First Look ’19: Donbass

Many of the so-called separatists in Ukraine’s Donetsk region are really Russian military out of uniform. What are the implications for Russian-speakers who chose to support this illegal military operation? Nothing short of the death of civil society and the beginning of their own oppression. That is the inescapable takeaway that comes through loud and clear in Belorussian-born, formerly Russian-based Ukrainian filmmaker Sergei Loznitsa’s Donbass (trailer here), Ukraine’s official foreign language Oscar submission, which screens as the opening night film of this year’s First Look at MoMI.

Disinformation (the term “fake news” makes it sound trivial) is a major theme running through Donbass. As the film opens, a group of extras are in makeup, awaiting their closeups in a bogus Russian news report about a phony “fascist” bus bombing (torched by the Russian propagandists themselves). It is crude, yet somewhat effective.

Thus, begins a rondo-style film, in which members of the would-be Russian breakaway puppet-state confront their new masters. We see paramilitaries menace the German journalist their commanders are trying to favorably impress. One of the new political wheeler-dealers tries to make a show for the staff and media of a stockpile of supplies supposedly confiscated from the former hospital director, but nobody is buying it (least of all him).

In one of the film’s most potent and stinging sequences, a Russian-inclined small business owner learns what happens when he tries to assert his rights and claim the van appropriated by the separatist paramilitaries. Viewers familiar with Loznitsa’s work will see shades of My Joy in a narrative arc that out as a satire of bureaucracy, but quickly evolves into a blend of Kafkaesque and Orwellian horror. Perhaps the most damning but least overtly political segment chronicles the rowdy marriage ceremony of two ghoulish crude supporters of the new Russian-backed regime. Here we see shades of the grotesque absurdity he previously unleashed in A Gentle Creature.

Yet, frame-for-frame and second-for-second, easily the most horrifying segment dramatizes the public pillorying of a Ukrainian self-defense force volunteer captured by the Russian-controlled separatist gangs. The brutal beatings and humiliations meted down on him are a sickening spectacle, which his tormentors gleefully record on their smart phones. It is a staggering sequence of cinema, anchored by the silent dignity of Valery Antoniuk’s performance as the tortured prisoner.

Yet, the kicker is the wrap-around conclusion that returns to the actors appearing in the propaganda reports. What happens to them makes it bitingly clear those collaborating with the Russians are only sowing the seeds of their own misery. It is a brilliant, bracing finish.

In some ways, Donbass is stylistically akin to Roy Andersson’s A Pigeon Sat on a Branch Reflecting on Existence, but it comes from the other side of the political spectrum and it has much more to say. Granted, the relay-rondo structure inevitably produces a bit of unevenness, but it is frequently razor-sharp, forceful as heck, and relentlessly honest. This is a major cinematic statement from one of the most important filmmakers working today. Very highly recommended, Donbass screens this Friday (1/11) at MoMI, launching First Look 2019.

Bitter Harvest: Ukraine’s Tragic History, Finally on the Big Screen

On the spectrum of human enormity, the Holodomor, Stalin’s genocidal campaign to starve Ukraine to the brink of extinction, ranks somewhere near the Cambodian Killing Fields, just below the National Socialist Holocaust. Yet, many in the West never knew it was happening. The prime culprit of Stalin’s disinformation campaign was the compromised journalist Walter Duranty. The New York Times no longer stands by his reports but the Pulitzer organization refuses to rescind the prize they awarded for his denial of Stalin’s crimes against humanity. On one level, George Mendelok’s English language Bitter Harvest functions as a historical romance, but it is also a timely reminder of what happens when journalists chose to serve as propagandists. Truth is a victim along with upwards of 7.5 million Ukrainians in Mendeluk’s Harvest (trailer here), which opens this Friday in New York.

There was no love for the Czar amongst Ukraine’s sturdy peasantry, so they initially welcomed the revolution as an opportunity to finally declare independence. Unfortunately, Lenin soon reconquered the republic, expressly so its grain could fuel the Soviet regime. After his death, Stalin pursued a more exploitative and intentionally brutal policy. All land was nationalized and collectivized. Harvests were almost entirely exported back to Moscow, leaving insufficient stocks for even subsistence living and the borders were sealed, with full knowledge mass starvation would result.

Like so many Ukrainians, Yuri comes from Kulak stock, the so-called “rich land-owning” peasants, a term that only makes sense to a Marxist-Leninist theorist or a Bernie Sanders intern. His childhood sweetheart Natalka grew up in even meaner conditions, but her family will still suffer and starve at the hands of the brutal commissar quartered in their village.

When Yuri is awarded a scholarship to a Kiev art school, he assumes it will offer opportunities to help his family, but conditions in the city turn out to be worse than in the countryside. He also witnesses the Party’s attack on free expression first-hand when Socialist Realism is rigidly mandated throughout the school. He assumes his old village chum will protect him when he is elected Ukrainian Party Secretary, but poor Mykola fails to understand the caprices of Comrade Stalin until he finds himself on the business end of a purge. When Yuri is also imprisoned, his hopes of reuniting with Natalka look grim, but the grandson of a legendary Cossack warrior has more fight in him than the art school pedigree might suggest.

On-screen, Bitter Harvest has the epic tragedy of its obvious role model film, Doctor Zhivago. However, if you sniff underneath the celluloid, you might smell the burnt rubber and tear gas that permeated many crew members who participated in the Maidan Square demonstrations on their free days from shooting. The parallels between the Lenin and Stalin eras of exploitation and attempted annihilation and the Putin era neo-Soviet militarism hardly need explaining. Yet, lingering ignorance of the Holodomor helps embolden Putin’s military incursions.

Much like Andrzej Wajda’s Katyn, Mendeluk and screenwriter Richard Bachynsky Hoover clearly illustrate the acrid demoralization of the propaganda that so brazenly denied the victims of Communism’s abject suffering (Duranty does indeed make an appearance in the film, but there is no context to explain who he is). Yet, the Zhivago-esque storyline has plenty of sweep and even harbors a handful of surprises. Samantha Barks was probably the best part of the Les Mis movie, but she is even more convincing as an illegitimate Slavic peasant than a French street urchin. Max Irons is a little stiff portraying Yuri’s puppy love years, but he shows some surprising grit in the second and third acts. Terence Stamp does his hardnosed thing as old leathery Ivan, while Tamer Hassan chillingly projects the wanton cruelty of the empowered extremist.

Bitter Harvest is not a pitch-perfect film. Frankly, Mendeluk’s dream sequences are far too woo-woo for a film that ought to be all about cold hard realism. However, it vividly shines a light on a criminally under-reported and often deliberately misunderstood case of systematic mass murder, while the family saga picks up speed and power as it develops. Highly recommended for fans of big picture historical dramas, Bitter Harvest opens this Friday (2/24) at the AMC Empire in Midtown and the Village East downtown.

Submitted by Ukraine: Ukrainian Sheriffs

They are Ukrainian border town sheriffs, sort of. Russia’s neo-Soviet annexation of the Crimea temporarily put Stara Zburjivka on the Ukrainian border. Suddenly, keeping the peace takes on vastly different meanings for the town’s two appointed lawmen. They keep plugging away as they can, while the town wrestles with the implications of grand geopolitical events beyond their control in Roman Bondarchuk’s Ukrainian Sheriffs (trailer here), Ukraine’s official foreign language Oscar submission, which screens next week at the Ukrainian Institute of America.

Technically, they are not formal police officers, but the nearest sub-station is so prohibitively far from Stara Zburjivka, the progressive town council chairman (mayor equivalent), Orange Revolution veteran Viktor Marunyak recruited Victor Grygorovych and his partner Volodya to act as referees. Generally speaking, the townfolk usually make nice when they intercede. Grygorovych is the small wiry one, but he is the one you really want to avoid antagonizing, rather than the big but genial Volodya.

Ever since Marunyak cut some featherbedding out of the town budget to pay their salaries, they have maintained civic order with relatively little trouble or ill feelings. However, a small but vocal faction is rising up to challenge Marunyak, not so coincidentally timed around the same time as the Russian annexation and subsequent invasion. Suddenly, the Sheriffs are serving not so far from a war zone.

Stara Zburjivka offers a fascinating vantage point for viewing recent events in Ukrainian history. However, viewers would get a fuller picture if Sheriffs were screened with the short doc Bondarchuk and producer Dar’ya Averchenko previously made on Marunyak, who was imprisoned on trumped up charges when he defied the attempted land grabs of the Yanukovich kleptocracy. There is maybe a little too much quiet observation in the feature follow-up, when they are so many true stories like Marunyak’s that need to be told.

Regardless, the Sheriffs are indeed worthy screen subjects, especially the flinty Grygorovych. During the third act, Bondarchuk duly captures a whole lot of unfolding irony from their point-of-view. We also get a vivid sense of how spirited (and in some cases, downright prickly) the Stara Zburjivka townspeople truly are. Frankly, Putin should think twice before trying to occupy the Sheriffs’ turf. Recommended as boots-on-the-ground, up-close-and-personal report from Ukraine (a friendly democracy experiencing predatory external pressure), Ukrainian Sheriffs screens this Wednesday (12/7) in New York at the Ukrainian Institute’s historic landmark building.

Culver City ’16: Women of Maidan

Their ranks included Ruslana Lyzhychko, the first Ukrainian Eurovision song contest winner, and babushkas from the provinces. Women disproportionately answered the call during Ukraine’s Maidan Square protests, because they found the Russian-backed regime’s use of force against peacefully demonstrating students simply unacceptable. According to Putin and the gullible media, they were also largely neo-Nazi nationalists. Of course, that was a libelous lie, as viewers can easily discern when watching Olha Onyshko’s Women of Maidan (trailer here), which screens during the 2016 Culver City Film Festival.

In retrospect, unleashing the paramilitary Berkut forces on orderly protesting students in November of 2013 was the Yanukovych Gang’s biggest mistake. It unleashed a sleeping giant: Ukraine’s mothers and grandmothers, who quickly filled the square to protect the nation’s “children.” Like many of the demonstrators, Onyshko arrived soon after the first brutal attack and quickly settled in for a long siege.

It is amazing how thoroughly the Euromaidan protests have been covered by documentarians, yet Putin’s disinformation campaign has still been so insidiously successful. If it were really an expression of anti-Semitic nationalism, one would think there would be signs peeking through Onyshko’s footage or that of Evgeny Afineevsky’s Winter on Fire, or Andrew Tkach’s Generation Maidan, or Sergei Loznitsa’s observationally immersive Maidan, but that just was not the case. However, probably no previous doc (except perhaps Dmitriy Khavin’s post-Maidan Quiet in Odessa) so thoroughly discredits such slander as Women of Maidan.

Onyshko talks to a wide cross-section of the women at the Square, none of whom come across as ideologues of any stripe. In case after case, they are simply moved by a desire to see a better future for younger generations. They are fed up with Yanukovych’s corruption and deeply skeptical of his chumminess with Putin—especially those who lost family members during the Holomodor, Stalin’s deliberate terror famine.

Women of Maidan is a necessary corrective to lingering Russian propaganda and an inspiring chronicle of a concerted grassroots campaign to protect Ukrainians’ constitutional rights. Unfortunately, Onyshko probably overstates her case when she heralds the Revolution of Dignity as a victory for humanistic matriarchal values over patriarchal oppression. Alas, Putin remains firmly committed to patriarchy and nobody seems to have a plan to deal with him. Regardless, it remains a film of great merit and journalistic integrity. Running an easily manageable sixty-six-minutes, Women of Maidan is very highly recommended for general viewers as well as feminists and foreign policy hawks alike, when it screens this Saturday (12/3), at the Culver City Film Festival.

NYJFF ’16: Song of Songs

You might think Shimek’s parents would be proud to say “my son, the doctor,” but not in this resolutely traditional Orthodox shtetl. To study medicine, he essentially rejected their tight-knit community. Unfortunately, that also meant turning his back on Buzya, the love of his life. He will return hoping to rectify that mistake, but time marches on in Eva Neymann’s Song of Songs (trailer here), which screens during the 2016 New York Jewish Film Festival.

Based a several Sholem Aleichem short stories, Song of Songs paints an almost naively nostalgic portrait of Russian shtetl life, at a time pogrom concerns were never idle or baseless. Life went on regardless. For young Shimek, this involved elaborately constructed fantasies informed by Kabbalah, wherein Buzya was the princess and he was her knight-protector.

Although Shimek studies with the local rabbi, he only distinguishes himself with discipline problems. It is almost inevitable that Shimek would leave for more cosmopolitan pastures. Ironically, in his absence, Shimek’s parents adopt Buzya, in spirit if not in law, arranging a much more suitable match for her than their rebellious son.

In terms of mise-en-scene, Song is exceptionally accomplished. Production designers Gennadiy Popov and Ilya Iovu make the wooden shtetl house look properly hardscrabble and strangely charming in an old world kind of way. Cinematographer Rimmvydas Leipus duly lenses everything with the glow of romanticized memory. To set the indefinable mood, Neymann uses vintage popping and hissing records of Jewish recording artists, including Jolson and Haifitz, who are not necessarily era-appropriate, but still fit the tenor of the time.

The problem is Neymann’s cast is practically just another set of props for her to manipulate. Subtle and reserved performances can be a revelation, but here they are often just quietly unobtrusive. We can one hundred percent believe these are the weathered, reticent shtetl denizens, but they all leave us on the outside looking in.

Song of Songs is the sort of film you respect rather than feel affection for. Nevertheless, its humanistic portrayal of shtetl life arguably comes at an opportune moment. This is after all, a Ukrainian film, arriving at a time when Russian propaganda would have the world erroneously believe the nation is dominated by goose-stepping National Socialists. Song of Songs is a scrupulously classy, admirably literate production, but mere mortals may have trouble fully embracing it when it screens twice this Thursday (11/21) at the Walter Reade Theater, as part of this year’s NYJFF.

The Tribe: Time to Brush on Your Ukrainian Sign Language

The industrial district of Kiev still known as “Stalinka” is so soulless and depressed, its nickname is probably more fitting than ever. It is here that Sergey will attend a state run boarding school for the deaf. He will learn the school’s lessons quickly, despite hardly attending any classes in Myroslav Slaboshpytkiy’s The Tribe (trailer here), which opens this Wednesday at Film Forum.

Perhaps more than any previous film, Slaboshpytkiy’s Tribe was conceived as means of putting the shoe on the other foot and forcing us to walk a while with it. Following a bold and already celebrated/notorious strategy, Slaboshpytkiy shot Tribe entirely in Ukrainian sign language, without offering any subtitles or narration to guide us through. Frankly, we will get lost from time to time (that’s sort of the point), but we can follow the broad strokes fairly well. After all, these kids are not exactly chatty.

Sergey soon learns the school is run by a very real high school mafia, led by King and “advised” by the shop teacher. Their primary illicit business involves pimping out classmates to drivers at the nearby truck-stop, like the apparently willing Anya and Svetka. After some initial hazing, Sergey quickly rises through the ranks, taking over the day-to-day operations following King’s jarring death by misadventure. However, he breaks the unspoken rule when he falls for Anya.

The overall effect of Slaboshpytkiy’s silent treatment is a mixed bag, but there are two scenes in Tribe that are so viscerally shocking, they will make you audibly gasp. A good deal of their power is indeed derived from the silence. They are also masterly blocked out by Slaboshpytkiy, causing us to wonder if his non-professional actors (who are also deaf in real life) walked away from their scenes unscathed, while underscoring the dangers of deafness in the wider, unaccommodating world. Of course, the school is supposed to be a shelter, but it is anything but.

Disturbingly, viewing The Tribe feels like watching a cold, violent documentary unfold. The young cast is so utterly convincing and free of mannerisms or artifice, they never seem to be performing. Still, it is worth noting the chemistry developed by Grigoriy Fesenko and Yana Novikova, as well as the gutsiness of their explicit but decidedly non-erotic sex scenes.

In a way, The Tribe is the anti-boarding school movie. Usually, the audience is invited to vicariously share the student camaraderie and sense of belonging, whereas Slaboshpytkiy deliberately keeps us on the outside looking in. Many times, we might actually wish we could join the pupils at Hogwarts or wherever, but in the case of The Tribe, no thanks. Yet, the self-contained nature of their environment makes it such an effective analog for the pre-revolutionary, Russian-backed Ukrainian regime.

Regardless, The Tribe’s vibe is totally distinctive and completely uncompromising. Timid patrons should be warned of its style, content, and pretty much everything else, but it is a truly immersive cinematic experience that edgier cineastes will appreciate. Recommended highly but selectively, The Tribe opens this Wednesday (6/17) in New York at Film Forum.

Loznitsa’s Maidan: You are there in the Square

The opening lyrics of the Ukrainian National Anthem make a fitting commencement for any film on the Euromaidan demonstrations and the subsequent Russian aggression: “Ukraine’s glory has not yet perished, nor has her freedom. Upon us fellow patriots, fate shall smile once more.” Let’s be frank, most of the media now considers Ukraine’s freedom a lost cause and the lame duck administration no longer has anything to say on the issue. Yet, when the Ukrainians unite in common purpose, they are a resilient force. Sergei Loznitsa captures his countrymen’s collective spirit in the direct cinema documentary Maidan (trailer here), which opens this Friday in New York.

Kiev’s central city square is currently known as Maidan Nezalezhnosti, or Independence Square. It was previously known as Soviet Square, Kalinin Square (in honor of Stalin loyalist Mikhail Kalinin), and the Square of the October Revolution—and it might be so renamed again if deposed President Viktor Yanukovych and his Russian masters have their way. In late 2013, outraged Ukrainians took to the square, protesting Yanukovych’s decision to reject an association agreement with the EU, in accordance with Moscow’s wishes. Protests did indeed erupt in Maidan, the scene of many Orange Revolution demonstrations following Yanukovych’s suspect election in 2004, but it was far from the “pogrom” Putin suggested. Loznitsa has the footage to prove it.

In a way, it is too bad the Euromaidan movement advocates freedom and closer ties with the west, because Loznitsa’s documentary could have been the greatest socialist film ever made. Arguably, no other film so powerfully conveys the spirit of collective action and a sense of individuals dedicating themselves to a larger cause. There are many long takes and wide angle crowd shots, but Loznitsa and his fellow cameraman Serhiy Stefan Stetsenko capture the tenor of the time quite viscerally.

Loznitsa never focuses on representative POV figures, maintaining a macro perspective throughout. Nevertheless, we can easily observe the trends and magnitude of the situation from his vantage points. At first, there is very much a sense that things will change, much as it did in 2004. We see the volunteers making sandwiches and distributing tea to regular Sunday night demonstrators. A gullible media largely accepted Putin’s smears at face value, but it is hard to imagine a neo-fascist movement would dispatch four volunteers to make sure nobody slipped on a spot of spilled water in the lobby.

Tragically, Yanukovych would unleash the Interior Ministry’s Berkut forces in January. At this point the audience can clearly see how unscripted Loznitsa’s film truly was, as either the director or his co-cinematographer is caught in a tear gas attack. They maintain the same long fixed approach, but the pleas for medical personnel to come to the stage area to treat the collected wounded speaks volumes about the old regime. Not to be spoilery (unless you work at a major network, you should already know this ends rather badly), but Loznitsa concludes the film with a funeral for two fallen activists, which is absolutely emotionally devastating, even without a personal entry-point character to concentrate on.

Still, the individual stories of Maidan supporters desperately need to be heard, which is why Dmitriy Khavin’s Quiet in Odessa is such a timely and valuable film. Since there is almost no supplemental context in Loznitsa’s Maidan it is best seen in conjunction with a film like Khavin’s. However, it has the virtue of presenting events as they happened and allowing the audience to draw their own conclusions. Highly recommended for anyone seeking an immersive understanding of Ukraine’s Euromaidan movement, Loznitsa’s Maidan opens this Friday (12/12) in New York, at the Elinor Bunin Munroe Film Center.

(The international film community should also note Ukrainian filmmaker Oleg Sentsov is still being held incommunicado in Russia, on trumped-up terrorism charges, awaiting his day in kangaroo court. Along with Loznitsa’s Maidan and Khavin’s Odessa, film programmers ought to consider scheduling Sentsov’s politically neutral Gaamer to raise awareness for his plight.)

OIFF ’14: Gaamer

Really good film festivals are not just an assortment of screenings. They provide a sense of community. Every year, I look forward to fests like Sundance, NYAFF, and the Bosnian-Herzegovinian Festival because of the people I expect to see there. That is why the continuation of the Odessa International Film Festival represents a small but significant victory for Ukraine’s cultural sector. Unfortunately, there is one particular filmmaker who will not be able to attend.

Pro-Ukrainian democracy activist Oleg Sentsov was arrested by the Russian military while attempting to smuggle food to barricaded Ukrainian military personnel in the occupied province of Crimea. He is now being held on trumped up terrorism charges, awaiting a show trial in Moscow. To date, Ukrainian consular personnel have been denied access to Sentsov, in clear violation of diplomatic law and custom. In his place, Sentsov will be represented at this year’s inspiringly defiant OIFF with his 2011 feature directorial debut, Gaamer (trailer here), which has a special screening this Tuesday.

Ostensibly, there are no political implications to be gleamed from Gaamer. The extra “a” represents a distinctively Slavic pronunciation of “gamer” adopted by video game fanatics in parts of Eastern Europe. Sentsov was once part of the subculture, just like his protagonist. Alex is an unrepentant underachiever. However, under his gamer handle Koss, he is one of the top players of the first-person shooter Quake in his depressed post-industrial town.

Much to his long suffering mother’s frustrations, Alex/Koss has been expelled from his technical school, preferring to idle his time away in a computer gaming parlor, presumably much like the one Sentsov once managed. When he places highly in a local tournament, he is recruited by one of the top national teams. At least he will have free gaming for the near future, but then what?

It is tempting to try to read further political significance into the work of filmmakers like Sentsov or Iranian dissident Jafar Panahi, because you would think it has to be in there somewhere to justify such heavy-handed human rights abuses. However, there is absolutely no commentary on neo-Soviet Imperialism to be found in Gaamer.

Instead, it is a film about lifestyle choices and their consequences. Specifically, it examines the awkward period when gaming loses its thrill. After all, a video game is by its nature fleeting and apparently Quake is one of those games that always ultimately ends with a player’s in-game death. So just what does Alex/Koss have to show for his monitor time?

Frankly, Putin would probably prefer an anesthetized Ukraine, lulled by video games or whatever into a state of extreme myopia. In that limited sense, Gaamer’s get-out-and-get-involved-in-life message is somewhat at odds with his expansionist agenda. However, the truth of the matter is Sentsov was simply rounded up for being a prominent ethnic Ukrainian in the Crimea, with a history of democratic activism.

Clearly, Sentsov also understands the characters of Gaamer and the worlds in which they interact. Vladislav Zhuk is totally convincing as the socially underdeveloped Alex/Koss, but his distant, cipher-like nature is sometimes frustrating. While it is not exactly a showy role, Zhanna Biryuk perfectly calibrates her performance as his mother.

All things considered, Gaamer is a very promising first feature. It has its odd rough edges and pacing issues here and there, but those who see it would be intrigued enough look out for Sentsov’s follow-up film. Unfortunately, production on what was to be called Rhino was postponed due to the Maidan Square protests and the Russian invasion. Any serious filmmaker like Sentsov deserves to have a chance to develop his art over the course of several pictures, but his abduction and incarceration now makes that impossible. Even Putin-approved filmmaker Nikita Mikhalkov has (somewhat boldly) joined the chorus of voices demanding his release.

If you happen to be in Odessa, attending the screening of Gaamer this Tuesday (7/15) would be a great way to show solidarity, while seeing a good movie in the process. For the rest of us, light up the social networks and online petitions. Free Oleg Sentsov.