The revolution will be dramatised

8 Aug 2017 | Artistic Freedom, Magazine, News and features, Russia, Volume 46.02 Summer 2017

[vc_row][vc_column][vc_custom_heading text=”Influential Soviet director Sergei Eisenstein is often portrayed as the godfather of propaganda in film. David Aaronovitch argues in the summer 2017 issue of Index on Censorship magazine that historical drama can also be manipulative when it ignores details of the past”][vc_row_inner][vc_column_inner][vc_column_text]

A still from Sergei Eisenstein’s 1925 film, Battleship Potemkin, portraying a massacre that never happened. Credit: Wikimedia

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My friend, a writer, reminded me of the English romantic poet John Keats’s axiom that “we hate poetry that has a palpable design upon us”. You could say, though, that Lenin and Mussolini – at least when it came to the poetry of film – knew differently. “Of all the arts, for us,” said Lenin, “the cinema is the most important”. “For us” meaning, of course, for the ruling Bolsheviks in the aftermath of the October 1917 revolution. When the Italian dictator Mussolini’s new super studios were opened in 1936 a sign was erected over the gate reading “Il cinema è l’arma più forte”, “cinema is the strongest weapon”.

It was George Orwell, not a dictator (though they doubtless would smilingly have agreed with him) who wrote that, “he who controls the past controls the future. He who controls the present controls the past.” It is pretty obvious that the way the powerful medium of film depicts the “then” has important implications for what people can be brought to believe about the “now”.

I was brought up partly on films made in the Soviet Union and saw some of the most celebrated early movies when I was young. The director Sergei Eisenstein was the most famous name and before I was 12 I’d seen almost all his films, from the silent Strike made in 1924 to the extraordinarily ambivalent and terrifying two-part classic Ivan the Terrible. Every single one of them can be said to have had some kind of agenda that dovetailed – sometimes perfectly, sometimes awkwardly – with that of the Soviet state.

[/vc_column_text][vc_row_inner][vc_column_inner width=”1/4″][vc_icon icon_fontawesome=”fa fa-quote-left” color=”custom” align=”right” custom_color=”#dd3333″][/vc_column_inner][vc_column_inner width=”3/4″][vc_custom_heading text=”The massacre on the Odessa steps (once seen, never forgotten) from the movie Potemkin didn’t actually happen” google_fonts=”font_family:Libre%20Baskerville%3Aregular%2Citalic%2C700|font_style:400%20italic%3A400%3Aitalic”][/vc_column_inner][/vc_row_inner][vc_column_text]

The two that were most obviously about Bolshevism and Russia were The Battleship Potemkin, dealing with events in the city of Odessa in 1905, and October, an account of the “ten days that shook the world” – the Bolshevik seizure of power – in Petrograd (St Petersburg) in 1917.

Both deploy Eisenstein’s famous techniques of intercutting, juxtaposition and montage to create mood and drama. Sometimes cutaways of objects or expressions are inserted to refer obliquely to what the viewer is supposed to think of the person or the moment being depicted.

And in both films the actual history is bent for the purposes of the filmmaker. The massacre on the Odessa steps (once seen, never forgotten) from the movie Potemkin didn’t actually happen. The film version of the storming of the Winter Palace in October involved many more actors than the actual event itself. And October was criticised in Keatsian terms by no less a luminary than Lenin’s widow, Nadezhda Konstantinovna Krupskaya.

The full article by David Aaronovitch is available with a print or online subscription.

[/vc_column_text][/vc_column][/vc_row][vc_row][vc_column][vc_custom_heading text=”Film and the Soviet state”][vc_column_text]

Sidebar by Margaret Flynn Sapia

[/vc_column_text][vc_video link=”https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3UQMg3saU4Q&t=1s” title=”Strike (1925)”][vc_column_text]The Soviet version of Russian history had two goals: to legitimise the rise and rule of the current government, and to instil its values into future generations. Strike, the first film directed by Sergei Eisenstein, undoubtedly does both. The film, set before the revolution, tells the story of a group of factory workers as they rise up against their abusive management. It begins with a quote by Lenin – “The strength of the working class is organisation” – and ends with a violent strike cross cut with the slaughter of animals. From the first frame to the last, the message is clear.[/vc_column_text][vc_video link=”https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JcJkHCihTmE” title=”Ivan the Terrible (1944)”][vc_column_text]It is fitting that Joseph Stalin regarded Tsar Ivan IV as his role model, given that the two men men are renowned as two of Russia’s cruelest and most feared leaders. Directed by Eisenstein and commissioned by Stalin himself, Ivan the Terrible takes a stab at telling Ivan’s story in a way that flatters the Stalin regime. The plot portrays the boyars, the highest of bourgeois aristocracy, as internal enemies seeking to undermine the singular strength of Ivan’s leadership, a less-than-subtle parallel for the one-party Soviet state of the 1940’s.[/vc_column_text][vc_video link=”https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kS5kzTbNKjs” title=”Battleship Potemkin (1925)”][vc_column_text]Like a dozen other Soviet films, The Battleship Potemkin depicts the horrors of the tsarist regime and a subsequent popular revolt. It dramatises the true story of a 1905 mutiny by the crew on a Russian battleship, but its most famous and enduring scene, the massacre on the Odessa steps, was entirely invented. However, unlike many of its comrades, this movie was internationally celebrated for its technical excellence, and was ranked as the 11th best film of all time in a 2017 BFI critics poll. Through the film’s five acts, Eisenstein demonstrates that propaganda and art are not mutually exclusive, and that the confines of oppression can sometimes breed incredible creativity.[/vc_column_text][vc_video link=”https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=riOLSslKvxU” title=”October: 10 Days That Shook the World (1928)”][vc_column_text]A retelling of Russia’s 1917 Revolution, this film creates a fascinatingly skewed representation of the Soviet Union’s rise. While the series of major events in the film is historically accurate, the depictions of Soviet leaders and opposition give the film’s biases away, as key facets of character and decisions are highlighted and hidden. When watching the film, pay special attention to the portrayals of Lenin and the Bolsheviks. [/vc_column_text][vc_video link=”https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R-QBqT9RQAM” title=”Panfilov’s 28 Men (2016)”][vc_column_text]Panfilov’s 28 Men demonstrates how Russian manipulation of history did not end with the Soviet Union. Released in 2016, this film is based on a famous but disputed incident in World War II wherein a small group of Russian soldiers purportedly warded off a wave of Nazi tanks and soldiers, all dying in the process. The events were heavily embellished by Soviet propagandists and later debunked, but the film based on them was partially funded by the Russian Ministry of Culture and is widely advertised as an accurate depiction of historical events. Times change, but the Russian regime continues to use cinema to its benefit.[/vc_column_text][/vc_column][/vc_row][vc_row][vc_column][vc_column_text]

This article is published in full in the Summer 2017 issue of Index on Censorship magazine. Print copies of the magazine are available on Amazon, or you can find information about print or digital subscriptions here. Copies are also available at the BFI, the Serpentine Gallery, MagCulture, (London), News from Nowhere (Liverpool), and Home (Manchester). Each magazine sale helps Index on Censorship continue its fight for free expression worldwide

[/vc_column_text][/vc_column][/vc_row][vc_row][vc_column][vc_custom_heading text=”From the Archives”][vc_row_inner][vc_column_inner width=”1/3″][vc_single_image image=”80560″ img_size=”213×289″ alignment=”center” onclick=”custom_link” link=”http://journals.sagepub.com/doi/pdf/10.1177/0306422014523227″][vc_custom_heading text=”Reel Drama: WWII propaganda” font_container=”tag:p|font_size:24|text_align:left” link=”url:http%3A%2F%2Fjournals.sagepub.com%2Fdoi%2Fpdf%2F10.1177%2F0306422014523227|||”][vc_column_text]March 2014

David Aaronovitch argues that all’s fair in war against fascist dictatorship, including seducing the United States into war with pretty faces and British accents.[/vc_column_text][/vc_column_inner][vc_column_inner width=”1/3″][vc_single_image image=”89184″ img_size=”213×289″ alignment=”center” onclick=”custom_link” link=”http://journals.sagepub.com/doi/pdf/10.1080/03064220512331339706″][vc_custom_heading text=”The ferghana canal” font_container=”tag:p|font_size:24|text_align:left” link=”url:http%3A%2F%2Fjournals.sagepub.com%2Fdoi%2Fpdf%2F10.1080%2F03064220512331339706|||”][vc_column_text]February 2005

The first 145 shots of a shooting-script by Sergei Eistenstein, a prologue to the modern drama of Uzbekistan’s reclamation of its desert wastes.[/vc_column_text][/vc_column_inner][vc_column_inner width=”1/3″][vc_single_image image=”98486″ img_size=”213×289″ alignment=”center” onclick=”custom_link” link=”http://journals.sagepub.com/doi/pdf/10.1080/03064229108535073″][vc_custom_heading text=”Iron fist, silver screen” font_container=”tag:p|font_size:24|text_align:left” link=”url:http%3A%2F%2Fjournals.sagepub.com%2Fdoi%2Fpdf%2F10.1080%2F03064229108535073|||”][vc_column_text]March 1991

An examination of how film is an arm of party propaganda in Saddam Hussein’s Iraq, highlighting the 1973 Law on Censorship of Foreign Films.[/vc_column_text][/vc_column_inner][/vc_row_inner][vc_separator][vc_row_inner][vc_column_inner width=”1/3″][vc_custom_heading text=”100 Years On” font_container=”tag:p|font_size:24|text_align:left” link=”url:https%3A%2F%2Fwww.indexoncensorship.org%2F2017%2F06%2F100-years-on%2F|||”][vc_column_text]Through a range of in-depth reporting, interviews and illustrations, the summer 2017 issue of Index on Censorship magazine explores how the consequences of the 1917 Russian Revolution still affect freedoms today, in Russia and around the world.

With: Andrei Arkhangelsky, BG Muhn, Nina Khrushcheva[/vc_column_text][/vc_column_inner][vc_column_inner width=”1/3″][vc_single_image image=”91220″ img_size=”medium” alignment=”center” onclick=”custom_link” link=”https://www.indexoncensorship.org/2017/06/100-years-on/”][/vc_column_inner][vc_column_inner width=”1/3″][vc_custom_heading text=”Subscribe” font_container=”tag:p|font_size:24|text_align:left” link=”url:https%3A%2F%2Fwww.indexoncensorship.org%2Fsubscribe%2F|||”][vc_column_text]In print, online. In your mailbox, on your iPad.

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Protests in motion: When films inspire rights’ movements

25 Apr 2016 | mobile, News and features

Films, like every kind of art, are often made purely for cinema’s sake – but sometimes they aren’t. Some of the most iconic recent films have actually played a major role in inspiring rights’ movements and protests around the world.

Ten Years, recipient of Hong Kong’s best film award on 3 April 2016, is just one of the latest examples of how cinema can side up with rights: films have often given protests momentum and a cultural reference.

Sometimes, directors have spoken out publicly in favour of protests; other times the films themselves have documented political abuses. In other cases, protesters and activists have given a film a new life, turning it into an icon for their protests on social media even against the directors’ original ideas.

Here are a few recent cases of popular films that have become symbols of rights’ movements around the world:

Ten Years

On 3 April, Ten Years was voted best film at the Hong Kong film awards, one of China’s most important film festivals – but most Chinese don’t know that, as the film is severely censored in mainland China.

Directed by Chow Kwun-Wai with a $64,500 budget, Ten Years is a “political horror” set in a dystopian 2025 Hong Kong. In the five short stories told in the film, Chow Kwun-Wai warns against the effects that ten years of Beijing’s influence would have on Hong Kong: The erosion of human rights, the destruction of local culture and heavy censorship.

According to the South China Morning Post, Ten Years was not intended to be a political film, but the political content is explosive to the extent that some critics have dubbed it “the occupy central of cinema”.

China Digital Times reports that both the film and the awards ceremony are banned in China. On Sina Weibo, China’s leading social network, the searches “Ten Years + Film Awards” (十年＋金像) and “Ten Years + film” (十年＋电影) are blocked from results.

Birdman

Winner of a 2015 Oscar, Birdman’s plot is not about rights or protests: The film told the story of a popular actor’s struggles years after his success impersonating a superhero.

But Mexican director’s Alejandro González Iñárritu’s acceptance speech turned it into the symbol of a protest against Mexican President Enrique Peña Nieto.

After asking for a respect and dignity for Mexican immigrants in the USA, Iñárritu said in his speech: “I want to dedicate this award for my fellow Mexicans, the ones who live in Mexico. I pray that we can find and build a government that we deserve.”

The speech came after the Mexican government declared the death of 43 students who went missing while organising a protest.

Iñárritu’s speech made Twitter erupt against Peña Nieto’s government under the hashtag #ElGobiernoQueMerecemos, “the government we deserve”.

Twitter user Guillermo Padilla said, “Now we are only missing a good ‘director’ in this country” – a play on words since “director” means both director and leader in Spanish.

In a photo, Birdman took the place of the Angel of Independence’s statue, symbol of Mexico City.

One user took it a step further, posting a “graphic description” of the effects of Iñárritu’s speech on the president.

Hunger Games

The sci-fi blockbuster Hunger Games took a life of its own in Thailand, where student demonstrators turned the protagonist’s salute into a symbol of rebellion against the ruling junta.

In the film, set in a heavily oppressed country where every year young people are forced to fight to death in a nationally televised contest, protagonist Katniss Everdeen defies the central government and inspires a rebellion against totalitarian rule. Her three-finger salute becomes the symbol of the protest.

In Thailand, students started to use the three-finger salute as a symbol of rebellion after the military government took power with a coup on 22 May 2014 and clamped down on all forms of protest, censored the country’s news media, limited the right to public assembly and arrested critics and opponents. According to The New York Times, hundreds of academics, journalists and activists have been detained for up to a month.

The Guardian reported that social activist Sombat Boonngam-anong wrote on Facebook: “Raising three fingers has become a symbol in calling for fundamental political rights.”

Since then, using the salute in public in groups of more than five people has been prohibited through martial law.

V for Vendetta

V for Vendetta holds a special place among films about freedom of speech. In 2005, it was incredibly successful bringing the themes freedom of speech and rebellion against tyranny into the mainstream media debate.

In the film, a freedom fighter plots to overthrow the tyranny ruling on Britain in a dystopian future. The mask he always wears has the features of Guy Fawkes, an English Catholic who attempted to blow up the parliament on 5 November 1605.

The mask has since become an icon. According to The Economist, the mask has become a regular feature of many protests. Among others, it has been adopted by the Occupy movement and Julian Assange, the founder of WikiLeaks.

David Lloyd, author of the graphic novel on which the film is based, has called the mask a “convenient placard to use in protest against tyranny … It seems quite unique, an icon of popular culture being used this way.”

Suffragette

In 2015, the film historical drama Suffragette inspired a protest against the government’s cuts to women services in Britain.

The film shows the struggle for women’s rights that took place in the beginning of the 20th century, when Emmeline Pankhurst led an all-women fight to gain the right to vote.

Before the movie premiere in London’s Leicester Square, activists from the feminist group Sister Uncut broke away from the main crowd, and laid down on the red carpet.

According to The Independent, they chanted “It is our duty to fight for our freedom,” and held signs reading “Dead women can’t vote” and “2 women killed every week” to draw attention to domestic violence and cuts to women’s services.

One protester told The Independent: “We’re the modern suffragettes and domestic violence cuts are demonstrating that little has changed for us 97 years later.”

27 Nov: Ai Weiwei: The Fake Case – film screening + Q&A

25 Nov 2014 | Events

Danish filmmaker Andreas Johnsen documents, over the course of four years, the high-profile court battle between world renowned artist and political activist Ai Weiwei and the Chinese authorities.

Detained for alleged tax evasion, Ai Weiwei spent 81 days in a cell with two guards watching his every move. On probation at the time of filming, and deeply affected by his ordeal, the artist continues to proclaim his innocence, despite the authorities’ unrelenting attempts to silence him. Johnsen’s candid portrait digs deep into the life and mind of a man single-handedly battling for the truth behind what has come to be known as a multi-million dollar “fake case”.

The screening will be followed by a Q&A with film-maker Andreas Johnsen, chaired by Index on Censorship’s David Heinemann

WHERE: Hackney Picturehouse, London, E8 1HE
WHEN: Thursday 27 November 2014, 20:30 followed by Q&A
TICKETS: Available Here

This event is presented as part of the Nordic Film Festival

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