Things Fall Apart

Decolonising the (Post-)Soviet Screen

Author

Heleen Gerritsen

Abstract

Taking as a starting point for reflection the late-Soviet Ukrainian feature film Rozpad (1990), which depicts the aftermath of perhaps the most significant environmental catastrophe of the 20th century and thus anticipates the protracted unravelling of the (post-)Soviet empire, this editorial introduction explores the themes of cultural and geopolitical disintegration. Heleen Gerritsen underscores the pressing necessity to reevaluate the cinematic legacy of the Soviet and post-Soviet eras within the context of global decolonisation processes. More urgent than ever, especially in light of Russia's full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022, is the imperative to explore alternative forms of knowledge about regions that have endured historical subjugation. This necessitates a redirection of researchers’ and film festival programmers’ focus, a nuanced revision of (film) history, and the adoption of a new language in film studies and in the humanities in general. This editorial describes how, in the context of the symposium "Decolonizing the (Post)Soviet Screen" at the Central and Eastern European film festival goEast 2023, the idea for a publication project in collaboration with Apparatus was born. It provides a brief overview of the included articles and texts and gives a glimpse into the subsequent issue. The editorial is accompanied by previously unpublished archival photographs from the private collection of the cinematographer of the film Rozpad, Vasyl’ Trushkovs’kyi, which he took as preparation for the shootings in 1988-1989.

Keywords

Mikhailo Belikov, Vasyl’ Trushkovs’kyi, Ukraine, Central Asia, CIS, post-Soviet space, Chornobyl’, COVID, goEast Film Festival, decolonisation activism, war, boycott, disintegration, film market, film distribution.

Editorial

Rozpad / Decay (Mikhailo Belikov, 1990, Soviet Union, United States) was the title of one of several Perestroika-era films goEast – Festival of Central and Eastern European Film screened in 2020, during a small window in summer when COVID-19 measures were temporarily lifted, and the German authorities allowed us to present the entire film programme accompanying the symposium “Film Heritage in Transition. Central and Eastern Europe 1985-1999” at Frankfurt am Main’s Film Museum.¹ The programme, curated by Prof. Schamma Shahadat and Dr. Margarete Wach, focused on the period of transition in Central and Eastern Europe during which film production, cultural politics, archives, and infrastructure, as well as individuals and societies at large, went through tremendous economic, political, cultural, and technological shifts.

The word 'rozpad' translates from Ukrainian as 'decay' (in the scientific, physical, and biological sense of the word) or 'collapse'. Indeed, Belikov’s film deals with the Chornobyl´ disaster – the first feature fiction film to critically and directly treat the issues (neglect, corruption, and societal collapse) leading up to one of the worst nuclear catastrophes ever. (Many scenes from the film were later used as inspiration (or indeed copied) by the creators of the HBO series Chernobyl (Craig Mazin, Johan Renck, USA, 2019) which – unlike Rozpad – gained millions of viewers worldwide). With some financial support from the goEast film festival, the National Oleksandr Dovzhenko Film Centre digitised the film and provided a DCP for our symposium screening. Hopefully, in the future, the film will be distributed more widely.

After February 24, 2022, and the start of the full-scale Russian invasion of Ukraine, I have thought about this important film often. The societal collapse and decay of the 'wild' 1990s are a recurring topic in current post-Soviet cinema as well, with films like La Palisiada (Philip Sotnychenko, 2023, Ukraine), or the films of Kazakh filmmaker Adilkhan Yerzhanov. This can partly be explained by the fact that for the current generation of filmmakers, the 1990s were the years of their childhood and coming-of-age that they now look back on from their adult years. But the 1990s and the break-up of the Soviet Union was also the start of a complicated period of transformation, which as the war in Ukraine makes painfully clear, has not yet concluded.

The 2023 goEast symposium, which – almost inevitably – received the title “Decolonizing the (Post-)Soviet Screen” felt like the continuation of the 2020 event, dedicated to “Film Heritage in Transition”. The symposium is an annual interdisciplinary event that does not aspire to be purely academic, thus providing a unique environment where theory and practice can meet and put each other to the test. It is also a safe space for the exchange of ideas in very chaotic times which, on the international film festival circuit, have been dominated by the call to boycott Russian cinema. Over the course of four days in April 2023, scholars, filmmakers and cinephiles from various countries gathered in Wiesbaden, Germany, to discuss a wide array of related topics and watch an accompanying film program curated by Barbara Wurm and myself.

In the aftermath of February 24, 2022, the feeling of “things falling apart” became acute again. Not only the destruction of the war itself, but economic sanctions, a breakdown of infrastructure, international relations and communications all throughout the post-Soviet territory heavily shook the landscape and isolated the Russian Federation. Ukrainian film production came to a halt, as the country was being attacked by Russian troops, and Ukrainian filmmakers joined the army or fled abroad. With the help of international solidarity networks and grants, some Ukrainian films in post-production could be finished abroad, and the war continues to be documented by filmmakers who often risk losing their lives in the process. But the future of the Ukrainian film industry overall is unclear and it is indeed uncertain how the film industries in the post-Soviet region as a whole will develop in the future.

The Russian Federation continues to produce films, mostly for its internal market. A few months after the start of the full-scale Russian invasion, a film adaptation of the popular Soviet cartoon Cheburashka hit the screens and became a box-office success to the extent that the producers and the distribution company Central Partnership are planning a sequel to come out in 2026.² In the meantime, Russian businesses are under sanctions and banned from the international film markets in Cannes and Berlin, although they continue to operate in other territories. For example, during the European Film Market (EFM) in 2023, Central Partnership notoriously rented a suite in the Ritz Carlton hotel next to the official Berlinale market venues and sent out its lineup to EFM participants, thus giving the impression they were officially accredited market visitors doing business as usual. Indeed, film rights for all CIS-states (including Ukraine and Central Asia) are still often sold to Russian distribution companies as a single package, making Hollywood titles available in dubbed Russian versions for several countries at once, and thus (legally) unavailable in Ukraine, since the licence trade between Russian and Ukrainian companies has – understandably – come to a complete hold. This issue was addressed by Ukrainian film professionals during various film industry panels over the course of 2022–2023 and discussed during the panels at the 2023 goEast Symposium as well.

The Baltic states have gone in a completely different direction. Relatively soon after their independence, they managed to set up infrastructure, provide state funding, and ensure that Baltic filmmakers have access to European Union funds and education, leading to a more Westernised film production culture. Central Asian states still rely on Soviet-era studios, like O'zbek Film, Kazakhfilm and Tajikfilm, but grassroots filmmaking initiatives develop alongside of it – usually without state funding, but with a large amount of freedom and international exchange. While state studios all over the territory continue their output of (mostly patriotic) films, and the S. A. Gerasimov All-Russian University of Cinematography VGIK even opened a franchise branch in Tashkent, led by Moscow-trained Uzbek director Yusup Razykov,³ parallel initiatives like the DAVRA collective around Saodat Ismailova were invited to Documenta 15 and put on the (Western) map with works that alternate between cinema and video art and almost always touch on political and social issues.⁴

One development that might have been expected to come to a halt with the full-scale Russian invasion of Ukraine is the so-called 'cinema from the regions' in the Russian Federation. Aleksandr Sokurov’s film school for filmmakers from the Caucasus region encouraged young filmmakers to shoot films in their native, non-Russian languages. Films like Tesnota / Closeness (Kantemir Balagov, 2017, Russian Federation) and Razzhimaia kulaki / Unclenching the Fists (Kira Kovalenko, 2021, Russian Federation) made it to the Cannes Film Festival and enjoyed considerable success on the international festival circuit. In the Sakha republic, an entire industry has developed: first with low-budget genre films for local audiences, culminating in art-house films that travelled the global festival circuit and the first historical feature film production from the Russian Federation to tackle the topic of historical colonisation in Siberia: Nuuccha (Vladimir Munkuev, 2021, Russian Federation). Alas, the distribution permit of Nuuccha was revoked after February 2022, making theatrical distribution of the film in the Russian Federation impossible. On the other hand, the Ministry of Culture of the Russian Federation continues to fund films in the Sakha language and the Fund of Presidential Grants supports film festivals in the Far East and Krasnoiarsk Region. It goes without saying that these events and the newest films do not choose a decolonial approach, but rather present a version where all of Russia’s autonomous ethnic republics contribute to the “Special Military Operation” and to the Russian Federation’s well-being as a whole. In November 2023, an “All-Russian Exhibition” opened at the VDNKh exhibition park. The Soviet-era pavilions once again display the “Achievements of the National Economy”, where each region sends its most exceptional representatives to celebrate the diversity of the Russian Federation.⁵ The aims of this endeavour are most likely not just propagandistic but also practical: to reinforce the internal economy now that many foreign markets are closed for Russian business because of sanctions. However, I do not doubt for one second that another goal of the event is to neutralise the threat of decolonisation activism and calls for independence among ethnic autonomous republics. After February 24, 2022, a significant part of the anti-war activist efforts has come from Indigenous movements and representatives of minorities on the territory of the Russian Federation. Grassroots movements like the Free Buryatia Foundation, the Free Tuva Movement, Tatarstan and Asians of Russia, started online, much like the Black Lives Matter movement, by sharing experiences of racism and systematic discrimination in the Russian Federation. They pointed out that a disproportionately large part of mobilised men sent to the fronts in Ukraine are not ethnic Russians. In her article “Putin’s War and the Dangers of Russian Disintegration”, Marlene Laruelle (2022) describes it as follows:

Russia’s ethnic mapping is complex: The country’s 21 autonomous ethnic republics do not make for a unified whole. In some regions, ethnic Russians dominate (sometimes overwhelmingly; for example, they make up two-thirds of the population in the Siberian republic of Buryatia on Lake Baikal) while in others they are scarce (around three percent in Dagestan, in Russia’s south). But with few exceptions – such as in industrialized Tatarstan – they all not only face the economic challenges that bedevil Russia’s remote provinces but also harbor cultural grievances. There is, for example, growing frustration in these linguistically diverse regions about the dominance of the Russian language. Local activists have called for history textbooks to stop celebrating their nations’ supposed peaceful integration into the Russian Empire. In the Arctic region, Indigenous leaders have clamored for a voice in how extractive firms, such as oil companies, exploit what was once their land.

Parallel to this development, the decolonial lens has become a more popular framework than ever before, among film academics and a young generation of filmmakers alike, for looking at the so-called post-Soviet region. Aside from successful examples like Sakhafilm, Indigenous cinema comparable to „Fourth Cinema“ in Barry Barclay’s definition (Smith 2020: 489), is rare in the post-Soviet space. The works of Nenets filmmaker Anastasia Lapsui should be mentioned here, even though she was not featured in our symposium. Since 1994 Lapsui has been making films from an Indigenous point of view. Topics include the forceful integration of nomadic peoples into the Soviet school system through boarding schools, forced assimilation, loss of land and autonomy, the colonial ties between Russia, Finland, and Alaska, as well as Indigenous child trauma and oral traditions of the Nenets peoples of the Yamal peninsula. In 1993, Lapsui migrated to Finland to live and work with her partner Markku Lehmuskallio, who is the cinematographer and co-director of most of her works. Her films were never financed by Russia, and thus often flew under the radar of festivals like goEast. Doc Lisboa organised a full retrospective of their works in 2023, curated by Boris Nelepo. Scholars like Caroline Damiens and Kathleen Osgood have written extensively about her work.

Despite its new-found popularity, it is still not very common to look at the post-Soviet space through the decolonial lens. Cinema, which played such a pivotal role in Soviet ideology and politics, focuses on the topic, thereby allowing us to look for orientalisms and ideology on screen, as well as reassess the film history of the republics and 'regions', beyond the dominating Russian-Soviet film legacy. To Wiesbaden we also invited speakers like Nancy Condee, representing Slavic and history departments of major Western universities, to reassess our own field of study.⁶ Indeed, both the coloniality of knowledge and the Russian bias in the curricula of institutions dealing with post-Soviet subjects were the topics often addressed. Many symposium participants came from the post-Soviet space. Apart from the scholars, active filmmakers and cultural managers contributed as well.

Providing a platform for “Fourth Cinema” and alternative means of production apart from state-financed films and classical auteur films, like collectives and amateur-like formats, was one of the goals of the 2023 symposium and will remain important for goEast in the future. For our festival, this is a relatively new ground. Circumventing the attribution of artworks to a national state when selecting a film programme and acknowledging minority languages and diversity, requires new skill sets and networks among curators and programmers. The next challenge is how to communicate this to a general Western audience? We are all still learning…

By analysing the transformation process, and looking at it with tools brought to us by decolonisation movements and theories that originated in the Global South and are currently in use in academia worldwide, the participants attempted to see the bigger picture of a complex process, in which, while indeed “things fall apart”, new movements and film languages are developing. The complexity of this process can perhaps be best understood by collecting case studies, examples, and different points of view: looking at and analysing specific films, the history and effect of film education in a specific country during a specific time, or by collecting very personal experiences of single filmmakers. Limited by the time slot during goEast Film Festival, we decided to expand the programme of the symposium in Wiesbaden with a publication in collaboration with Apparatus. After a rather successful call for papers, we started the editorial process and are extremely happy to present the first volume of highly diverse contributions which – in accordance with the motto of decolonising knowledge – consists both of traditional peer-reviewed articles and essays, op-eds, and artistic research. Issue #17 will contain contributions from and concerning Central Asia, the Baltic States, as well as the Caucasus region. Issue #18 is planned for January/February 2024. Both the symposium and the two editions of Apparatus dedicated to the decolonisation of cinema in the post-Soviet space would have been impossible without the support of Lukas M. Dominik and Maxim Tuula. The editor further wishes to thank Dr. Natascha Drubek, Prof. Denise Youngblood, and Irina Schulzki of Apparatus for their kind cooperation and contributions, as well as the anonymous reviewers whose expertise has proven to be invaluable in preparing these two special issues. Both the goEast Symposium and part of this publication have been funded by Kulturfonds Frankfurt RheinMain.

Heleen Gerritsen
Director of goEast Film Festival
Gerritsen@dff.film
Tashkent-Wiesbaden, November 2023

Bio

Heleen Gerritsen (The Netherlands, 1978) studied Slavonic Languages, Eastern European Studies and Economics in Amsterdam and St. Petersburg, Russia. She moved to Germany in 2003 where she completed a course in film production and started freelancing as a producer for various companies and broadcasters like ARTE, ZDF, VPRO and SWR, mostly with a focus on Central and Eastern Europe. In 2009, she produced her first feature length documentary. From 2014 to 2016 she was festival director of the European Documentary Film Festival dokumentART in Neubrandenburg. Since October 2017 Heleen is at the helm of goEast – Festival of Central and Eastern European Film in Wiesbaden, Germany, which is organised by DFF – Deutsches Filminstitut & Filmmuseum. goEast focuses on cinema from the post-socialist space. Apart from contemporary programs and competitions, the festival features an interdisciplinary symposium as well as several historical programs each year. She is a guest lecturer at Goethe University Frankfurt, Ruhr University Bochum and Albert Ludwigs University Freiburg, and frequently invited as jury member for film festivals worldwide, among them IDFA (International Documentary Film Festival Amsterdam), International Documentary Film Festival Jihlava, Cinéast Luxemburg, Al Este Peru, Dok Fest Munich, as well as for funding and film institutions like HessenFilm and Medienstiftung NRW. Heleen is a member of the European Film Academy and a founding member of the Documentary Association of Europe.

Bibliography

Laruelle, Marlene. 2022. “Putin’s War and the Dangers of Russian Disintegration”. Foreign Affairs. December 9.

https://www.foreignaffairs.com/russian-federation/putins-war-and-dangers-russian-disintegration

Smith, Jo. 2020. “Indigenous insistence on film”. In: Routledge Handbook of Critical Indigenous Studies, edited by Brendan Hokowhitu et al. London. https://www.routledgehandbooks.com/doi/10.4324/9780429440229-42

Filmography

Balagov, Kantemir. 2017. Tesnota / Closeness. Primer intonatsii, Lenfilm.

Belikov, Mikhailo [Mikhaik]. 1990. Rozpad / Decay. Dovzhenko Studios, Lavra Studio

D’iachenko, Dmitrii. 2022. Cheburashka. Yellow, Black and White, START Studio, Soyuzmultfilm, Russia-1, CTC Media, Cinema Fund

Kovalenko, Kira. 2021. Razzhimaiia kulaki / Unclenching the Fists. Non-Stop Productions

Munkuev, Vladimir. 2021. Nuuccha.

Renck, Johan. 2019. Chernobyl. HBO, Sky UK, Sister Pictures, The Mighty Mint, Word Games.

Sotnychenko, Philip. 2023. La Palisiada. VIATEL, Contemporary Ukrainian Cinema “CUC”.

Suggested Citation

Gerritsen, Heleen. 2023. Editorial: “Things Fall Apart: Decolonising the (Post-)Soviet Screen”. Decolonising the (Post-)Soviet Screen I (ed. by Heleen Gerritsen). Special issue of Apparatus. Film, Media and Digital Cultures in Central and Eastern Europe 17. DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.17892/app.2023.00017.359.

URL: http://www.apparatusjournal.net/

Copyright: The text of this article has been published under https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ This license does not apply to the media referenced in the article, which are subject to the individual rights owner's terms.