Doubles standards et russophobie au menu du festival des documentaires de Biarritz
On spinning Russia-phobia
Voici un reportage d’humeur en anglais d’un membre de stop russophobie qui a suivi le festival FIPA du documentaire cette année à Biarritz. Il est regrettable que la motivation russophobe profonde recourre toujours au mêmes procédés et à la même thématique de l’amalgame de l’époque stalinienne et du Goulag à la Russie actuelle qui n’a pourtant rien à voir. Confusion des époques, superposition des images, commentaire tendancieux jusqu’au ridicule, comme le montre l’article, sont les plats qu’on nous sert en permanence sous couvert d’anti-communisme mais qui sont en fait qu’un défoulement de haine contre les Russes et la Russie. Quel dommage que les réalisateurs baltes ou polonais accuillis avec tant de complaisance sur la Cote basque cette année avec des films cpntre les camps de concentration staliniens se montrent bien timides pour dépeindre les camps de concentration et d’extermination nazi qui ont trouvé un accueil pour le moins ambigü souvent sur le territoire de leurs pays. Souhaitons que la Fipa en prenne conscience en cette année du 75ème anniversaire de la défaite du nazisme que nous devons pour une bonne part aux 27 millions de Russes et soviétiques sacrifiés.
The third week of January is an interesting time along the Basque Coast of France, and for a good reason: not the climate, as the humid Ocean winds of the Bay of Biscay blow gusts of humidity that make even mild weather chilly in beautiful Biarritz, but the FIPA.
The International Festival of Audiovisual Production, now focusing exclusively on documentaries, showcases the best world production of that specific genre.
In our day and age every person with eyes to see and brains to understand knows the importance of television in the business of shaping so-called “public opinion”. Within all television production, there is one kind that supposedly stands head and shoulders above the rest for its claim to depict reality as it is, no ifs, no buts, just facts, and that is the documentary. Thus when Russia-phobia showed its ugly face under the guise of a documentary, I felt honour-bound to unveil how it masquerades behind a set of real and often tragic stories.
I identified a few documentaries that seemed to contain a subliminal or sometimes outright direct Russia-phobic message. Before I take you into them, just a word on “the spin”, that tried and trusted technique finalized at directing the viewers to a well programmed reaction. In our case, the engine of the spin is “the voice over” the images, telling the story in such a way that it spins the sense of it into a both subliminal and direct feeling of at best pity and at worst despise for Russia and its history. In a nutshell: the voice over spins the story into a Russia-phobic message. And as we all have learnt the hard way these years, once Russia-phobia settles in as the default position in all things Russia-related, it is very hard to change the setting.
Sadly, the documentaries in question could have been a fine occasion for an international audience to try to understand Russia with an open mind and with the respect that country deserves. The “voice over” could have been different and the “spin” could have been absent, and it is by a clear choice that the former was not and the latter was present. Once again, Russia-phobia is a dangerous political choice, not a natural unavoidable condition of life, like, say, death… and taxes.
Now, let’s get down briefly to the nitty-gritty of the specific documentaries keeping in mind there is a market for this stuff. Evidently there are funds available to produce it and advertise it, eventually there will be those who buy it.
“Goulag, une histoire soviétique” (Gulag, a Soviet Story) is a French production, directed by Patrick Rotman consisting of three episodes on the history of the notorious labour-based prison system in the Soviet Union from 1917 to 1957. This documentary certainly deserves credit for not trying to hide that it is the visual mouthpiece of a Russia-based foreign sponsored NGO called Memorial, already in the crosshairs of the Russian government for being too close to foreign interests. And that says it all.
If it were not unfair, it could be grimly amusing to list the times where the spoken language over the images contradicts the very same images. For example listening to a voice over speaking about the rigid climatic conditions at Kolymo in the Russian Far East “where winter lasts 12 months, and the rest is summer” as the pictures on the screen show detainees working bare-chested under the summer Siberian sun… or the description of Solovki Islands as a place with the coldest climate in Russia… Well, maybe Solovki is a harsh neck of the woods if your reference is Paris or London, certainly not if the country Solovki is in, can offer you a vast choice of High Arctic locations.
Human suffering is bad enough, but spinning it against a country without taking into consideration the historical reality of that country at that time is unfair beyond repair. Thus a documentary that speaks of “20 million innocents sentenced as guilty” (20 millions d’innocents designés coupables) is not good enough, not just because the statement does not take into consideration the historical circumstances of a country, then as now, surrounded by hostile governments, but also because it never sheds light on the proportion of political prisoners and the hard-core criminals detained in those premises. How do they know all those 20 million were innocent? Were they all political prisoners? If so why does the documentary underscore the evil role played by gritty con men within the premises of the very gulag? Then, paraphrasing Maxim Gorki, why would a sovereign government not have the right to transform the prison system into a labour camp? Why would a country the size of Russia, in the dire straits of domestic underdevelopment and international hostility not have the right to put its convicts to work? Britain did it all along in Australia. More shame than pride about that historical episode in Old England, I presume, but it never did become a serious source of Anglophobia. Did it? Double standard, anybody?
Interestingly, the festival presented a documentary called “Pays Basque et Liberté, un long chemin vers la paix”. (Basque Country and Freedom, a long route to peace) Ironically, the documentary starts with these words of a French judge:
“A’ partir du moment où on n’a pas de vision historique de la situation on peut raconter n’importe quoi…” (Without a historical vision of the situation one can say just about anything) (Serge Portelli, of the Versailles Court of Appeal).
Indeed, and if as the saying goes “what’s good for the goose is good for the gander”, then I say what is good for the Basques is good for the Russians. As it should be.
Bare with me. “Immortal”, is a Latvian and Estonian production directed by Ksenia Okhapina focusing on “an old gulag, transformed into a city where children are raised to become perfect Russian citizens”. The documentary begins with the words: “After Stalin the gates (of the gulag) were open… the people stayed”…
If debate were a fair boxing fight and intellectual honesty were a human body, these words would be the dismal equivalent of a treasonous nasty blow below the belt. The sight of old photos of Stalin, and new photos of Putin subliminally suggesting continuity is sickening. Ditto, for the succession of images of the old gulag convicts taken to work at the time, and contemporary factory workers going to work on public transport today. Plus, that poignant image of a lone and lost Alsatian dog, yelping under the snowfall, a clear metaphor for an abandoned nation crying for help… or maybe looking for a new master-saviour?
In fact, the place in the Murmansk oblast where this documentary is mostly shot is not really a “city” but a Youth Army Cadet training centre. As in all such facilities all over the world, boys and girls play soldier, learn to handle guns and go through drills under strict discipline. When Israelis engage their youngsters in training for national defence, there is nothing wrong. When Russians do the same… out of the blue of these Baltic countries come a set of folks that suggest that it is the continuity of the dictatorial gulag mind. Why the double standard? It is probably superfluous to say that this “Immortal” titled infamy on screen also “benefitted” from the sources of that “international, historical, charitable and human-rights society” corresponding to the name of the NGO Memorial (see above).
Then comes my “favourite”: “Vie et destin du Livre Noir. La destruction des Juifs d’Urss”, (Life and Destiny of the Black Book, the destruction of Soviet Jews) a French production directed by Guillaume Ribot.
Now this is a timely and historically necessary documentary about a political marriage, certainly of convenience, probably also of conviction between Soviet communism and political Judaism (also known as Zionism). A marriage that as we all know ended in a bitter divorce after (not before!) the Soviet Union supported Israel in the war of 1948 that enabled the foundation of the Jewish State in Palestine. The tendentious voice over the images spins the story transforming the country that broke the back of the Wermacht and liberated Auschwitz into a vulgar anti-Semitic entity. The idea that the likes of Ilya Ehrenberg (“the only man that can explain the Soviet Union to foreigners”, dixit Stalin) and Victor Grossman (of Red Army frontline journalistic fame), could do two things at once and be both pro-Zionist and proud soviets, seems too much to fathom for these modern Black Book chroniclers. Nothing to add, except that I wonder what people like Vladimir Solovev or Jacov Kedmi would think. Maybe, it would be worthwhile asking them.
Last but not least, “Dulcis in fundo”, the male stripper’s story.
Now, this Polish production directed by Andrei Kutsila called “Strip and War” could have been a fine study case of intergenerational masculinity in that piece of land torn away from Mother Russia now called the “country” of Belarus. The bonding of a grand-father and a grand-son, the former, a retired Soviet Red Army officer and the latter an unemployed graduate of engineering who makes a living as a stripper, is an original angle to summarize how straight-male Russian family values can mediate between two polar opposite perceptions of the world, that of the old soviet commander of troops and that of the post-soviet young stripper.
Yet, even the stripper from Minsk felt compelled to put Moscow under a bad light. He says that stripping in Moscow is a threshold for drugs and prostitution. Fair enough. Seems obvious. But not in Minsk and Vilnius? What is stripping there? Just a line of business with a libertine bend, maybe?
In for a penny, in for a pound, I decided to sit through 2 hours 15 minutes of… (guess who’s) “State Funeral”, a Dutch and Lithuanian production directed by Sergei Loznitsa. Basically a collage of images from Soviet archives dating back to March 1953. With the usual little help from the NGO Memorial, that historical international and multicultural honourable encomium for the commander in chief of a victory in a war of extermination against his country, and the founder of a superpower that half the world looked to for inspiration is spun into a message summed up in these words: “a fear-induced collective delirium”.
Watching Mao Tse-dung bowing three times in front of the casket, followed by the hierarchy of the Orthodox Church, told a different story, one far more complex and interesting.
Listening to Malenkov’s speech at the funeral from the podium on the Red Square, it came across as a paean for peace, of a kind we never hear these days from our so-called “Western” leaders. Enough said.
Roberto Scarcia Amoretti R. S.A.
