There is a reason Putin thought he could get away with invading Ukraine. It is
because Russia already got away with sabotaging a democratically elected
government in Georgia. Zviad Gamsakhurdia was elected Georgia’s first president
with 87% of the vote. Less than a year later, he was toppled in a coup
orchestrated by former Communists and street thugs. Filmmakers Elene Asatiani
and Soso Dumbadze show it going down in real-time, through primary video
sources foraged from the internet in the documentary, Limitation, which
screens during this year’s First Look.
It
starts out triumphant and full of hope, as Gamsakhurdia’s campaign smoothly
segues into a victory lap. Yet, simultaneously, the anti-democratic elements
immediately started demonstrating on the streets, with a vehemence that quickly
crossed over into violence. Western critics argued Gamsakhurdia’s nationalist
rhetoric was not sufficiently inclusive towards non-ethnic Georgian minorities,
but you do not hear any such arguments from the Russian-backed
coup-instigators.
Eventually,
Gamsakhurdia and his supporters barricade themselves in a government building,
eerily paralleling the 1993 Russian coup attempt, but the results were
different. All the footage was apparently recorded by eye-witnesses and
bystanders, but two clips feature “behind-the-scenes” footage of Western
journalists, recorded by third parties, rather than their camera crews. ABC’s
Sheila Kast gets credit for asking the putsch-promoters a tough question, but
Christiane Amanpour largely peppers Gamsakhurdia with “your-detractors-charge-you-with-this”
style questions, basically recycling their propaganda.
If you wonder what a Pax Putania might be like, look at the Caucasus.
Spoiler alert: it isn’t very peaceful. Despite its security pact with Russia,
Armenia was routed by Azerbaijan, a more “allied” Russian ally, during the 2020
fighting over Nagorno-Karabakh. Most of the breakaway Artsakh region were
Armenian speakers who more readily identified with Armenia, which makes Russian
pretenses for invading Ukraine even more hypocritical. Tragically, Shoghakat
Vardanyan’s brother Soghomon was a casualty of the conflict. Perhaps even more
cruelly, Soghomon’s fate remained unknown when his sister picked up a camera
and started documenting the family’s Kafkaesque anguish in 1489, which
screens during this year’s First Look.
Soghomon
Vardanyan was a musician, not a fighter, but he answered his nation’s call.
Unfortunately, Armenia will be forced to accept humiliating terms after their
military defeat. Vardanyan and her parents have few illusions, because they
know Soghomon’s unit was nearly decimated in a disastrous engagement. They
still try to hold onto some hope, but they feel mixed emotions when the body
they are summoned to identify turns out to be another false alarm.
1489
(titled
after an identification number related to Vardanyan’s brother) is a quiet,
intimate long-take film. Intuitively, Vardanyan develops the sort of embedded
documentary filmmaking techniques Wang Bing has perfected over a two-decade
span. She captures some heart-breaking family drama, while also participating
in it.
Cineastes sometimes forget Tarkovsky’s Solaris was not the first adaptation
of the Stanislaw Lem novel. It certainly wasn’t Soderbergh’s either. In 1968
there was an early Russian film released, often referred to as Solyaris.
Even before that, there were Polish radio productions in 1962 and 1970, each
predating Tarkovsky and Soderbergh. Filmmaker Kuba Mikurda samples audio from
both Polskie Radio plays in this hybrid documentary that in a very abstract way
also condenses the themes and story of Lem’s novel in Solaris Mon Amour,
which screens during this year’s First Look.
For
those who know the book (which Lem started writing in 1959, the same year
Resnais’s Hiroshima Mon Amour was released, so there you go) and films, Mikurda’s
audio excerpts are readily identifiable as Solaris-ian. The images are
culled from vintage 1960s Polish industrial and educational science films that
have nothing to do with Lem, but marry-up rather aptly with the audio passages.
Scenes of protozoa and microscopic cell structures fittingly match discussion
of the sentient “sea” on planet Solaris, while protagonist Kris Kelvin’s
alienation is nicely represented by star fields and remote figures traversing
alien-looking terrain, or the like.
As
a result, Solaris Mon Amour sort of is Solaris, but you need to know
some of the various Solarises to fill in the gaps. Ironically, that now makes
Tarkovsky’s Solaris one of the more “accessible” versions.
