behalf of the former family vodka company, there is still an awful lot of him in Empire.  He is not a bad chap at all, but he is not exactly a riveting cinematic presence. Regardless, How to Re-Establish a Vodka Empire documents a fascinating intersection of commercial, political, religious, and family history that goes down rather smoothly. 

It is preceded by Jack Feldstein’s brief but powerful Shards.  An expressionistic, almost abstract representation of Peretz Markish’s similarly titled poem, Feldstein’s neon-animated short film serves as a stark elegy to the poet and the other twelve Yiddish writers murdered by Stalin’s minions of terror in 1952.  While only two minutes long, it powerfully conveys the essence of the Soviet experience.  Both films are highly recommended when they screen this Thursday (1/10) and Saturday (1/12) as the 2013 NYJFF gets underway at the Walter Reade Theater.

NYJFF: The Return of Nathan Becker

August 12, 1952 would be the last night on Earth for thirteen Soviet Jewish writers and intellectuals. Loyal Communists who had promoted the Russian war effort as members of the Jewish Anti-Fascist Committee, they were fatally purged by Stalin in what came to be known as the “Night of Murdered Poets.” Among them was one Peretz Markish, a Yiddish poet, playwright, and novelist, who also penned the screenplay for the only Soviet Yiddish film of the sound era, The Return of Nathan Becker, which screens tomorrow at the NY Jewish Film Festival.

Markish was not the only member of the Return production who would not live through the Stalin years. However, co-star Solomon Mikhoels was considered too prominent a public figure as the artistic director of the Moscow State Jewish Theater for the usual show trial and summary execution. Instead, he was assassinated on Stalin’s orders in 1948 through a staged automobile accident. It is Mikhoels that the NYJFF pays tribute to tomorrow with screenings of the 1925 silent film, Jewish Luck, and Return from 1932. The leading Soviet Jewish actor of his day, Mikhoels was the cultural point-man for convincing his co-religionists their faith and heritage were indeed compatible with Marxism. Return was very consciously a part of that program.

The film is in fact, propaganda. Wisely, the National Center for Jewish Film, which restored Return, added an introductory preface explaining Mikhoels and Markish would eventually be killed by the same regime the film proceeds to exalt. As it opens, the burly title character is returning to his homeland after years of toiling for Yankee robber barons. The Great Depression has laid America low, but the Soviet Union is portrayed as the new land of plenty. His idiosyncratic father, played by Mikhoels, has abandoned the shtetl, becoming an ardent Communist. So should you all is the clear message of the film.

The noble worker has difficulty acclimating to his new home. He is so used to the competitive pressures of capitalism, he chafes at what he perceives as half-hearted efforts from his co-workers. While the work leaders try to explain the “Soviet” way to Becker, he will have none of it, challenging them to a bricklaying duel to prove his point. Becker knows only one way to work—100% flat-out. He starts fast, but is eventually worn down by the ergonomically advanced Communist methods. Believing himself disgraced, Becker prepares to return to America. However, his father and the work leaders reassure him he is still welcome in the workers’ paradise. In fact, they can learn from him as well, refining Soviet bricklaying techniques with his own innovations.

In a way, it is hardly surprising that the producers of propaganda telling laborers to work smarter, not harder, would eventually run afoul of the state. As propaganda filmmaking, Return has some interesting visuals, like the broken Becker dwarfed by the looming brick towers of his ill-fated challenge, but it is nowhere near the league of Sergei Eisenstein’s films. It is a highly significant work, but one that must be considered in the proper historical context—specifically the fates of Mikhoels and Markish. A fascinating viewing experience, Return screens tomorrow (1/25) at the Walter Reade Theater.