The Chopin Theatre, 1543 W. Division, Chicago, has been hosting Post Revolution Blues: the Polish-Ukrainian Film Festival, the last two evenings. The film on the first evening was "Acts of Imagination" made by a Canadian director, Carolyn Combs, and script writer, Michael Springate, neither of whom are of Slavic descent. The film focuses on the difficulties faced by two young immigrants from Ukraine, a brother, who is eager to assimilate and his sister who is haunted by the tragic past of her parents and grandparents, victims of a famine. While the brother has taken a natural step toward assimilation, meeting a Korean woman he falls in love with and plans to marry her, his sister meets a man from Pakistan, but she doesn't feel ready to become intimate with him. But both seem to live very isolated lives, separated from any immigrant community and the larger community as well.To me the film felt claustrophobic in its relentless focus on the inner conflicts faced by its subjects, and it reminded me of a stage play in its reliance on dialog. Some of the exchanges would certainly be much more forceful and moving in a live performance by actors on stage.
The cinematic element offers some rays of light in its engaging and long lasting closeups and occasional shots of the dark, looming horizons. The lighting in most of the film is dark and scant on color, perhaps capturing Vancouver during a rainy season, but also the meager and straightened circumstances of its characters. There is a strong sense limited mobility and entrapment in the film that reflects the situation and psyche of its vulnerable immigrant subjects, who are . For example, the film begins with a close up of the sister peeling and cutting an orange. It's she who is concentrating on this simple act, as if using it to anchor herself in a world in which she feels adrift and uncertain of herself and troubled by the past. But in the film there are also elusive symbols of transcendence, like an icon, which may serve as a source of rent payment for the brother and sister who have fallen behind in its payment.
This was for me a difficult film to watch. I appreciated the carefully done closeups, the scenic shots, the dialogs, but I felt as if I was locked up in a small place with these characters for too long in their very circumscribed world. After the film an informative post-film discussion took place with the director and screenwriter. We learned from the screenwriter, for example, that mixed ethnic marriages between immigrants are very common.
The second evening there were three films, a long documentary and two short films. The first film was again a film made about Ukraine by a non-Ukrainian, a Spaniard, the director Carlos Rodriguez. "The Unnamed Zone" is a film made about the daily lives of the people living just outside the contaminated zone of Chernobyl. Though they live in a purportedly safe zone, the children from the area are reported to have more illnesses and sickness, and one who is filmed takes medication for headaches. We meet three families and the children talk most of the time, but their parents are also given some opportunity to speak. The film avoids presenting scientific and medical data about the nuclear disaster, and its consequences; instead, the focus is on the daily lives of the people who live in the shadow of this still contaminated and dangerous area. It was a well made and engaging documentary.
In the discussion after the film, we learned that the director took an interest in the film, because every summer children from around the Chernobyl area are sent away for weeks or months to European countries in order to live in an area far from the scene of the disaster. The director curious about the appearance of Ukrainian children in Spain took an interest in them that led to making the film.
The next film was a documentary made about a homeless girl about age 12 named Liza. We follow her around the city and in the reform school where she lives. She smokes and smarts off and swears and violates personal boundaries of others with impunity. She has soaked up much too cynicism at too young an age. The film speaks for itself about the effects that homelessness has on damaging the spirit of a child. In this documentary, as in the first one, statistics and an overview of the problem of homeless children was not given. In the discussion after the film we learned that it is serious problem in Ukraine. Often the children run away from an abusive home, or from homes where grandparent(s) become the guardians, since the parents are compelled to leave the country in search of work abroad for months to years.
The last film in the evening was a short film, A Man Thing, also devoted to a children, in this instance child abuse. The director, Slawomir Fabicki, was at the festival and at the discussions. I found this film to be the most moving and riveting of any I had seen up to that point. It was shot in black and white, and its focus was on a boy at soccer practice at school. The coach tries to toughen up his team of boys by talking tough to them, but this really proves to be not the abuse the boy is suffering from. Instead, it's at home he suffers from his father's physical beatings for misbehaving at school. I won't say more about the plot of the film, for it may take away some of its beauty and charm.
In the discussion afterwards, the director, Fabicki, stated that in his film he focuses on a social issue, like the problem of child abuse, and his purpose in film is to provoke emotions by leading the audience to identify and sympathize with its characters.
The final evening featured two more films. First, a short documentary, again about the problem of homeless children in Ukraine, "There was a woman who lived in shoe," but this time about a family in Western Ukraine who have adopted five young children, though they have two sons, who are young adults in their late teens and attending college. I found this film quite moving. The woman in the film shows an incredible reservoir of love and compassion that she feels compelled to share for her adopted children.
The evening ended with a feature length film, "The Retrieval" by Fabicki. It is a tale of on level of a Polish economy in upheaval and for many young people one that leaves them with few hopes for the future. One such young man weary of work at a cement factory where his friend dies and work at a hog farm of his family, drifts into the criminal underworld, working there as an enforcer, who collects money on loans and threatens and beats those who can't or don't pay up. On another level this is a film that details the process of desensitization to brutality and violence, that is, overcoming a natural human unease about evil. That process is especially well documented in the film. Watching this film, I felt as if it echoed the festival's first film: again, the viewer is led to follow and witness the difficult plight of isolated and young individuals.This film was even more difficult than the festival's first film: we, who know better, are compelled to follow the descent of a good young man into darkness. There are recurrent scenes of brutality and violence in the film, and ironically, what one would hope would possibly lead this young man away from this path--a woman he loves, a Ukrainian woman--ironically only provokes him to choose this path. For he believes that he will impress his woman by making money.
I can't but help feeling the viewer felt emotionally crushed and beaten up, much as the protagonist of the film is at its end. While the film is technically brilliant, its emotionally grim and tragic in tone. I can't help but feel that the director perhaps wanted to impress on the viewer what a dead-end the new economic situation has become for some young people in Poland.
For a link to a film site created by Yuri Shevchuk, one of the moderators in the film festival discussion and founder of the Ukrainian film club at Columbia University see http://www.columbia.edu/cu/ufc/
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More information about the films, which I've cut and pasted here:
| Post Revolution Blues: Polish Ukrainian Film Festival |
| Friday, August 24th 7p Reception 8p "Acts of Imagination" by Carolyn Combs and Michael Springate, 2006 930p Discussion - "Global Identity" with Zbigniew Banas, Film Critic; Carolyn Combs, Canadian Director; Slawomir Fabicki, Oscar ® Nominated Director; Alton Miller, Columbia College Chicago and Yuri Shevchuk, Columbia University. Saturday, August 25th 730p "The Unnamed Zone" by Carlos Rodriguez, 2006 9p "Liza" by Taras Tomenko, 2006 The award winning filmmaker Tomenko follows a homeless teenage girl to understand the personal and societal reasons for the rise in numbers of Ukraine's unwanted children. Ukrainian, Russian, and Surzhyk (hybrid of Russian and Ukrainian) with subtitles. 930p "A Man Thing" by Slawomir Fabicki, 2001 10p Discussion - "Social Activism through Filmmaking" with Zbigniew Banas, Film Critic; Carolyn Combs, Canadian Director; Adam Ensalaco, Greenpeace; Slawomir Fabicki, Oscar ® Nominated Director; Yuri Shevchuk, Columbia University; and Stephen Steim, Human Rights Watch. 1030p Reception Sunday, August 26th 4p "Retrieval" by Slawomir Fabicki, 2005 6p "There Was A Woman Who Lived In A Shoe" by Olena Fetysova , 2005 Documentaries about homeless children on the streets of Ukrainian cities are a common sight in countries in transition. This film is about a couple who offer their own solution to this problem. They take in homeless children into their own family and create a home for them, a private crisis center for orphans. Original Ukrainian with subtitles. 630p Discussion - "Family Redefined" with Zbigniew Banas, Film Critic; Slawomir Fabicki, Oscar ® Nominated Director and Yuri Shevchuk, Columbia University 7p Reception |
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