Short Films by Asliuk, Strembitsky, Loznitsa, Pakalnina, Buraja

Falling Out of Time
Gene Siskel Film Center
Curators, Oona Mosna and Jeremy Rigsby
Thursday, April 3, 2008

"Once the home of state-sponsored social realism, the former Soviet Europe has given rise to a new breed of documentary featuring the observational ambiguities and formal rigor more familiar to experimental cinema."

The Mine, Victor Asliuk, Belarus (2004) 16 min

Wayfarers, Igor Strembitsky, Ukraine (2005), 10 min

Halt, Sergei Loznitsa, Russia (2000), 25 min

Papa Gena, Laila Pakalnina, Latvia (2001) 10 min

Mother, Oksana Buraja, Lithuania (2001) 10 min

Five short experimental, documentary films from the former Soviet Union were shown. None of the films had narration or extended dialogue; some had background music. Before the films were shown, the curators gave some background information about them. Though the union came to an end in 1991, seventeen years ago, directors from nations that were a part of it, were strongly influenced in the 1990s by the film schools and documentary film studios that had been formed in the 1920s in the Soviet Union. Each province or oblast in the former Russian Soviet Union had a film school and studio, as well as the centers of Russia, Leningrad and Moscow. Each of the Soviet republics also had its film schools and centers in their capitol cities.

"The Mine" was shot in color and follows a crew of miners to their work site. There is no narrative commentary, no dialogue and some background movie only towards the very end of the film. The sound of the film is strictly on the machinery. The camera shows the workers trudging down a tunnel to the elevator, which then follows them as the elevator takes them further underground. A sensation of claustrophobia, feeling confined, is likely to develop in the viewer as the camera pans the faces of the miners in the elevator. The elevator reaches its destination and the workers leave one confined space to enter yet into another such space--the system of tunnels. The camera follows a few of the individual miners as they split up in order to attend to their particular tasks.

There is an implicit commentary being made by the director: the life of a miner is grim and grimy and harsh. We get closeups of miners attentive at some task; they are stoic, reserved, suggesting not the laborer as hero--as the 1920s propaganda films suggested--but rather a detached and dutiful attention to the task at hand. A triumphant sounding classical music score begins at the end of the film as workers depart from the mine; this is clearly an ironic comment, a suggestion that departure from confined and dusty underworld is the one source of solace for the miners from their difficult work.

The "Wayfarers" also offers us a grim view of life, in this instance, life at a home for mentally ill men, but there are occasional cuts in this narrative focus to shots of women sitting alone, a child, and a woman with a child. All these shots are presumably references to the social world outside the nursing home, a world that its inhabitants have left behind (in childhood) or dream about (meeting a woman to share life with). The film opens with the nursing home's director making his morning rounds with a forced cheerfulness and sarcastic comment (Here is our hero) to a former veteran confined to his bed. In one scene an elderly man reads aloud a nostalgic love poem near a tv that is playing, but is not tuned to any station, but simply showing static. There is no need for commentary or narration for this poignant scene, which shows us an older man's loneliness and estrangement from the world. In another similar scene, as the men mingle and sit outside the building, one man is prompted to sing, and he obliges. In several shots, individuals are seated and face the camera, but none of them talk nor seem to be quite sure how to respond to being put on the spot or interviewed. The film ends with a woman singing a lullaby in the background. Again, an ironic comment on the subject of the film--the tragic separation and isolation of mentally ill men confined to a nursing home.

Halt by Sergei Loznitsa is a black and white series of images that focuses on people sleeping at train station, which is full of them. The camera lingers on one or two or several people. Usually the edges of the screen are slightly out of focus, and often the angle of the camera is from the floor. The distance of the camera from the sleepers is uniform throughout: they fill the screen. Each sleeper or sleepers seem to get a minute or two of time on which the camera lingers on them, and usually there is some subtle and slight movement to observe

Each individual has fallen asleep in a different position--seated, slumped, stretched out, curled up, and so on. The only sounds we hear are the people breathing, stirring slightly, the occasional train whistle and the train rumbling nearby. The absence of action, the repetition of poses with slight variations leaves the viewer free to begin to form his or her own reflections; in effect, I see this as an open ended occasion for the viewer to reflect on whatever topic is on his or her mind. In this regard, a parallel experience would be looking at and reflecting on an abstract painting. In this film the burden of finding and making sense of the film is placed almost completely on the viewer.

Papa Gena by Laila Pakalnina is a black and white, gritty film that contrasts mundane life in a flat, urban, industrial landscape with Figaro singing Mozart's opera The Magic Flute. There is a strong contrast between the lively music that people are listening to on headphones and the gray setting they inhabit. The music, Mozart, often brings the dead scene to life, and on occasion puts a smile on the listeners face, usually on older listeners. The children and young adults don't seem to take as much pleasure and joy in the music as the adults. The film is made up of a series of scenes in which the listeners to the music are standing still and waiting, it seems, for the music to begin. At that point they listen to it for a time, and then walk away off camera which doesn't follow them. From one perspective, listening to the music is an indicator of the interviewees mood--are they amenable, open to the joy of the music, or are they indifferent to it? Will it make a change in their mood? If not, why?

The last film shown "Mother" by Oksana Buraja is shot in color and ironically, we never do get to see the mother of the boy in the film. As the film opens, we see a boy staring at a tv, and then a room full of smoke and people sitting around a table drinking. Presumably, the boy's mother is at the head of the table. All we see is her her back facing the film as she sits at the table full of bottles and glasses offering guests more to drink. A nonstop party seems to be in session, and the only people not partaking are the boy, who is about age six, and his friend who appears later in the film. Most of the film follows the boy around; the adults don't seem to pay much attention to him, except when he plays with the stove and is asked to get some water for a drunk man (his father?). The man talks about the struggle for good and evil in the soul; clearly, he has lost his battle, and is in the grip of alcoholism.

The residents of this apartment speak in Russian, and they are part of the Russian minority in Lithuania; such a Russian minority remains in all the new nations that formed after the collapse of the Soviet Union. This particular group illustrates not only the prevalence of alcoholism among Russians, whether it is in former Soviet republics that have been independent nations, or in Russia itself, but a widespread health and social problem throughout Eastern Europe and in particular the former Soviet Union.

From the naive perspective of the child, his life is boring, and he lacks structure and direction which his parents and family are supposed to be providing him. From the viewers perspective, we can only cringe and wonder what will be the long term consequences of this parental neglect on his development.