Farewell to unsmiling past

Europe at times resembles a huge stage where especially thrilling historical dramas are played out. This particular trend was foremost on the agenda of the Week of European Films and Discussions entitled “Good-Bye, USSR!”

This event wasn’t a regular film festival because it had two distinct components. First, every film was submitted by a cultural institution of the country of origin — owing to the concerted effort on the part of the Austrian Cultural Forum, Goethe Institute, Italian Cultural Institute, British Council, and French Cultural Center — which means that it could well be described as an event held on a European cultural scope. Second, all the films selected for screening in some or other way opposed communism, the Cold War, and its present recurrences. Finally, every screening was followed by a discussion conducted by veteran journalists or filmmakers from the country of origin.

The program started with the Austrian director Erhard Riedlsperger’s Tunnelkind (Tunnel Child, 1990). Its almost incredible plot focuses on the 13-year-old Julia who moves with her mother to a village in the north of Austria, near the Czechoslovakian border. On the other side, the Prague Spring revolt has just been crushed and new border fences are being built… Village youth puts her to a test of courage, and the girl enters a no man’s land between Austria and Czechoslovakia. There she finds a tunnel leading to a construction site in Czechoslovakia. Julia crosses the tunnel and gets to know Roman, a 45-year-old land surveyor involved in the border-fence construction project. They become friends after a while. After the screening the discussion was conducted by Dr. Paul Schulmeister, a noted Vienna-based freelance journalist, one of the key figures in the Austrian Broadcasting Corporation ORF, in the field of television, and author of the book Wende-Zeiten. Eine Revolution im Rueckblick (The Turning Point. Revolution in Retrospective).

Germany was represented by Christian Schwochow’s Novemberkind (November Child, 2007). The plot unfolds on two temporal planes: in Honecker’s GDR — where the 20-year-old Anne hides Juri, a deserter of the Red Army; they fall in love and flee to the West, leaving Anne’s six-month-old daughter Inga behind — and in present-day Germany, where Inga, now a big girl, starts looking for her mother. The after-film discussion was conducted by Jochen Laube, who, among other things, was assistant producer with Peter Greenaway’s The Tulse Luper Suitcases (2004) and collaborator at the UNESCO-established national cinema project Zauberlaterne.

Italy submitted Daniele Luchetti’s Mio fratelloe figilio unico (My Brother is the Only Child, 2007). The plot has to do with the 1960s and 1970s, the most dramatic period in Italian history, when its society was divided between the extreme rightists and extreme leftists. The confrontation starts between two brothers, the older one, Manrico, a local communist leader, and the younger one, Accio who is on the reactionary fascist side. As is often the case with such plots, the political confrontation gets personal as Accio falls in love with Manrico’s girlfriend Francesca who, like everyone else, is blind to Manrico’s increasingly dangerous ideas. The after-film discussion was conducted by Giuseppe Finocchiaro, career diplomat, Deputy Head of Mission at the Embassy of Italy, and film conoisseur.

The British Council added a comical twist by submitting Chris Bernard’s comedy Letter to Brezhnev (1985/94). It is about a British girl who composes a letter to Brezhnev, asking his permission to meet with her sweetheart, the Soviet sailor Peter. The after-film discussion was conducted by the BBC journalist and instructor Tony Howson, who has been working in Ukraine for the past 13 years.

The Week’s only documentary was the French-Belgian D’un Mur, L’au Tre — de Berlin a Ceuta (Wall to Wall – From Berlin to Ceuta, 2008), directed by Patric Jean. It is a road movie that serves as another proof that far from all walls between various civilizations have been torn down. Jean travels all the way from what is left of the Berlin Wall, crossing four borders to stop in front of yet another civilization wall that separates us from Ceuta, the Spanish enclave on African ground. The after-film discussion was conducted by Patric Jean, the director of four documentary and documentary-fiction films.

Poland presented Wojciech Wojcik’s 2001 production Tam i z powrotem (There and Back). It is set in Poland, 1965. Andrzej Hoffman is a physician who, having been released from prison, returns to his work at a hospital. One day he unexpectedly sees a patient, Piotr, whom he knew he was in the Polish underground. Piotr tells Andrzej that he wants to escape to the West for a much-needed operation and that Andrzej must help him as his wife and daughter are already waiting for him abroad. However, to flee from communist Poland they need money, and so the men concoct a plan to rob a bank. During the armed robbery a bank guard is wounded and Doctor Andrzej Hoffman must operate on the victim…

Wojcik’s There and Back received Toronto festival award (2002) for the brightest individuality of the festival and for “addressing a historically important issue through the prism of ethical values.”

On November 21, Mykola Riabchuk presided over the roundtable “Ukrainian Prospects: Hopes and Realities.” Needless to say, uppermost on the agenda was the possibility of progress in the post-communist countries where no revolutionizing changes have been made. However, Ukraine did say, “Good-bye, USSR!”