two prosecutors (w&d sergey loznitsa, w. georgy demidov)

Loznitsa’s film does everything one might expect of it, including the long, brooding takes. It’s interesting to review the narrative’s structure. Adapted from a novel by Demidov, the film is essentially four sequences. In the first the prosecutor, Kornev, played with a deadpan naivety by Alexander Kuznetsov, visits a prison where he interviews an elderly former tutor and prosecutor, who has been the victim of the Stalin’s regime’s abusive torture. The second brief sequence occurs when Kornev is in the train to Moscow, and falls asleep as a peasant relates a meeting with Lenin. The third sequence has Kornev heading for the office of the Soviet state’s head prosecutor, a man shrouded in bureaucratic menace. In the final sequence Kornev returns in the train accompanied by two ebullient characters who are not what they seem, even if this feels quietly predictable. There is a simplicity and straightforwardness to the storytelling which perhaps betrays an exaggerated straightforwardness towards the film’s material. If there is no doubt that Stalin was a monster, ultimately responsible for heinous crimes, there is nevertheless no attempt made to contextualise Kornev’s fateful journey. It emerges as a kind of fable of totalitarianism without in any way addressing its roots. The film has a clipped, efficient feel, where the only real note of humanity comes from two murderous agents of the state. 

how to win an information war (peter pomertantsev)

Arrived at Pomertantsev’s book about Sefton Delmer via reading Marias, who cites Delmer in his recondite spy novels. Pomertantsev talks through then way Delmer coordinated and was the creative urge behind the British propaganda campaign against the Nazis during WW2, mostly via the medium of radio. Delmer is a curious character, whose approach was amoral, Wellesian, instinctive, and possibly brilliant. The word ‘possibly’ is because the author seems so taken by his subject that it becomes hard to evaluate from the book how effective Delmer’s broadcasts were - at times, it’s hinted, they were even counter-productive. Pomertantsev connects Delmer’s work with the way in which information is manipulated in the 21st century. The upshot would appear to be that you have to fight fire with fire: the power of coordinated propaganda is so effective that the only way to fight back is by playing dirty, ignoring any arguments based on idealism. In a fucked-up world, this might be true. Then again, it might not. 

this is not propaganda - adventures in the war against reality (peter pomerantsev)

Pomerantsev’s book is an investigation into the world which shaped the world we live in. Even though it was published less than a decade ago, it already feels as though history is running away from those pre-pandemic times when the reality of what was about to confront us was something that people were warning about, rather than living through. Pomerantsev investigates on a global basis the evolution of the post-truth world, fuelled by social media and its bot farms, by individuals like Nix for whom ethics are an offshoot of capitalism, entirely beholden to the idea of profit. In the process of which are facilitated sense-deranging attacks on reality, allowing the wanton killing of women and children, the elderly and the innocent, to be reframed as actions taken in self-defence, and promoted as such to the point that anyone who questions this logic is in danger of being excommunicated. This is the world Pomerantsev saw coming, and now it has arrived. The dangerous edges of democracy, a system beholden to the manipulation of the masses, are laid bare. The author of the book outlines his personal journey from Soviet Ukraine to the UK. His family fled from a repressive totalitarian regime towards the hope of something called ‘the west’. But the west is not an ethical construction. It is a market driven society. And now the fusion of vast wealth which the technocrats of the internet have succeeded in generating and seek to preserve, with the autocratic ambitions of wealthy men and women driven by nothing more than personal ambition, threatens to decimate the planet with an uncontrollable ferocity. Anything that stands in the way of this behemoth will be levelled. Pomerantsev sees the writing on the wall and traces the way that this is a global epidemic. But there’s a sense that his concerns have been overtaken by the actuality of the present. 

the red cavalry and other stories (isaac babel, tr, david mcduff)

This collection of short stories is split into three. The first includes Babel’s early stories which appear autobiographical (but the excellent introduction by the translator, David Mcduff, assures us are not), telling tales of life in the Jewish quarter of Odessa in his youth. The second series deals, famously, with the Bolshevik war against the counter-revolutionary forces on its Western front. The third series returns to Odessa, telling tales of Jewish gangsters and other colourful characters. The first and last sections are clearly complementary and tie in to a Yiddish tradition that links to Bashevis Singer, among others, writers whose identity is constructed in large part by their Jewish roots. In the early stories, a progrom is described with a brutal intensity from a child’s perspective which we take to be the author’s, although as  Mcduff notes, it is in reality a reflection of the stories the Babel would have grown up with. The capacity of the writer to be on a bleeding front line between fiction and reality, war and peace, is evident again in the Red Cavalry series. The authenticity of the vision feels undeniable, the cruelty of this conflict where there are no obvious good guys. The struggle is desperate and existential, a supposedly philosophical conflict which in actuality boils down to men’s capacity for violence. Much of the conflict Babel describes takes place in what is modern day Ukraine and the echoes with today’s war are everywhere. This has been a land that has been fought over, on the hinge of East and West, for centuries, and that battle continues to be waged today, suggesting a more fundamental schism than whatever might be the ostensible reasons for war. Babel’s Jewish perspective, which places him both on the outside and the inside, allows him to view the war more dispassionately, and more honestly, in all its savagery, no matter the cause. 

outside (d. olha zhurba)

The Trieste Film Festival is dedicated in large part to Ukrainian filmmakers and stories this year. This makes sense. Trieste is on the Adriatic, right next to Slovenia and Croatia, a city that pivots between East and West. The war is geographically closer here, and it is a festival that posits itself, perhaps, as the westernmost point of east Europe.

I caught two films during my brief stay. Home Games is a fairly traditional documentary about a female Ukrainian footballer and her struggles to bring up her two younger siblings, the other side of the beautiful game.

Outside felt more unusual. Great docs sometimes emerge out of chance and persistence. Capturing the Friedman’s being one example. In this case, the director, Olha Zhurba, started filming the thirteen year old Roma, who had fled from his orphanage to join the Maidan protest camp, and was subsequently kicked out. Roma is a chirpy natural in front of the camera.  Over the years, Zhurba returns to catch up with him, finding him wherever he might be, sometimes in Kiev, sometimes in his rural hometown. Roma’s life has not run smoothly. He becomes an addict, and then gets into serious trouble in his hometown when he is accused of stealing. The film knits moments from Roma’s life together, skipping backwards and forwards in time, gradually building up a portrait of his tough life. It’s a slow burn, but carries a growing power as the film unfolds, a story from the edge of the European dream.

Both of these films were shot before the war. Underpinning the watching of them is the great uncertainty about what might have become of these characters now. It also brings into question the whole functioning of the documentary industry. I type this sitting in the lobby of the Savoie hotel, with industry people from across Europe networking over white wine. Ideas are being pitched and deals, perhaps, are being made. The tension between the art and the industry in the context of war is palpable. 

voroshilovgrad (zhadan, tr. reilly costigan-humes, isaac wheeler)

Voroshilovgrad is the old Soviet name for the city of Luhansk, which is currently a Ukrainian town under attack by Russian forces. Zhadan’s novel is set not long after the fall of the Soviet Union, when this town, set in a sea of wheat, was something of a Wild West land, bickered over by gangsters, locals and smugglers. The novel follows the journey of Herman who lives in Karkhiv. His brother owns a petrol station, which is a going business, on the outskirts of Luhansk. When his brother disappears to Amsterdam, for reasons which are never entirely clear, Herman returns to his childhood home to take charge. There he finds himself caught up in the shenanigans, going on an increasingly Pynchonesque journey into the netherworld of the border. This is a hallucinogenic space, where the dead walk amongst the living and the living scrap for territory. Once again we are on the farflung edges of European project. Herman has a pseudo job in Kharkiv, working for a nebulous political outfit. The sort of Macjob that so many young aimless people have in the Western world. He has no real need of a petrol station which is being targeted by gangsters, but he finds a cause there, and the cause traps him. At one stage on his journey, Herman finds himself in a travelling convoy of Tibetans and Mongolians, drifting across the Eurasian plain, in the general direction of the EU. This is where the continental plates collide. To the west, Europe, with its property. To the east, Asia, with its vast, uncharted peoples and spaces. Zhadan has Herman tread water in the lawless middle, but it is notable that this lawless middle is a place where finds himself feeling increasingly comfortable. A decade before The Orphanage, Voroshilovgrad offers a more hermetic, dreamy vision of the space that emerged after the fall of the Soviet Union, one where camaraderie and local feeling still held sway. At the same time it illustrates the porous nature of this frontier between West and East, (perhaps akin to the lands of Pamuk’s Snow), a place whose borders are intangible and, as a result, a recipe for trouble. 

the orphanage (serhiy zhadan, tr. reilly costigan-humes & isaac stackhouse wheeler)

Serhily Zhadan is a cult writer of novels and poetry from Kharkiv, a city I had never heard of a month ago, but one which has now joined the list of names that will forever be associated with the evils of war.

The Orphanage was published in 2017. It should be compulsory reading for two reasons. Firstly because, if you want an idea of what it is like to exist in Ukraine right now, this book gives you that. The Orphanage is set across three days of war. The down-at-heel Pasha is someone who ignores the news and doesn’t realise that conflict is about to break out once more in his Eastern corner of the Ukraine. When he finds out how bad things have got, he sets out to bring his nephew, Sasha, back from the orphanage he has been put in by his Pasha’s sister, who works as a stewardess on the long distance train to Kyiv. Pasha gets on the bus which doesn’t get far and then begins a journey into hell. The novel traces his movements across a battle scarred terrain. Death is always one step ahead or one step behind. He befriends people and then fears that the building they were sheltering in has been shelled after he’s left them. Life is transitory and endlessly, exhaustingly terrifying. Three days is a chaotic lifetime where nothing matters except getting through the next hour alive. In some ways the novel is reminiscent of Tarkovsky’s Stalker, except that the tone is more deadpan and mordant. There is no real sign of poetic redemption to be gleaned from the mess of the world that the conflict is creating.

The second reason has to do with the date of publication. The Orphanage is five years old. I remember watching Bartas’ Frost in 2017, a film which revealed the extent of the ongoing war in Eastern Ukraine. What is occurring now is not new or unforeseen. This conflict has been armed and dangerous for many years. Which suggests that the fact it has escalated should not come as such a surprise, and also make one question the statescraft or lack of it that has failed to build in measures to prevent the escalation. Looking back now, Zhadan’s novel was a clear warning of what was happening and what might go on to happen. It has become a prophetic work, one whose prophesy has been ignored to everyone’s cost. 

the ascent (voskhozhdenie) (w&d larisa shepitko, w. yuri klepikov)

There are so many films from the USSR or Russia set in the second world war that it’s not hard to think there’s nothing new to see. The Ascent, a film I had never heard of, proved this thesis wrong. It has to be one of the most remarkable, harrowing films I have ever seen. The director, Larisa Shepitko conjures an astonishing bleak, visceral film which drives itself forward over the course of two hours to a gut-wrenching conclusion. The first hour of the film sees two partisans, Sotnikov and Rybak struggle through a snowbound landscape in search of food to take back to their group. This is almost all filmed with hand-held camera, which tumbles through the snow with the two partisans, sinks up to its waist in the snow, genuinely makes us feel as though we are also there, fleeing for our lives. Cinema as immersive experience. Just as it seems they’ve succeeded in their mission, Sotnikov and Rybak run into a German patrol and Sotnikov is wounded. Rybak saves his life, but seeking to hide in a farmhouse, they are captured. This is a plot twist that it complete contrast to anything Hollywood might have come up with. What we assume to be a film about how the plucky heroes’ escape, turns into something completely the opposite. A tale of torture, betrayal, collateral damage, death. In short, a stunningly convincing and unsettling portrayal of the realities of having an enemy force invade your homeland and the price that is paid in both physical and spiritual terms. The Ascent is another example of the remarkable talent of Soviet cinema. The Soviets didn’t just lose the Cold War, they also lost the culture war, but in their cinema we can discern a sensibility in complete contrast to that of their enemies, a capacity to create cinema that is immersive, compelling, terrifying and beautiful. Perhaps Soviet cinema whispers to us that there was another course for humanity to take, another way to put the technology into practice. Or perhaps this is just a wilfully romantic notion on my part.

blood from the sky [piotr rawicz]

Piotr Rawicz committed suicide at the age of 60. Suicide is often seen as a desperate, tragic event, but to those who survived the Holocaust, such as Levi, Borowski  and more, perhaps it felt like a blessing to be able to have dominion over the moment of your death, unlike so many others. Blood From the Sky does not deal with Rawicz’s time in the camps. Rather it follows the misadventures of his alter-ego, Boris, as he seeks to escape the Nazi net as Jews were rounded up in his native Ukraine.

Boris is atypical. He’s blond. He doesn’t look Jewish and has few problems passing himself of as a native Ukrainian. He is a descendant of aristocratic stock and has reserves of cash. As the whole of his town is rounded up, he escapes with a girlfriend. It’s made clear that Boris is not a one-woman man, something that gives his relationship with the understandably jealous Naomi even more pathos.  Together they drift around the country, getting by, constantly moving on, before Boris is finally picked up and identified as a Jew through the absence of a foreskin.

The book is split into three parts. The first takes place in Boris’ hometown, where the horrors are a blend of Artaud and Kafka, the flip side of Litttel’s The Kindly Ones. There, we are also offered an insight into the world which is in the process of being annihilated, with flashbacks to Boris’ louche youth. It’s an unromantic account. Boris spares no-one as he describes how people were happy to deceive themselves as they scrambled for the right to survive, only later finding out the worthlessness of money or influence. The second section of the book deals with his peregrinations through the country, and the last is the account of his arrest.

One wonders why this work of Holocaust literature is not better known. There must be reasons why Rawicz’s novel has not been praised in the same way as the work of Levi, remaining obscure. It may well have something to do with the unsettling, semi-cynical tone of the book. At times Blood from the Sky truly reads like a horror movie. It has moments which are grotesque, blood-curdling. The nobility the reader might hope to find in order to lend a retrospectively life-affirming slant to events is more or less absent. Instead, the author delights in subverting his anti-hero, Boris, a subversion he himself joins in with. The irony that his whole fate depends on the presence or absence of a foreskin is not lost on him, with two of the chapters being titled “The Tool and the Art of the Comparison” and “The Tool and the Thwarting of Comparison”. There’s a grittiness to Rawicz’s prose which refutes sentimentality and refuses to let the reader settle. The author appears to be fully conscious of the degree to which his experiences have damaged him, and wants the reader to sense this through his complex prose and unyielding capacity to look the horror straight in the eye.

The further it recedes into history, the more the Holocaust emerges as a sign, or a symbol, one which can be appropriated at will be storytellers (see Scorsese, Benigni etc). All to often, this leads to a dissolution of the reality of what happened. (Something Littel’s novel was clearly seeking to counteract). Rawicz’s neglected novel shakes the reader out of their comfort zone. It feels as though it is almost written in spite of itself. At one point, early in the book, Boris is told by his community leader that he has a duty to act as a witness to events, and the book honours that call to duty. However, this is a writer who also seems conscious of the absurdity of trying to write about what he has witnessed. There is a paradox in that, in the act of documenting, the storyteller inevitably reduces events, converting them from the real to signs on a piece of paper, signs which can never do justice to that which has been lived. Hence, Rawicz both accepts and reacts against the role of witness. He guards his right to cynicism in order to retain his individuality in the face of the machine which sought to annihilate it. Perhaps the choice of a suicide, exercised by so many survivors, was a similar act of paradoxical self-affirmation.