Maidan

Can a filmmaker who was born in Romania, speaks Russian, has lived her whole life in Ukraine, and made most of her films at Odessa Film Studios be considered a Ukrainian artist? Not according to the organizers of the retrospective Take No Prisoners: the Bold Vision of Kira Muratova, which opens at the Lincoln Center's Walter Reade Theater in New York on February 25. The retrospective (until March 10), organized by the Film Society of Lincoln Center and Seagull Films, includes eight full-length feature films made by Muratova between 1967 and 2004. Muratova and all of her films are billed as Russian throughout the materials of the retrospective: The Walter Reade Theater monthly program, the press release that was distributed at the press screening on February 10, and on the Film Society of Lincoln Center Web site. The only time Ukraine is mentioned in an indirect way is in the special thanks that the organizers of the retrospective extend to, among others, "...the Ukrainian National Center of Alexander (sic) Dovzhenko and the Consulate General of Ukraine in New York..." An uninformed reader will get the impression that Kira Muratova is a Russian director. Is this innocent ignorance or a deliberate decision by the organizers? Seeking clarification, I wrote to Ms. Alla Verlotsky, director of Seagull Films, who was instrumental in organizing the Muratova retrospective. Here is Ms. Verlotsky's response: "Only three of Muratova films in her retrospective are produced in Ukraine: Long Farewell, Brief Encounters, and Asthenic Syndrome. The rest, including Getting to Know the World (Lenfilm) are Russian productions. Russian producers are the rights holder and they have provided us with prints. I am sure you understand matters of intellectual property and rights. I think that you should ask Ms. Muratova if she considers herself an Ukrainian artist. When we asked her this question she sad that she belongs to the "world". As of her origins, as it has been mentioned in our press release, she is Moldovian/Romanian... Sorry I answered just a part of your question. If I looked closely, I see that you are asking me to give our curatorial rationale to the series. One of the reasons we wanted to show works by Kira Muratova is the fact of the incredible universal appeal of her work that makes her a true international artist. As for the authenticity, there is none. There is no Ukrainian authenticity in any of her work as all the films were made in Russian, not Ukrainian language, they do not refer to Ukrainian history or culture and they don't have Ukrainian film aesthetic like films of Dovzhenko, Osika, Mashenko, Ilyenko and so. So who do you, for example, consider Paradzhanov? A Ukrainian, Georgian, or Armenian filmmaker? I don't know... I consider him an ARTIST, so do we consider Kira Muratova. In our program preface we say that she is a Soviet/Russian filmmaker which is correct. Long Farewells, Brief Encounters, Asthenic Syndrome, and Getting to Know the World were made during the Soviet era and her latest works are produced by Russian producers... From our perspective, and from the perspective of international film scholars and critics, there are no Ukrainians in any of Kira Muratova's work. I have never seen any mentioning of Ukrainian cultural influences in Muratova's work. As for the rights, four of her films in her retrospective were made in the Soviet Union (Russian Language) and other four are Russian productions. I leave it up to you to make a conclusion on the ethnicity of her work. It might be an interesting critical discovery." It only takes a brief Internet search to find out where Muratova's films were produced. Here is information from an article by Nancy Condee of the University of Pittsburg (http://www.kinokultura.com/reviews/R1-05tuner.html) : Astenicheskii sindrom (The Asthenic Syndrome), Odessa Film Studio, 1989; Chekhovskie motivy (Chekhov's Motives), Odessa Film Studio and Nikola Film, 2002; Chuvstvitel'nyi militsioner (Sentimental Policeman), PimOdessa-Film and Parimedia, 1992; Dolgie provody (A Long Farewell), Odessa Film Studio, 1971/1987; Korotkie vstrechi (Brief Encounters), Odessa Film Studio, 1967/1987; Poznavaia belyi svet (Getting to Know the Big Wide World), Lenfilm, 1978; Tri istorii (Three Stories), NTV-Profit, with the participation of Sudzi-Film (Ukraine), Roskomkino, NTV, Ministry of Culture and Art(Ukraine), Odessa Film Studio, 1997; Uvlechen'ia (Passions), Nikola-Film, with the participation of Roskomkino and RTV, 1994; Nastroishchik (The Tuner), Russia (Pygmalion Production) and Ukraine (Odessa Film Studio, Ministry of Culture and Art). While six out of eight films to be shown at the Walter Reade Theater are either entirely produced in Ukraine or joint Russian-Ukrainian productions, the retrospective's program presents all of them as Russian. Why is there not a single word about the Ukrainian part of Muratova's life and work? Why should an artist's self-vision ("I belong to the world") be the conclusive statement of their cultural identity? Can a director as sensitive as Muratova not be affected by the world in which she has lived most of her adult life? Who are the "international critics" Ms. Verlotsky refers to, who pass judgments on the "Ukrainian authenticity" of Muratova's films? Do they have what it takes to identify Ukrainian influences - knowledge of culture, language, sense of humor, world perception, and, yes, geography? There is a reason why Jane A. Taubman, professor of Russian at Amherst College (MA) and author of the most recent Muratova biography Kira Muratova: The Filmmaker's Companion 4 (The KINOfiles Filmmaker's Companions, February 2005), includes a chapter entitled "Muratova as a Ukrainian Filmmaker" in her book. What relevance does language have to the cultural authenticity of a film or even a work of letters? Is this why "international critics" still much too often consider Dovzhenko's silent films Earth and Arsenal to be Soviet and therefore Russian? Should the novels of Andrey Kurkov, a Russian-language writer from Kyiv, be declared without "Ukrainian authenticity", or should a host of writers - Nikolai Gogol, Isaak Babel, or Shalom Aleichem to name but a few - who wrote about Ukraine in languages other than Ukrainian be considered without Ukrainian authenticity? Ukrainian cinema does not begin and end with the poetic cinema of Dovzhenko, Paradzhanov, Osyka, Illienko and recently, Sanin. There are other Ukrainian film schools, other filmmakers, and Muratova is one of them. Upon her graduation from the VGIK Film School in Moscow, she began working at the Odessa Film Studios in 1961. She has lived and worked in Odessa ever since. As for the Ukrainian authenticity in her films that the retrospective's organizers refuse to acknowledge, it can be argued that it is subtle, understated, perhaps unintentional, yet unmistakable. I discovered Muratova only recently. Until the early 1990s, when I left Ukraine and made my home first in New York, then Toronto, then New York again, it was not easy to see a Muratova picture, initially because the Soviet authorities considered her films "strange and formalistic" and prevented them from being shown (her film The Asthenic Syndrome (1989) has the dubious distinction of being the only picture banned by Soviet censorship during perestroika). Later her films were not screened publicly because the cinema distribution system in Ukraine collapsed. My meeting with Kira Muratova, the Ukrainian filmmaker, took place on February 10, at the press screening of her two films, The Long Farewell (Dolgie provody) and The Tuner (Nastroyshchik) at the Walter Reade Theater. It was a vicarious meeting through her pictures. Muratova will not be coming to the opening of the retrospective. The first film is a penetrating and poignant portrayal of the relationship between a mother and her rebellious son. The son goes through a tumultuous puberty and comes close to fleeing from his mother in pursuit of an illusory freedom by the side of a father who left them and resurfaces years later. To the boy, the unknown father becomes a promise of freedom. Muratova seems to shun any verbal mention of the location - Odessa, where the action takes place, or Ukraine - in its broader context. The only geographical references are to Moscow, Saratov, Cheliabinsk, Novosibirsk, all in Russia - the illusory world of freedom for which the rebellious son wants to leave his mother. Cinema is not primarily a verbal medium. There is a wealth of visual, vocal, and symbolic references to Odessa and Ukraine in this film. I would say that it is these references that give the film a special feeling. The undoubtedly local Ukrainian accent of her characters, the Ukrainian music (Chervona ruta, the Ukrainian hit of the 1970s, is heard in one of the film's central scenes, and today is easily one of the symbols of Ukrainian identity). A Hutsul (possibly Moldovan) folk band playing in another scene, Ukrainian announcements at Odessa railway station - these are but the most obvious references to Ukraine in the Long Farewell. What is particularly interesting about Muratova is her less obvious, veiled, unintentional "Ukrainianness" despite herself, which is still largely undiscovered, but without which her work is somehow incomplete. Her relationship with Ukraine is complex, complicated, and at times problematic. Maybe that is why she'd "rather belong to the world." Yet much like the youth in her Long Farewell, she stays in Odessa. Muratova's latest picture The Tuner is an example of a more complex and hidden influence of the Ukrainian reality. The Tuner is about the clash of two worlds: The old world of Soviet Odessa, where official immorality was compensated for with close-knit ties between private individuals, and the new world of Kuchma's oligarchic capitalism with its degradation of human values and disappearing distinction between good and evil. The plot unfolds around two old ladies, who are oblivious to the society around them and insist on living by their own rules, in their own world of old-fashioned values. Their houses are filled with antiques - an otherworldly atmosphere - and are visited by guests as strange as their hostesses. Their homes may be construed as metaphors of their values - grand, impressive, and removed to a distant periphery, a suburb of Odessa. A rickety old streetcar is their only physical connection to the real world. Their spiritual connection is even more tenuous. This self-imposed isolationism, their wilful blindness towards socially imposed norms, which was an effective, or even the only, way of staying "human" under the ancient Soviet régime, implodes from the first contact with the corrupt, quasi-criminal society that flourished during Kuchma's presidency and its overarching moral maxim: Money does not smell. The women, each in her pathetic and charming way, are by choice out of tune with the world. Enter the Tuner. His nice manners, quick wit, and empathy are but a subterfuge so skilfully staged that until the very end of the film the viewer is ready to believe that the tuner will desist from his cruel intentions. Ominously, the tuning of an old piano becomes the "tuning "of the two ladies to the new reality. The result is predictably disastrous. The Tuner is Muratova's brilliant portrayal of a sick society on the verge of complete moral collapse. Her protagonists are the little people so removed from reality that at times they seem unrealistic, invented, and their actions, unmotivated. In the end, their weakness and crushing defeat by the petty con artist gives them moral power that vindicates their social marginality. Their quirkiness, their refusal to live by the rules, or, as in the last scene, to accept their own defeat even when their very survival is at stake, paradoxically becomes the last hope for humanity. Within the context of the Orange Revolution, The Tuner becomes Kira Muratova's prophetic vision of the return of human dignity in her home country. While this is my personal view of the film and, as a matter of interpretation, is arguable, there are things about The Tune that are givens. One such fact is that this film is a joint Russian-Ukrainian production and is billed as such on the official web site of the Pygmalion Production, the film's producer. As to there being "no Ukrainians in Muratova's films," that is not quite true. Georgiy Deliyev, who plays the con artist Andrey in The Tuner, is a Ukrainian actor from Odessa. According to the authoritative Kyiv weekly paper Dzerkalo tyzhnia, Muratova's entire film crew is Ukrainian. The musical score to the film was composed by Ukraine's world acclaimed Valentyn Sylvestrov, who was nominated for this year's Classical Music Grammy Award. The problem with the retrospective, however, is not Kira Muratova's identity, her films, or Ukraine and its cultural authenticity. It is the tenacity of imperialist attitudes that are so manifest in the curatorial decisions of the retrospective's organizers. Even in the wake of the Ukrainian people's Orange Revolution, which won the admiration of the world, there are still "experts" who deny Ukraine the right to exist as a culture in its own right. It is a disappointment that the respected Film Society at Lincoln Center, knowingly or not, went along with what seems to be a deliberately narrow-minded and sloppy presentation of Muratova's work. New York's moviegoers deserve to have the full picture, to know all the pertinent facts, and be allowed to decide for themselves. Yuri Shevchuk Lecturer of Ukrainian Language and Culture, Director of the Ukrainian Film Club of Columbia University The club's website: www.columbia.edu/cu/ufc