A Legend: Propaganda on BluRay

How many film critics are in the mood to cheer for colonialists waging war on an indigenous people? That is exactly what you get with this latest fantastical historical from China, except the cultural genocide it celebrates is still going on. In one timeline, it is the Han versus the “Hun,” a.k.a. the Xiongnu people of Xinjiang and the Eastern Steppe. The other timeline features the archeological time excavating the past. Jackie Chan appears in both—sort of. The propaganda might elude dumb Westerners unfamiliar with the region, but it is ever-present in Stanley Tong’s A Legend, which releases Tuesday on VOD and BluRay.

Technically, this is the third film in Tong’s trilogy featuring Chan as archaeologist Dr. “Jack” Fang, following the fluffy Kung Fu Yoga and the earlier, similarly blandly titled The Myth, which A Legend more greatly emulates. As in Myth, Doc Fang and his assistant Wang Jing start having dreams and visions of the Han-Xiongnu Wars, in which they were both young heroic generals for the imperialist Han. However, you might not fully realize Fang is supposed to be part of the historical action. For the flashback scenes, Chan was “de-aged” using AI, rendering him almost unrecognizable and very weird-looking. If A Legend represents the current state of Chinese AI, then America and the West are way out in front of them.

Of course, the noble generals manage to save Mengyun, a Xiongnu princess fleeing a company of fellow Xiongnu soldiers. Conveniently, she and her family pledged their loyalty to the Han conquers, which [understandably] infuriated He Boar, who also covets the princess for himself. In fact, he even killed his moderate brother and their ailing chieftain father to have her.

Apparently, these visions started with the discovery of Mengyun’s shamanic jade pendant. There definitely seems be some kind of strange time-transcending New Agey power at play. A lot of people around Fang who are also interested—maybe too interested—in a rumored cache of Xiongnu treasure.

Throughout A Legend all Xiongnu who are not part of Mengyun’s family are demonized for their barbarity. It is also rather galling to hear to listen to Chan lecture the audience on preserving archaeological treasures when the Chinese Communist occupiers have been literally razing mosques throughout Xinjiang to ground.

The Wandering Earth II

In the hit 2019 film and Liu Cixin’s original source novella, the Earth made like the Moon did in Space: 1999, spinning out of its orbit and into space. However, in the case of the Wandering Earth, this was done deliberately, to save humanity from its dying sun. It took a lot of work to make it happen. In the first movie, Earth escapes the sun, but the prequel shows how we handled the Moon first. Prepare for a whole lot of talk about the Roche Limit in Frant Gwo’s The Wandering Earth II, which just opened today in theaters worldwide.

Chinese astronaut Liu Peiqiang will save (or has saved) the Earthly civilization in The Wandering Earth I. It turns out, he will now do it again, or rather has done it before. The film starts with a well-orchestrated terrorist attack against the space-elevator servicing what was then called “The Moving Mountain Project.” It is a brilliantly realized, extended action sequence, but it is also impossible to miss the Anglo-American appearance of most of the terrorists.

Indeed, it is blatantly obvious much of WEII is intended as an allegory celebrating China’s hardcore “Covid-Zero” approach to crisis management and excoriating the Western preoccupation with individuality. Of course, it never shows Chinese scientists destroying evidence of the looming solar crisis, as was the case with the initial Covid outbreak in Wuhan.

Be that as it actually was, there are pieces of two really good movies in WEII. The aforementioned space-elevator scene is a whizzbang set piece. The film also evolves into an intriguing speculative sf drama exploring the nature of artificial intelligence and sentient consciousness. Andy Lau plays Tu Hengyu, a computer scientist still mourning the death of his young daughter, whose consciousness he has digitally copied, in contradiction of current laws.

Hengyu’s efforts are risky, because he is trying to accomplish what the “Digital Life” movement, the major opponents of “Moving Mountain” project advocate. To do so, he needs the processing power of the HAL9000-like 550W super-computer running the project. This story arc takes several provocative twists and turns. Lau is also terrific as Tu, bringing a desperately needed human dimension (somewhat ironically) to a film that often desperately needs it. (However, it is sad to see the Chinese flag on Mr. Hong Kong’s shoulder, rather than HK’s five petals.)

The problem is these two parts are held together by long stretches of exposition and CCP-China propaganda, often relayed through UN-style speeches and news reports. This style of filmmaking is both boring and insultingly didactic. Frankly, the character of Zhou Jiechi, the wise Chinese ambassador to the UEG (the UN successor organization) is an insult to all the victims of Covid and the ongoing genocide in Xinjiang.

The Ottoman Lieutenant: Love in a Time of Genocide Denial

Late 1914 probably sounds like a fateful time for an American nurse to travel to Ottoman Turkey. Perhaps you are thinking of the Armenian Genocide, in which the Muslim Ottoman Empire systematically murdered 1.5 million ethnic Armenian Christians, but oh how wrong you are. It is significant because nurse Lillie Rowe is swept off her feet by the dashing Ishmail Veli. Genocide? There’s no genocide here. There’s just a spot of rough-housing that gets out of hand in Joseph Ruben’s historical white-wash, The Ottoman Lieutenant (trailer here), which opens this Friday in New York.

Rowe feels stifled by Mainline Philadelphia society, so after listening to an inspiring fundraising speech from Dr. Jude Gresham, she resolves to ferry an ambulance stocked with medical supplies to the American clinic in Anatolia. Unfortunately, her humanitarian aid is hijacked by Armenian bandits (those villains will do it every time), but at least she arrives safely with her nurse’s training, thanks to her escort, Lt. Veli.

Initially, the cynical clinic director, old Dr. Woodruff is less than impressed by her naïve do-gooder impulses, but Gresham is delighted to have her on staff. However, he is quickly frustrated by her flirtatious friendship with Veli and their habit of frequently crossing paths. She in turn is alarmed by his secret collaboration with the Armenian resistance—a clear violation of Starfleet’s Prime Directive.

Whether he intended to or not, Ruben (best-known for the Julia Roberts melodrama, Sleeping with the Enemy) hired onto a Turkish funded propaganda production that does its best to confuse, obscure, minimize, and ultimately deny the Armenian Genocide. Imagine a film set in 1930s Germany whose only Jewish characters were gangsters and cut-throats. Essentially, that is what we have in The Ottoman Lieutenant. Frankly, most of the bad stuff in the film is committed by Armenians. Granted, we witness noble Lt. Veli save a group of Armenian civilians from execution late in the third act, but that incident only seems to be there to suggest any atrocities were the unsanctioned work of low-ranking vengeance seekers.

When screenwriter Jeff Stockwell is not rewriting history, he gives us scenes of Veli and Rowe taking in cinematic vistas and cooing platitudes at each other, like “it’s like being inside God’s thoughts.” Michiel Huisman and Hera Hilmar have zero chemistry together, but his devil-my-care attitude wears better than her scoldy earnestness. Josh Hartnett is just embarrassing as the tightly wound Gresham. However, Sir Ben Kingsley lends the film some dignity and authority as the haunted Dr. Woodruff.

This film is an affront to history and a troubling indicator of Hollywood’s Dhimmi inclinations. Supposedly crimes committed by the Ottomans (all 1.5 million of them) need to be understood in a wartime context and probably weren’t that bad in the first place, whereas the racial segregation that appalled Rowe in Philadelphia is an original sin for which America can never be forgiven. Maybe we could forgive the film if the performances and dialogue were less wooden, but such was not the case. Not recommended under any circumstances, The Ottoman Lieutenant opens this Friday (3/10) in New York.

Under the Sun: North Korea Exposed by its Own Propaganda

Lee Zin-mi really is a sweet little girl, but that is about the only true thing about the propaganda film she was supposed to star in. Russian filmmaker Vitaly Mansky was supposed to make it, because he would have given it international credibility. However, unlike other disgracefully compliant filmmakers allowed inside the notoriously closed state, he quickly and repeatedly clashed with his minders. Mansky duly followed the ground-rules requiring him to allow the authorities to review his footage each night, but digital is a subversive format. Unbeknownst to them, Mansky’s camera was not simply recording between “action” and “cut.” He also captured the minders as they staged the phony propaganda. Viewers get a rare chance to peak behind the curtain of DPRK rhetoric to see the enforcers threatening little girls to look “joyous” or else in Mansky’s Under the Sun (trailer here), which opens this Wednesday in New York.

Wherever little Lee goes, there is always someone there to lecture her (and us) on the glories of the Kim Royal Dynasty. As she prepares for her initiation into the Children’s Union, her family will live in a fake apartment (nice, but not spectacular by most nations’ standards) and actually eat regular meals. Her father starts the film as a journalist, but he then becomes the engineer at a garment factory. We get to see him celebrate with the joyful workers when their latest productivity results are announced, but with each successive take, the minders keep increasing their quota-busting percentages.

Under the Sun starts slow, allowing us to get to know Lee and her family. However, when Mansky and editor Andrej Paperny let the first apparatchik peak into the frame, the film takes a seriously sinister turn. We then watch as Lee’s pageant dance instructor reduces her to tears. Of course, the command to “look happy” always remains in full force.

Even when they are faking it, everyone looks miserable in North Korea. This is especially true of the everyday crowd footage Mansky presumably captured surreptitiously. Yet, what really makes the film sting are the moments when we see how much pressure young Lee is under. She is just a kid. She shouldn’t have the full weight of the Kim family dictatorship weighing down on her. However, if Mansky had ignored this terrible reality, it would only make matters worse.

Needless to say, Under the Sun has provoked outrage from North Korean authorities, as well as Putin’s Ministry of Culture, which thought it was co-financing a very different film. Perhaps most disappointing was the revelation a MoMA curator axed Under the Sun from this year’s Documentary Fortnight, for fear of offending North Korea. That led to a mini-firestorm and her apparent dismissal. If that is indeed how things went down, MoMA deserves credit. For too long and too often, submitting to censorship demands at the expense of our freedoms has been seen as the safe choice. At least in this case, there were professional costs for betraying the values of free expression all film curators should necessarily share.

Be that as it may, Under the Sun is a fascinating film, but it could have used Mansky’s voice to more fully explain what was happening just outside our field of vision. We can see enough to fully understand the gist of the situation, but there must have been even greater lunacy they tried to hide from the mostly Russian crew. Still, there is an unvarnished, un-spun integrity to the film as it is.

The world cinema community has a dual responsibility in this case. We should all see Under the Sun and take stock of the ways Mansky circumvented his minders. (Australian filmmaker Anna Broinowski should hang her head in shame, because Under the Sun truly exposes how cravenly subservient she was while making the gutless puff piece, Aim High in Creation.) Going forward, the international film world also should do its best to keep tabs on Lee and her family. The regime should be made to understand if anything happens to the Lees, it will reflect disgrace on them. Very highly recommended, Under the Sun opens this Wednesday (7/6) in New York, at Film Forum.

NYJFF ’15: Forbidden Films

You have to wonder if Nicki Minaj’s Nazi propaganda-inspired video is even legal in Germany. If not, it might find a place in the vault where archivists store the National Socialist films considered so incendiary they remain barred from public screenings and above-board distribution. It is there Felix Moeller begins Forbidden Films (trailer here), a documentary survey of banned Third Reich cinema which screens during the 2015 New York Jewish Film Festival.

The explosive nitrate film stock the wartime filmmakers used makes “explosive” metaphors too easy. Given its inherent instability, the storage unit was deliberately constructed facing a large land berm to absorb the shock, should it ever ignite. Recalling the vibe of Into Eternity, documentarian Michael Madsen’s excursion to the underground nuclear by-product holding facility Onkalo, these are arguably the best scenes of Forbidden. Unfortunately, they are soon dispensed with.

Most of the documentary consists of brief analysis of banned films representative of particular propaganda categories and a subjective determination of their lasting potency, often involving rare public screenings, under strictly controlled circumstances. The result is a strange mishmash that almost approaches a hate propaganda installment of the That’s Entertainment franchise.

Moeller breaks samples of the forty remaining prohibited films down into broad themes, such as the gloriousness of war, the supposed villainy of Poles, and the dehumanization of Jews. Granted, just about everyone who sees Veit Harlan’s Jew Süss (the subject of Moeller’s better, previous doc) is disturbed by its naked anti-Semitism and the uncomfortable effectiveness of its dramatic manipulations. However, Moeller is clearly conflicted how to handle audience attempts to defend Wolfgang Liebeneiner’s I Accuse, an ardent euthanasia advocacy film that especially pleased Goebbels precisely because it normalizes the killing of the weak. These viewers cry out to be challenged, but Moeller just punts it away to the next thematic section.

Moeller might think he is plumbing the depths of the German soul, but Forbidden is really rather shallow. For all its purported concern over neo-Nazi groups it never examines the precipitous rise in anti-Semitism in Europe, in part driven by immigration from the Islamic world, or questions how these films might play to non-European audiences. Nor does it get into the deeper wonky details on the Denazification of most of the twelve hundred some films made during the National Socialist era, some of which were musicals and romantic comedies that merely required a swastika to be edited out here and there.

Not nearly as thorough as it should be, Forbidden Films is far from a must-see at this year’s NYJFF (check out the far superior Natan instead). Of course, for those perversely fascinated by National Socialist propaganda, who are also tired of re-watching Minaj’s “Only” video, it is the only game in town, flawed though it is. It screens this Thursday (1/22) and next Sunday (1/25) at the Walter Reade Theater.

NYAFF ’14: Aim High in Creation

How does this sound to you? “Sure, there were human rights abuses in Hitler’s Germany, but they produced some really entertaining propaganda films.” Absolutely unacceptable, right? Yet, Australian filmmaker Anna Broinowski essentially makes the equivalent argument for North Korea, except she never really acknowledges the Kim dynasty’s appalling oppression of its own people. Instead, she happily heads to the DPRK for pointers on how to make an anti-fracking propaganda film in Aim High in Creation, which screens during the 2014 New York Asian Film Festival.

According to Frontline, it is estimated one out every one hundred North Koreans is a political prisoner. In that Orwellian state, it is not just perceived thought criminals who are purged, but also two generations of their families, in both directions. Apparently, Broinowski has no real problem with what she euphemistically calls North Korea’s “closed society,” but “fracking” generates no end of moral indignation.

After assembling her annoying hipster cast, Broinowski jets off to North Korea to get tips from the propaganda masters. She sees all the monumental sites, hanging on her minders’ every word. Not once does she challenge anything said to her, passively accepting their charges of American war crimes. She also readily agrees her native Australia is a country of drunks.

Perhaps the idea was to simply record the state of affairs in North Korea and let the surreal images speak for themselves. However, that approach still requires Broinowski ask the blindingly obvious questions, to cue the resulting dissembling. That never happens. Instead, she obsequiously sucks up to the propaganda filmmakers, like a star-struck teenager.

Yes, it takes courage to speak truth to the apparatus of control in a “closed society.” Few will ever live up to the gold standard set by Mads Brügger in Red Chapel, but those filmmakers fortunately enough to gain access to the rogue state have to at least try. If Broinowski lost her nerve when faced with the regime’s everyday pervasiveness, she should have scrapped the film and preserved her dignity. Instead, her brown-nosing is just embarrassing.

At times, Broinowski’s own images contradict her words, as when she claims there are no advertisements to be seen in North Korean. We can see this is patently false. Pyongyang is covered in propaganda posters and murals, which are indeed advertisements selling blind obedience to the state. She simply finds their aesthetic consistency pleasing, which is what happens when the state exercises absolute control over all means of expression.

Great value seems to be placed on Broinowski’s “just folks” interactions with her propaganda colleagues, as if the audience will be shocked when they do not immediately throw the thumb screws on her, while singing the Internationale, but of course they are carefully crafting their image. These are propagandists, after all.

Not surprisingly, the resulting anti-fracking propaganda short is utterly unwatchable. However, if enough people see it, The Gardener should secure the safe and profitable production of coal seam gas for many generations to come, which is exactly the legacy Aim High deserves. To return to the original question, National Socialism boasted a stable of world renowned filmmakers that included Leni Riefenstahl and the now discredited Viet Harlan. Arguably, one could learn something from their work, whereas their North Korean counterparts are literally following the Great Leader’s formula.

Either Aim High represents a massive editing room meltdown, or it is a profound failure to document the reality of one of the most oppressive regimes in the world. In any event, it is not worthy of your ticket dollars, especially when there are so many great films still to come at this year’s NYAFF, including the bizarrely heartbreaking Miss Zombie and the deeply moving Great Passage. Both are highly recommended, but Aim High in Creation is definitely not when it screens tomorrow (7/10).

DF ’13: China Concerto

Something as profoundly traumatic as the Cultural Revolution cannot simply be papered over.  It hangs over the national psyche, like a malevolent ghost.  As much as it embraces globalism and crony capitalism, the excesses of the Mao years still have a bearing on the present day China.  Indeed, it is part of the internal contradictions Bo Wang analyzes in his documentary-essay China Concerto (trailer here), which screens as part of MoMA’s 2013 Documentary Fortnight.

A film of observation and rumination, Concerto has a pseudo-epistolary structure, featuring a woman’s disembodied voice reading a man’s dispatches from China.  The writer is not a passive viewer, having trained himself to dissect imagery and look for the telling details nobody is supposed to notice.  He is in the right place for it.  Aside from the movie clips and newscast excerpts incorporated for illustrative purposes, Concerto was almost entirely shot in Chongqing, the China’s version of Chicago.  While Bo Wang was shooting, Bo Xilai’s neo-Maoist “Red Culture” campaign was in full swing, but the Chongqing party secretary would soon be removed after the Wang Lijun scandal brought international media attention to rumors of extensive corruption.

 He certainly captured images that are both striking and ironic.  Perhaps his richest vein of material is the park where viewers witness couples dancing under a model of Mount Rushmore and an elderly man reclining near a Statue of Liberty.  Yet, tucked away, there is also a cemetery dedicated exclusively to Red Guards that remains padlocked and shunned.  According to the woman’s tantalizingly vague narration, it seems many of those interned were involved in an incident of cannibalism, which has since been consigned to the memory hole.  One suspects this park could easily be the subject of an entire documentary feature.

It is absolutely fascinating to watch Concerto apply the techniques of deconstruction to official state propaganda.  The stand-in for the filmmaker’s stand-in explicitly argues China’s obsession with spectacle is intended to mask and empower it Communist rulers.  It also offers trenchant analysis of the capitalism promoted by the state, a mutation described as “collective capitalism,” in contrast to the western individualistic variety.  The implications for the individual in Chinese society are obvious.  That is one reason the correspondent always focuses on a single individual when watching sprawling propaganda pageants.

Indeed, Concerto’s concern for the overwhelmed individual is rather noble, in a genuinely subversive way.  As if its indie bona fides needed more burnishing, China Concerto holds the distinction of being a selection of the 2012 Beijing Independent Film Festival, which was shutdown not once, but three times by the government.  This is a film that simply encourages audiences to think, but some might find that threatening.  Highly recommended for sophisticated viewers, China Concerto screens during MoMA’s Documentary Fortnight this Wednesday (2/20) and Thursday (2/21), with the director present for Q&A both nights.  For Georgians, it also screens March 27^th at Kennesaw State and March 28^th at Emory, as part of the well curated Independent Chinese Film Series.

Romanian Film Festival ’11: Danube Waves

Given Romania’s shifting positions during WWII, it was a bit tricky setting a Communist-era propaganda film during that time, but the recently deceased Liviu Ciulei managed to do just that. For his second feature, the renowned theater director combined Casablanca with Wages of Fear, adding a pinch of Party propaganda for seasoning. A ripping tale of war and intrigue, Ciulei’s Danube Waves screens as part of the sidebar tribute to the filmmaker at the 2011 Romanian Film Festival, presented by the Film Society of Lincoln Center and the Romanian Cultural Institute.

Mihai is barge captain who does not trouble himself over politics. Nor is he much concerned about the poor substitutes for sailors he forces to sweep for mines. He just wants to get home to his young wife Ana. Though expendable crewmen are getting harder to recruit, the Germans are willing to provide a prisoner for his use. He chooses Toma, because the supposed criminal is certainly able-bodied and claims to have served on a ship before.

However, Ana can tell right away Toma does not know port from starboard, but he is a quick enough study to fool Mihai. Suspecting he is more than a common thief, a conspicuous sexual tension develops between Toma and Ana that Mihai deals with through heavy drinking as the barge loaded with German arms approaches a known minefield.

Of course, Toma is an agent of the Communist partisans, which gives the film an opportunity to periodically remind viewers just how deeply the Party loves us and how much it has sacrificed for Romania. Though hard to miss, these messages easily could have been more didactic.

The rest of the film is quite tightly executed. There are some real white-knuckle moments as the barge negotiates the bobbing mines and the dialogue (per the translated subtitles) is surprisingly sharp and even snippy at times. In a powerful performance, director Ciulei’s Mihai is an intense salt-of-the-earth screen presence, like Rick Blaine by way of Stanley Kowalski. In her film debut, Irina Petrescu nicely balances the intelligence, naivety, and sexuality of Ana. Though a bit stiff, Lazar Vrabie has a craggy Robert Stack quality that works rather well for Toma. After all, Communist heroes are supposed to be rigid and unyielding.

Danube is such a good film noir, even the state film authorities could not undermine it. Grigore Ionescu’s black-and-white cinematography is appropriately cool and moody, while the love triangle frankly gets kind of hot. As a bonus, there is even a rendition of "The Internationale." Highly recommended for old fashioned movie lovers who can parse the occasional propaganda salvo, Danube screens this Friday (11/2) as part of the 2011 Romanian Film Festival at the Walter Reade Theater, with a special introduction from Petrescu.

Totalitarian Kitsch: The Juche Idea

Before Kim Il-sung, mass-murdering megalomania had never been so kitschy. The Kim dynasty’s tyrannous misrule has been marked by imposingly ugly architecture, stilted cinema, and truly bizarre mass “arirang” stadium performances, all of which promoted the so-called Juche Idea, his crypto-Confucian brand of self-isolating socialism. An expatriate leftist South Korean filmmaker takes on the challenge of making Juche propaganda art films for an international audience, when not weeding the vegetable patch of a North Korean arts collective in The Juche Idea (trailer here), Jim Finn’s experimental mockumentary mash-up, now available on DVD.

Before he bravely led the proletariat into the future, the crown prince Kim Jong-il wrote North Korea’s definitive book on film studies. Not surprisingly, he concluded any honest, class conscious film should scrupulously adhere to his father’s Juche Idea concepts. DPRK films tended to be a wee bit formulaic as a result, typically culminating with a tearful self-criticism session and a vow to rededicate one’s self to Communist Party, as Finn illustrates with several clips crying out for the Crow and Tom Servo treatment.

As Yoon Yung Lee, the filmmaker-in-residence, splices together her strange Chuck Workman-like Juche films, the insular nature of the North’s ideology-driven culture becomes inescapably obvious. As soon as any distance is applied to the cheesy visuals and overblown synchronized dance numbers, irony rushes in like air into a vacuum. There is also an unexpected abundance of accordion music to heighten the surreal vibe of it all.

Finn never directly addresses the brutal reality of DPRK concentration camps, intrusive secret police, and widespread famine. As a result, Juche Idea really ought to be seen in conjunction with other North Korean documentaries, like Mads Brügger’s fearlessly subversive Red Chapel, which Lorber Films has also just released on DVD. Unlike the play-it-safe “Yes Men,” Brügger and his colleagues punk a target that wields absolute, unchecked power, on its own turf. You have yet to truly live until you have witnessed a pair of Danish-Korean comedians perform a slapstick rendition of “Wonderwall” for an audience of stone-faced DPRK apparatchik-minders in this mad expose-performance art hybrid.

In contrast, Juche Idea is all about the outrageous over-the-top propaganda serving the Great and Dear Leaders’ personality cults, without any reality-based context. Though it seems hard to miss the joke when a Russian tourist’s loose bowels lead to a lecture on the merits of North Korea’s socialized medicine, some of those protesting downtown might just swallow it whole.

Clearly, Finn is not exactly an underground conservative filmmaker, having also produced the short film Dick Cheney in a Cold, Dark Cell, which should have certainly maintained his standing in the experimental film community. Still, after watching Juche it is clear North Korea is a profoundly scary place, at least by any rational aesthetic standard.

Viewers who missed Brügger’s Chapel in theaters should definitely catch up with it first and then supplement it with Juche Idea’s head-spinning images and sly satire. Though only sixty-two minutes, there are some nice supplements on the DVD, including some deleted scenes, such as a whacked-out Juche comic book given the motion-comic treatment, as well as Finn’s short film Great Man and Cinema, which essentially boils down the essence of Juche Idea to three minutes and forty-nine seconds. Recommended for the ironically-inclined and the propaganda-savvy, Juche Idea and Chapel are easily two of this week’s most notable DVD releases.

Propaganda without Context: The Autobiography of Nicolae Ceaușescu

There was a time when Nicolae Ceaușescu got all the Iron Curtain’s favorable press. Many in the foreign policy establishment considered him reasonable, even reform-minded, based on some shrewd public relations moves, like his measured criticism of the 1968 Soviet invasion of Czechoslovakia. However, the 1989 Revolution ripped down the façade, revealing to the world the monster that had long oppressed Romania. Of course, every dictator sees themselves as an enlightened Caesar and has the state-produced propaganda to prove it. Culling 180 minutes from over 1,000 hours of archival footage, Romanian director Andrei Ujică assembled a video-collage of Ceaușescu’s life as it was perceived by the dictator and recorded by his state cameras in The Autobiography of Nicolae Ceaușescu (trailer here), which opens today in New York.

Defiant to the end, Nicolae Ceaușescu refuses to cooperate in the hastily assembled trial, following the Revolution (he would say coup) that removed him from office. Indeed, his has been a life of destiny as we watch his storied career in flashbacks, courtesy of the state propaganda ministry.

From his meteoric rise following the death of his Stalinist mentor Gheorghe Gheorghiu-Dej, Ceaușescu might have displayed a bit of independence in foreign policy, but aside from his support for Prague Spring, this usually manifested itself in uncharacteristically warm relations with the Warsaw Pact’s Eastern rivals, the Chinese and Vietnamese (here was a man who could appreciate a personality cult). Still, he certainly seemed to enjoy entertaining western heads of state, including President Nixon (who also appears to relish his photo ops with one of the few world leaders he physically towered over).

We watch as Ceaușescu celebrates birthdays, receives dignitaries, and opens party conferences, over and over again. He briefly condemns a spot of hooliganism in Timişoara and then suddenly he is facing an ad-hoc inquest. Of course, the real story is much more dramatic and far bloodier.

More or less billed as an object lesson in film as a propaganda tool, Ujică did not set out to create a revisionist history or to humanize the permanently deposed dictator. However, the film might have that unintended effect on audiences not privy to Ujică’s underlying concept or his past work documenting the 1989 uprising in Videograms of a Revolution. This is a particular risk here in New York, where art-house patrons consider themselves politically sophisticated but are easily manipulated by propagandistic images exactly like those assembled in Autobiography.

Running a full three hours, Autobiography is a hugely ambitious work, but frankly it is a punishing viewing experience. One scene of Ceaușescu fondling the bread of a well-stocked Potemkin market during a photo op makes the point. The second constitutes overkill. In fact, there is constant and deliberate repetition throughout Ujică’s film, as each Party conference and state visit blends into the next. Perhaps, this is a deliberate strategy to convey the rigidly homogenous nature of Ceaușescu’s artificially constructed reality, but is wearying for viewers looking for a lifeline to grasp unto.

As the highly problematic Autobiography stands, there is no footage that even mildly criticizes Ceaușescu’s twenty-five year misrule. How could there be? Any employees of the propaganda ministry not properly lionizing their master would have faced severe (probably fatal) reprisals. As a result, the entire film is much like Kim Il-sung’s massive welcoming ceremony, a hyper-real but static spectacle, ironic in its conspicuous lack of irony.

Ujică proves himself a daring filmmaker, but to what end? Autobiography is ultimately a film for those who have an affinity the vintage aesthetics of the Soviet era, regardless of the messy history involved, essentially unreconstructed leftists and ironic hipsters. Not recommended, it opens today (9/9) at the Elinor Bunin Munro Film Center.

Holocaust Remembrance on PBS: A Film Unfinished

In any documentary film, each and every visual and sound-bite has been carefully chosen. Consideration of what might have been left out is just as important as what is included. Unfortunately, the ability to actively scrutinize and parse images on-screen has atrophied in the general film-going public. If it is in a documentary, it must be true, is the too common, too passive assumption many make. That is why Yael Hersonski’s A Film Unfinished (trailer here) is important, both as a historical documentary in its own right and an object lesson in critically dissecting propaganda. One of several PBS broadcasts commemorating Holocaust Remembrance Day, Hersonski’s film airs this coming Tuesday as part of the current season of Independent Lens.

Innocuously labeled “Ghetto,” for years the film inside a dusty can discovered in an East German vault was taken at face value as an accurate representation of life in the Warsaw Ghetto, creeping into many documentaries about the Holocaust. A strange artifact, the never-completed film included scenes of both extreme suffering as well as images of wealthy Jews living ostensibly happy and prosperous lives in the Ghetto. However, the extent to which the entire so-called Warsaw Ghetto film, particularly the episodes designed to stoke class envy, was deliberately staged by its National Socialist film crew only became apparent forty years later with the discovery of nearly half an hour of outtakes. In Unfinished, Hersonski shows the audience the entire surviving Warsaw Ghetto film, with the help of a handful of surviving residents of the Warsaw Ghetto, who provide crucial context to understand just what really happened off-screen while the cameras were rolling.

Not so much a deconstruction in the contemporary academic sense, Unfinished is more a forensic inquiry into Warsaw’s production. Viewers see nearly all the extant footage, including many retakes and the occasional stray cameraman. We watch the Potemkin footage as well, but with the additional knowledge of whom and what were outside of the camera’s chosen field of vision. As a result, it is clear Warsaw is not an accurate portrayal of how things were. Just what their propaganda plans were for the film remains somewhat murky, despite the discovery of a surviving cameraman, who not surprisingly tries to present the production in the best possible light.

In addition to methodically analyzing the film and providing much needed context, Unfinished also acts as a corrective to notions (which Warsaw not coincidentally contributed to) that the Jewish Ghettos created by the National Socialists might have been uncomfortably cramped, but were not deadly per se. However, as Hersonski and her interview subjects make vividly clear, the Ghetto was indeed an environment intended to cause death and suffering, lacking only the fearful efficiency of the camps.

Unfinished was at the center of a small controversy when the MPAA bestowed an R rating on the film for “disturbing images.” While there are indeed such visuals in the film, they are never presented in a titillating or lurid manner. It was a problematic ruling because Unfinished is an educational film on multiple levels. Yet, in an odd way, it underscores the film’s point that images on film can have an insidious power on people’s perceptions. Meticulously assembled and scrupulously responsible in its treatment of admittedly “disturbing” imagery, Unfinished is a highly recommended work of nonfiction filmmaking. It runs on Independent Lens this coming Tuesday (5/3) on most PBS stations nationwide.

Tribeca ’11: Cinema Komunisto

It was a country that never really existed with an economic system that never ever worked. Obviously, Communist Yugoslavia needed constant distractions. Avala, the now decrepit Yugoslav state film studio responded with a constant stream of propaganda pictures, varying widely in quality. Mila Turajlic revisits the films and filmmakers who brought Tito’s version of reality to Yugoslavia’s movie-houses in Cinema Komunisto (trailer here), which screens during the 2011 Tribeca Film Festival.

It was good to be the Marshal. A lifelong film buff, Josip Broz Tito had a private screening almost every night of his reign. Unlike other Communist strongmen, he enjoyed Hollywood films as well as the Avala productions he took such an active interest in. According to his personal projectionist, one of his favorite actors was none other than John Wayne. He probably appreciated the Duke’s World War II films.

Indeed, the war was nearly ubiquitous in his state propaganda pictures. According to actor Bata Zivojinovic, many of his films simply consisted of him killing Germans from beginning to end. While not exactly ambitious, there is something to be said for the red meat approach. However, Avala also produced some legitimate prestige pictures, including the epic Battle of Neretva, featuring major stars from the West, including Yul Brynner, Orson Welles, and the Zagreb-born Sylva Koscina. A darling on the international festival circuit, Pablo Picasso was convinced to create the film’s poster.

Neretva was not an aberration. Western studios co-financed several productions with Avala and shot a number of films on location in Yugoslavia, often because of the country’s ready supply of vintage WWII era military hardware and their willingness to blow it up when required by the script. The Hollywood-Avala connection arguably reached its pinnacle when Richard Burton agreed to play Tito in the first sanctioned bio-picture of the soon to be declared President-for-Life. (With Elizabeth Taylor in tow, he looks distinctly woozy in vintage publicity footage unearthed by Turajlic.)

Komunisto is a fascinating film, but it is important to recognize its limits. Unlike the instructive press notes, Turajlic focuses exclusively on the Avala studio and its state-sanctioned films. The so-called “Black Wave” movement of dissident filmmakers will have to wait for their own documentary. Since nearly everyone interviewed was associated with Avala or the Marshal, they are usually rather circumspect in their criticism of the old regime, if not outright worshipful.

While the Polish and then Czechoslovakian film industries were arguably more accomplished, they also produced more significant troublemakers, like Andrzej Wajda and Vojtrech Jasny. Still, Komunisto makes a strong case for a systematic reissue program of the Avala catalogue, starting with the full theatrical version of Neretva. Largely skirting wider political and historical issues in favor of safer cinematic terrain, Komunisto is still one of the more engaging and informative documentaries at this year’s Tribeca. It screens tonight (4/21), Saturday (4/23), Monday (4/25), and Wednesday (4/27) in lower Manhattan.

KAFFNY ’11: Centre Forward

The “Fatherly Leader” loved the sight of young comrades physically exerting themselves in the open arena. Of course, the consequences of losing were rather permanent in “Juche” sports. Fortunately, Kim Il-sung also had ideas on cinema that prohibited any inconvenient realism. As a result, North Koreans had a steady diet of propaganda films, including Pak Chong-song’s oddly watchable Centre Forward (trailer here), which screens at the 2011 Korean American Film Festival on a double bill with Mads Brügger’s reality check Red Chapel.

After several frustrating years as a scrub, Cha In-son finally gets a chance to start for the Taesongsan football team. Unfortunately, he is so keyed-up, he pretty much stinks up the field. Shortly thereafter, he and his entire family are consigned to a prison camp. The end. Actually, not in this sanitized portrayal of DPRK. Instead, Cha’s awful performance sets of a round of recriminations and self-criticism that would be out of place in any healthy society.

Basically, the Taesongsan coach decides his team lost because everyone got too fat and complacent, so he institutes a bone-crushing new training program, making Cha one popular fellow. He does not get much sympathy from his sister Myong-suk either, because as dancer in the elaborate propaganda productions staged on behalf of the Kim personality cult, she works harder than any of the football slackers.

Anyone waiting for a romance to blossom between Cha’s superstar roommate Chol-gyu and his sister Myong-suk better forget it. Centre is not merely chaste, it is neutered. There is only one person getting any love in this film, but he never appears directly. However, plenty of rousing songs are sung in Kim’s honor.

There is no question Centre is propaganda bearing little or no resemblance to the truth. Everyone is robustly vital and all the shops are amply stocked. Yet, it is bizarrely fascinating to watch this Rocky unfold with all its idiosyncrasies, while knowing it all takes place in one of the most isolated, repressive regimes in the world. At times, it is downright surreal, like the cut-away shots of the Taesongsan team suddenly riding a roller coaster in their Sunday best amidst their final training montage. (Aren’t they supposed to win the big game before going to Kim Il-sung-Land?) Still, the young actress playing Myong-suk is quite good, still coming across endearingly sweetly as she busts Cha’s chops for his insufficient zeal.

Although obviously stilted, a film like Centre is well worth screening, if it is presented in the proper context. Fortunately, KAFFNY gives equal time to Mads Brügger’s Red Chapel (trailer here), a bracing dose of truth. Ostensively, Brügger came to North Korea with two Danish Korean comedians, Simon Jul Jørgensen and Jacob Nossell, to stage a good will show. However, his real intent was to expose the oppressive nature of DPRK system.

As soon as the Danes arrived in the North, their minder, Mrs. Pak, stuck to them like glue. Her response to the Nossell was particularly unnerving, almost smothering the wheelchair-bound comedian with attention. However, even Mrs. Pak could not fake an enthusiastic response to the program the comedians had prepared. Featuring skits in drag and an unclassifiable rendition of Oasis’s “Wonderwall,” it was not just bad, it was awe-inspiringly awful.

While Chapel is at times a riotous exercise in comedic performance art, the overall film is as serious as a missile attack. The pathological nature of DPRK society weighed particularly heavily on Nossell (all too aware of the suspicious absence of North Koreans disabled in any way), causing frequent rifts between him and the director.

Though he makes a noble effort, Brügger fails to capture the smoking gun scene that would utterly lay bear North Korea’s tyranny. Of course, he was doomed from the start, because the Communists set all the rules and could change them at their convenience. Still, they are plenty of telling moments, as well as some truly outrageous humor. Indeed, Chapel compliments and counterbalances Centre quite effectively. Together, they will make for a mind-blowing night of film this coming Saturday (3/19). However, the final word of the DPKR should go to John Arlotto’s poignant short film Deface, which also screens at this year’s KAFFNY (review to come).

Deconstructing Propaganda: A Film Unfinished

In any documentary film, each and every visual and sound-bite has been carefully chosen. Consideration of what might have been left out is just as important as what is included. Unfortunately, the ability to actively scrutinize and parse images on-screen has atrophied in the general film-going public. If it is in a documentary, it must be true, is the too common, too passive assumption many make. That is why Yael Hersonski’s A Film Unfinished (trailer here) is important, both as a historical documentary in its own right and an object lesson in critically dissecting propaganda, which opens this Wednesday at the Film Forum.

Innocuously labeled “Ghetto,” for years the film inside a dusty can discovered in an East German vault was taken at face value as an accurate representation of life in the Warsaw Ghetto, slowly creeping into many documentaries of the Holocaust. A strange artifact, the never-completed film included scenes of both extreme suffering as well as images of wealthy Jews living ostensibly happy and prosperous lives in the Ghetto. However, the extent to which the entire so-called Warsaw Ghetto film, particularly the episodes designed to stoke class envy, was deliberately staged by its film crew only became apparent with the discovery of nearly half an hour of outtakes. In Unfinished, Hersonski shows the audience the entire surviving Warsaw Ghetto footage, with the help of a handful of surviving residents of the Warsaw Ghetto, who provide crucial context to understand just what really happened while the cameras were rolling.

Not so much a deconstruction in the contemporary academic sense, Unfinished is more a forensic inquiry into Warsaw's production. Viewers see nearly all the extant footage, including many retakes and the occasional stray cameraman. We see the Potemkin footage as well, but with the additional knowledge of whom and what were outside of the camera’s chosen field of vision. As a result, it is clear Warsaw is not an accurate portrayal of how things were. Just what their propaganda plans were for the film remains somewhat murky, despite the discovery of a surviving cameraman, who not surprisingly tries to present their filming in the best possible light.

In addition to methodically analyzing the film and providing much needed context, Unfinished also acts as a corrective to notions (which Warsaw not coincidentally contributed to) that the Jewish Ghettos created by the National Socialists might have been uncomfortably cramped, but were not deadly per se. However, as Hersonski and her interview subjects make vividly clear, the Ghetto was indeed an environment intended to cause death and suffering, lacking only the fearful efficiency of the camps.

Recently, Unfinished has been at the center of a small controversy when the MPAA bestowed an R rating on the film for “disturbing images of Holocaust atrocities including graphic nudity.” While there are indeed such images in the film, they are never presented in a titillating or lurid manner. It is a problematic ruling because Unfinished is an educational film on multiple levels. Yet, in an odd way, it underscores the film’s point that images on film can have an insidious power on people’s perceptions. Meticulously assembled and scrupulously responsible in its treatment of admittedly “disturbing” imagery, Unfinished is a challenging but highly recommended work of nonfiction filmmaking. It opens this Wednesday (8/18) in New York at Film Forum.