The
invasion of Ukraine has led to war not just on the battlefield, but in the
areas of trade and culture as well. The troops rolled in. Global corporations
stopped doing business in Russia. At the same time, cultural bodies like the
Ukrainian Film Academy called for the international film community to boycott
Russian films.
اضافة اعلان
Just days after Vladimir Putin’s tanks
crossed the border, I received a request to sign a petition calling
on film festivals to ban films produced by Russia. It also demanded that
the International
Federation of Film Producers Associations expel Moscow International Film and
that producers and distributors stop working with or in Russia.
Reading
it, I could not help but cast my mind back to Danish-Palestinian director Mahdi
Fleifel’s short film, “I Signed the
Petition”.
In this film,
Fleifel reflects on his decision to sign a petition that called on British rock
supergroup Radiohead to cancel its July 2017 gig in Israel. Luminaries such as two-time Palme
d’Or winner Ken Loach had also signed.
A
few days later, Fleifel is in existential flux. He wonders if he has done the
right thing by signing. Did he do the right thing by going public with his
support? Does he want to get into talking politics? Will his signature make any
difference?
The
Ukraine petition has had interesting reactions from the film community.
Stockholm Film Festival announced it would not be selecting Russian films.
Other festivals put on special screenings of Ukrainian films in solidarity. The
Glasgow Film Festival pulled two Russian films, “No Looking Back”, a dark
comedy crime film directed by Kirill Sokolov, and the thriller “The Execution”,
directed by Lado Kvataniya.
There
was a social media backlash against Glasgow’s decision. People argued that the
withdrawal of the films suggested that the festival regarded these Russian
directors as agents of Putin, pushing Russia’s propaganda messages.
The
Glasgow Film Festival team felt the need to clarify the reasons for the
withdrawal. It was not because of the directors’ nationality, but because “both
films received state funding via the CF Cinema Fund, whose board of trustees
includes current ministers of the Russian government and the Russian Ministry
of Culture”.
The
Cannes Film Festival said Russian films submitted to the festival would be
judged on a case-by-case basis. Official Russian delegations would not be
welcome to attend, nor anyone linked to the Russian government. However, the
festival praised the courage of Russian “artists and film professionals who
have never ceased to fight against the contemporary regime, who cannot be
associated with these unbearable actions”.
Other
festivals such as Venice and San Sebastian have taken a similar approach to
Cannes. It highlights the problem with blanket bans. If everyone is excluded,
you may also curtail voices you want to support. It is not always easy to know
where to draw the line, and there are always exceptions that make a mockery of
a general rule.
Calls
to action can have unintended consequences. Sergei Loznitsa, the award-winning
Ukrainian filmmaker of “Donbass”, resigned his membership in the European Film
Academy because he felt that the EFA’s statement condemning Russia was not
strongly worded. The EFA responded by banning Russian films from competing at
this year’s awards.
Loznitsa
then argued against outright bans on Russian artists.
“We
must not judge people based on their passports,” he said. “We can judge them on
their acts.” For this stance, the director has now been expelled from the
Ukrainian Film Academy.
Individual voices of dissent also matter – and filmmakers often find ways to tell their stories in the most difficult of circumstances
Loznitsa’s
statement on passports is something I strongly believe in. But then, I also
hear the pleas of others in the film industry whose homes are under threat.
Andriy Khalpakhchi, director of the Kyiv-based Molodist International Film
Festival, argued: “The only way to change the fascist regime of Putin’s
Russia is complete isolation of Russian society, Russian culture and sports.”
Throw
in the messages from the people in the film industry who I know, whose families
are in danger, or the pain on the face of my cleaner, whose brother has decided
to join the Ukrainian army, and it makes me wonder if I should not just sign
the petition and be done with it. But will I then feel remorse, as Fleifel
did?
Looking
at the petition on a macro level highlights how influential art can be in
bringing about change. The petition calls into question our behavior and
individual actions that can exert pressure, even on one of the most powerful
governments in the world. So I am glad that the petition exists, even if I have
doubts about a blanket ban.
Individual
voices of dissent also matter – and filmmakers often find ways to
tell their stories in the most difficult of circumstances. One only has to look
at the plethora of Iranian filmmakers who have managed to express dissent
through their cinema. Some, like Jafar Panahi, continued to do so, even after
being arrested or banned from filmmaking. The films of Abbas Kiarostami, and
more recently Asghar Farhadi, provide a window into Iran and some of the
dissent and confusion there. These works are invaluable to increasing our
understanding of the country, especially as they are voices from the inside.
Of
course there should be action against films that are mere propaganda, but it
should not be at the cost of stopping those directors who criticize their
systems from being heard.
I
am not sure the petition that I was asked to sign makes this distinction clear
enough. Nonetheless, every morning when I turn on the news and see the war
going on, I am forced to ask myself: Is today the day that I sign that
petition?
The writer is a
film critic, author of the biography “Spike Lee: That’s My Story and I’m
Sticking to It”, and director of International Programming for the Red Sea
International Film Festival.
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