#media commentary
At the Cannes Film Festival, the director Сергей Лозница was awarded the French Culture Award - France Culture for his contribution to film art. Congratulations! Loznitsa made a speech commenting, in particular, the demands to boycott Russian culture. Here’s what he said:
Ladies and gentlemen! I am very honored to receive this award. I thank Mrs. Sandrine Trenier and her colleagues from France Culture for appreciating my film work, supporting my views and position.
For all of us, culture is a matter of life, and today we were all on the frontline. On the one hand - those who demand to ban Russian cinema, and to completely “cancel” Russian culture. On the other hand, those who are against the total boycott of culture.
Immediately after the beginning of Russian aggression in Ukraine, I opposed the total ban of Russian cinema and the boycott of Russian culture. Some of my compatriots responded to this demand by boycotting my films - in particular, films about current and past wars - “Donbass”, “Maidan”, “Babiy Yar”. It is amazing that a few years ago the same films - “Donbass” and “Maidan” were already banned. This happened in totalitarian Russia, by order of the FSB. Today Ukrainian “activists” demand to cancel the screenings of these films in the democratic European Union. It is with regret that in some issues their position coincides with the position of the Russian FSB.
Unfortunately, the Cannes Festival ended up on the front line today.
To my knowledge, only once in the 75-year history of the Cannes Festival has its management received a letter from the head of the State Film Foundation demanding the removal of a citizen of that state from its program. This happened in 1969 with Andrei Tarkovsky’s film “Andrey Rublev”.
This year, the same story happened to my film “Natural History of Destruction” produced in Germany, Lithuania and the Netherlands, which will be premiered the day after tomorrow. A film about the problem that has again become monstrously relevant in the war that Russia is waging in Ukraine: can we use peaceful civilian population and human life space as a resource for war? It turns out that the leaders of organizations supporting Ukrainian cinema are not bothered by this problem. They are only concerned that a citizen of Ukraine dared to express an opinion opposite to the opinion of the majority. They are waging a war on their special front - not where the fate of Europe, modern civilization and perhaps all humanity is decided, but where state building is replaced by the war of cultures, where knowledge of one’s own history is replaced by mythology, where freedom of speech and freedom of expression are declared enemy propaganda.
The events of these three military months, and the aggression to which individual cultural institutions have been exposed and are exposed -not only museums, theaters, cinemas, galleries, but also directors, actors, conductors, artists, musicians - require reflection. We need to understand: what is going on? And who needs this?
Language is one of the most important and fundamental categories of culture. In language and with the help of language, human misunderstandings are formed and expressed. The demand to ban culture is equivalent to the demand to ban language. The demand is as immoral as it is insane. How can you ban a language spoken by 350 million people on the globe? I am addressing you now in my native language, which I have spoken in my native city of Kiev since childhood. Most of the refugees from the eastern regions of Ukraine speak this language. In the same language, heroic defenders of Zmeiny island explained to Russian aggressors where they should go. Modern Ukraine is a multinational and multicultural country. The demand for a boycott of Russian language and culture, which is also the achievement and wealth of Ukraine, is archaic and destructive in nature. Instead of putting Russian, the native language of 30 percent of this country’s citizens, at the service of Ukraine, telling the truth about the terrible war, “cultural activists” are exhausting themselves with a meaningless, Sisyphus labor - to destroy what is indestructible.
It seems that by “culture” these people mean a simple set of individual works - films, novels, plays, paintings, etc. But this is not the case.
Culture is human activity in its various manifestations, it is the rituals and practices of our lives, it is the forms and ways of human self-knowledge and self-expression, it is our memory and practices of its preservation and reproduction. And, in the end, culture is cultivation, it’s development. I think that all of you - France Culture employees, patrons and friends of this wonderful organization, know this very well. How can you fight against all this? How can you identify the atrocities committed by the current Russian regime (in fact, in the last hundred years in Russia there have been no other regimes than authoritarian, violent ones) with the works of those Russian authors, often outcasts and almost always mourning prophets in their unfortunate homeland, which have become part of the world culture, which means - the property of all humanity? How can you, in response to the barbarities committed by Putin’s regime in Ukraine, demand to destroy or abolish what has always stood against barbarism? This makes no logic or sense.
French philosopher Rene Girard writes: “The object of genuine hatred can only be the person who prevents us from satisfying our desire - even though he himself has inspired it. The hater hates himself first of all, and behind his hatred hides a secret worship. Trying to hide from others and himself this desperate adoration, he refuses to see in his image anything but an obstacle. The secondary role of the sample, thus, comes to the foreground and completely overlaps its original, which was its religious imitation.” What is happening to us? What’s going on with culture? I believe that it is through constructive and in-depth discussion, rather than various prohibitions, that it is possible to answer those questions. And if we’re talking about cinema, I think that the European Film Academy can be a platform for a nationwide conference with philosophers, anthropologists, film historians, cultural scientists, filmmakers, directors and screenwriters willing to discuss this very serious problem.
Stefan Zweig recalls in his memoirs the atmosphere of the First World War: "France and England were "conquered” in Vienna and Berlin, on the Ringstrasse and Friedrichstrasse. English and French inscriptions were to disappear on the shops; even the monastery “To the Angelic Maids” had to change its name, because the people were outraged, not knowing that the “English” meant angels, not Anglo-Saxons. Naive businessmen pasted stamps on envelopes with the words ‘God punish England! “, secular ladies swore that while alive, they would not speak a single word in French. Shakespeare was taken out of German theaters, Mozart and Wagner - from French and English music halls, German professors declared Dante a German, and French - Beethoven, a Belgian, thoughtlessly appropriating spiritual heritage from enemy countries.” Does this remind you of anything?
Fate has given me a few years of friendship with the great Irene Weisite, a Lithuanian Jew, rescued from the Kaunas ghetto, a professor of theater science and a specialist of German literature, associate of George Soros and an outstanding public figure. Irena once recalled that in the ghetto she and her teenage friends organized an underground group of German poetry. In the evenings, they would sneak up and read poems by Goethe, Gaine, Schiller to each other. “But how is it so? After all, there was the speech of German executioners around you every day? ” - I exclaimed. Irena looked at me with astonishment: “Yes, but what did it have to do with Goethe?! ”
Only a few are given such a gift of spiritual wisdom, only a few can reach such humanity, only true heroes are capable of nobility. But each of us, people of culture, have the duty to make an effort to confront barbarism in any of its manifestations. I am often asked - what should an artist do during the war? My answer is simple - preserve common sense and protect the culture.
Thank you.
On May 23, the Cannes Film Festival will host the premiere of Loznica’s film “The Natural History of Destruction”, edited from archival materials about carpet bombing of European cities during World War II.
can’t people enjoy something without feeling the need to act like that thing is completely unique and groundbreaking because if i see one more post that’s like “you guys don’t understand howrevolutionary it is for a story to do [insert normal thing for a story to do]” i’m gonna lose it
to be clear, it’s different when something actually is groundbreaking and it’s different to express appreciation for more representation in stories. but it’s annoying when people act like there’s almost a moral imperative to enjoy something or else you’re not supporting innovation and/or representation. and people can get weirdly dogmatic about what you can and can’t criticize if they think what you’re critical of is revolutionary lol. i also think it annoys me because it feels very dismissive of older media and media that’s not in the mainstream, especially when it’s from people who sound like they don’t watch things from before 2010 that weren’t made by disney or netflix or other mainstream media producers
Ever Given was a nice treat, and while I am glad the issue is solved, I am a bit sad to see her go. I think what we enjoyed most about the situation was knowing there was absolutely nothing we had to (or even could) do about it. It wasn’t our job! At all! We didn’t have to donate, protest, educate ourselves, raise awareness, or even move the darn thing. We didn’t have to feel guilty about our inaction. This time it was wholly, completely not our problem.
i’ve been saying for weeks how fucking nonsensical it is for mcu!bucky to be adapted into the White Wolf (a completely seperate character he has little, if anything at all, to do with) when bucky in the comics is the Winter Soldier and has been since 2004. As it turns out, this breathtakingly out of character adaptation of Bucky literally trying to fix/forget his Winter Soldier identity is just Disney actively trying to avoid paying Ed Brubaker, co-creator of the Winter Soldier comic-run, ongoing royalties. Brudbaker has been disputing TFATWS’ interpretation of Bucky for weeks. Just a reminder that Disney has no respect for the comic creatives who’s award-winning works they’re profiting off, and the only thing mcu!bucky as a character has going for him is being played by Sebastian Stan.
ok i think what gets me about the kind of post that’s like ’[children’s media] has child soldiers, where are their parents!!’ is that those stories really and truly aren’t forpeople who’ll think about that, they’re for the people the children’s age, who don’t, for the most part, want to be kept safe or told they’re too young to participate in the world, they want to be given a sword
