Easter Monday and I finally have some time to sit down and write about all the rest of the beautiful documentaries I had a chance to see at this year's One World festival.
I'm so grateful that festivals such as this one exist. For all the great work of brilliant and courageous people they bring together to share stories so distant from our comfortable lives, from our daily tiny problems and worries. How these events really bring things into perspective for you and make you see the really important things in life... So let me take you around the world and look behind the everyday news you hear from the media. Let me take you to places you haven't known about. Let me introduce you to people you'll never meet, and bring them closer to you. Let me tell you what it's like to travel the world in a week...
Since the documentaries have been divided into several thematic sequences, therefore, let me also keep the same pattern, starting with none else than topic closest to us, both geographically and historically,
From the works of the Swiss filmmaker Eric Bergkraut, who decided to gather all the footage he had with Anna when he worked on his previous documentary about Chechnya and add more to create a picture of the strong and stubborn journalist, the documentary craftfully slowly paints a picture of Anna through interviews with her, her son and daughter, her husband and her close friends and her boss at Novaya Gazeta Dimitrij Muratow, all creating a mozaic of today's "Putin's Russia", Anna's personality, life, work, drive and events preceding her murder.
One thing I did not know about her is that she participated in negotiations between the Chechen separatists in two occasions: during the seizure of the
The film also depicts the latest history of
What the documentary did for me was enable me to meet Anna in her daily life and get to know her as a person with never-ending desire to search for the truth and righteousness with courage and drive just a few people have.
The most important aspect of the film I will remember is her dedication to her work – even to the point of sacrificing her marriage for her niche. She was not a person to be told what to do and when to stop. Even despite she knew the threat to her life exists – and as she said herself in one of the sequences "being genuinely surprised to still be alive", she could not stop, until the end.
Of course, the question of who is responsible for her murder is being asked and discussed in the documentary as well and a really disturbing view is presented by her son Ilya, when he says that "despite someone else pulled the trigger, it is President Putin who gave the orders, all starts and ends there... I think Putin has really murdered her..."
Now, this is a very strong statement and it really surprised me that I did not for a second think this being something completely improbable, especially after seeing another movie from this sequence called:
which completely put things into perspective for me.
This documentary captures life in a village close to
Durakovo is, from the outside and the inside a perfect example of such a "castle of the new age", or should I say "Putin's age"?
Administered by Mikhail Morozov, Durakovo is really one mighty mansion, where Morozov rules, and where all the people from the village have to work for little or no pay, or nothing more than just food or shelter. At first, what comes to might is how come these people stand it. Well, the documentary perfectly depicts this on a case of one of the workers, an educated young man, who just came back home from his studies in
The first thing his mother does is takes him to Morozov's house to get work for him over there, saying how good the man is and that this young man (forgot his name by now...) should be grateful to have the opportunity to work for such a great employer.
As the film unfolds, we are shown how terribly the workers are treated while forced to build this great mansion, forced to cook for the man and his visitors, who, as it turns out have close ties to Kremlin. The clergy, high administration officers, Putin's advisors, all meet once in a while in this village or a cottage close by to celebrate the well-sewn web around the Russian president. The web of power which is so bullet-proof and so well-guarded, as the tsar's palace...
The thing which is the most evil in Durakovo is how Morozov is basically brainwashing the village folk who work there by using religion and the "way Russia works" to make them believe they are all subject to divine rule and do not have any other choice than to conform with their current life. That there is no other way how they can live, apart from working for him and hope they will get to heaven.
What really got me were the interviews with the workers conducted separately. How they really believe the "imperialists" are trying to strip
And my question is – how many places like Durakovo (just FYI "durak" in Russian really means "fool") are there in today's
Not to loose this stream of thought let me jump straight away to another film, from another section, but a closely related topic:
"Dictatorships in the Spotlight" sequence
and its brilliant, sharp and funny documentary
depicting the latest manipulated presidential elections in
The documentary starts of in a lightly jovial mode and keeps the tone throughout its entire length, depicting the manipulative methods of the elections and the entire way how the country is governed under the iron fist of one man, who uses all possible methods of manipulation from controlling the media to actual use of the military force to keep his dictatorial regime intact.
Through a sarcastic tone of the narrative, the filmmaker depicts everything from the way how Lukashenko controls the message the media broadcast about him to the way how the demonstrations on the square where some 15,000 people participated on for several days was conveyed as a gathering of several tens of drunken anarchists.
From a remote village where people despite the grand poverty still express their heated support for the dictator saying "he's a poor guy, left alone to govern the entire state by himself, and nobody is helping him," to the speeches of other election candidates – if you can call them that – having their speech before the election committee and being "not thanked" for their speech when they dare to say anything bad about the current regime.
Of course, the best part which shocked me was the police who stood in the way of more protesters entering the square, searching them for food and beverages they were carrying to confiscate and the old babuschkas paid to yell at the demonstrators...
Moving right along to Sub-Carpatho Ukraine and a light documentary of the Czech filmmaker Tomáš Hodan, who created a wonderful portrait of the slow, yet rich life in one of the Ukraine's forgotten villages, depicting, both, the hard life yet, romanticism of a place where old values are kept and electricity is a luxury.
I won't go into much detail here, since the feelings the film depicts and the stories and conversations between the people are the main feature of this film creating a mozaic that either has to be captured on camera, lived, or read about in a book which would enable a thorough description.
However, one thought which I had after seeing the film and actually mentioned as one of the trends in such remote places is the young generation which prefers moving to bigger cities rather than stay and work on the land they would inherit.
So a logical question which rises from this fact is – what is going to happen to the land, when only the old generation will stay there? Is it going to be bought by rich western Europeans as weekend houses or simply for the land itself who will wait until its value rises to sell it again to whomever they feel like, exactly as it is happening with some land in the Český les natural reservation? And, will the Ukrainian government now preocuppied with other problems do anything to prevent its land from being dismantled and sold and left to rot?
For that, I fear, we'll have to wait a bit longer...
Meanwhile, let's have a look at, as one of my friends once called it, our "Czech Dictatorship":Don't disturb, We're governing
A documentary based on a book Vládneme, nerušit, by Erik Tabery, deputy editor in chief of the perhaps most respected Czech weekly called rightfully Respekt. The book and the documentary both depict the Opposition Agreement in 1998 between the two strongest governing parties in the Czech Republic – the Social Democrats (ČSSD) and the Civic Democrats (ODS) and the division of the power between them, which basically left no space for a democratic way of government.
The film is compiled of archive material of the statements and speeches of the politicians as well as interview with Erik Tabery, Miroslav Macek - and others.
For me the documentary felt like a breath of fresh air, stating things as they were, not hiding behind the typical Czech light humour, sarcasm and irony.
By uncovering major affairs of that time and even the strings which originited at that era and have consequences even up till today and by questioning and wondering over the fact that such an "agreement" could have really actually happened in a democratic country, the film is a great warning and casts light on the workings of the Czech politics even today.
Great examples could be:
- Miloš Zeman and Václav Klaus actually following the same goals in politics – which is to gain them as much power as possible and as low transparency as possible,
- the attempt of ODS and ČSSD to pass a law which would lower the number of seats for the smaller parties in the parliament and increase the number for the bigger parties,
- placing control of the secret police into the hands of just a couple of people,
- passing a law to limit the powers of the president to choose Constitutional Court judges so that the president would have to choose only from the candidats, preselected by the cabinet (luckily, Václav Havel prevented this law to pass due to its contraditiction with the Constitution),
- granting victory of state tenders to companies who financially supported either ČSSD or ODS,
etc. etc.
Despite the film lasts only about 50 minutes, I really appreciated the almost two-hour long discussion which followed afterwards.
... to be continued with documentaries from Africa, China, India, Iraq/US, and Israel
