I first saw the film Tolkien, directed by Dome Karukoski, back when it released in theaters. Back when theaters were still open and when the world wasn’t being held captive by a virus as fierce as any dragon from Tolkien’s mythology. I remember actually showing up to the theater intent on doing a double feature (with Aretha Franklin’s concert film, Amazing Grace), but being so affected by this film that I refunded my ticket to the second showing, downloaded the soundtrack, and just went for a drive into what was one of the coldest nights of that winter.

Since that moment, I have been hesitant to revisit this film out of fear that it would steal away from this memory. Yes, I know that sounds utterly silly. But when art impacts you in this way, it becomes something of a treasure. And so I came back to this film with some trepidation that it might not live up to my expectations, but also with a determination to pick up my pen and hash out of some my thoughts as I embarked on this now familiar journey back into the creation of Middle Earth. Imagine my surprise then to find a film that not only confirmed my experience, but also elevated it by speaking of art as a treasure to uncover, one of the dominant themes in the story.

This is what this film is and means to me, a treasure we are meant to uncover, an artform in which we are to find the language of our own inspiration, giving both the story of the film and our own story a voice and meaning against the backdrop of the darkness and struggles of our lives, be it war, be it loss, be it a virus, or be it times of struggle and depression that follow a world necessarily bound to a persistent and never ending lock down.

As the film develops, we gain glimpses of Tolkien’s upbringing, the people and home that gave him a sense of place, belonging, and imagination. Forced to move, the mother calls Tolkien to look around him and to carve these images into his memory as a way of protecting this sense of place, belonging and imagination in his heart, giving it a single world to recognize it by should he lose sight of it- happiness. Not circumstantial happiness, but deeply felt joy. This call is framed by the presence of a light, which then morphs into the light of the sun bursting through the trees, bridging night and day in a spectacularly connected cinematic expression. This shapes, visually speaking, as a constant journey from darkness to light, and light to dark, both of which form an essential part of the mothers story about a quest for the “treasure”. What the treasure is is the mystery they must uncover, for as she says, there is treasure, and there is TREASURE.

Here the light, in its cinematic expression, gives way once more to the dark where we encounter these magical moving images cast from the twirling lamp which is twisting shadows and light into a gloriously connected story about dragons, treasure and desire.

What I noticed this time around when watching the film was this intentional and constant movement from light to dark, dark to light, both on a narrative and cinematic level, allowing this to weave the narrative of Tolkien’s particular journey into one that must make sense of these two extremes living together, ultimately learning to imagine the world through his mother’s eyes, through that twisting lantern which becomes the reigning visual as it forms the backdrop of the final scene in which we witness Tolkien finally picking up a pen to write the first words of The Hobbit story.

The Director’s narrative vision towards this end is profound to me, with rarely a scene not fitting into the stories purpose and theme in a specific and illuminating way. Just consider how the early scenes from this point in the film are constructed and weaved together in such a poetic fashion.

Having moved from the light to the dark, we are given this image of Tolkien in the middle of the war lying in a pool of blood and mud. Having faced the loss of his mother and now put in the care of a family Priest, the war mimics the darkness of this moment, setting him in tension with the memory of the light he is supposed to hold close to his heart, the light the Priest now embodies in a complicated way. This then leads us back into the light of day and the emerging into the “Barrows”, which is referred to as a “Kingdom” and given a romanticized shine. Here we find the start of a friendship and a world that is formed through language, a language that is immediately entrenched in a vision of love and beauty as we meet a beautiful young woman (Edith) whom Tolkien discovers playing the piano.

As these two meet, this young man and young woman from different walks of life but also with a shared understanding of poverty, the film shifts back to the darkness and we find Edith employing language in order to describe their environment and to imagine another world in the light of the kingdom motif, one where poverty is not a constraint, where the light shines brighter than the darkness. This imagining once again cuts us back to the war, which sets the stage for this developing friendship between the brotherhood of four as another light in the darkness, bringing with it this proclamation that to die is not within our control, but to live is. The brotherhood become the soldiers, using their stories, their art, as their weapon to fight for good. Here both the beauty and the horror come together in a single but complex frame, one that is willing to sit in the tension that this creates for Tolkien.

A really compelling part of this scene for me this time around was finding the 4  boys sharing stories about this figurative “hell”, where hell is both the dangers (the darkness) but also the fiery and beautiful woman who they are drawn to. They face hell on both terms then and turn it into an adventure, which gives the whole light/dark motif an added layer of meaning. Not only this, but it also paves the way for the relationship between Tolkien and Edith to rise to the surface, something we now see being established as they sit down for a rather glorious dinner scene together.

What’s super interesting about this dinner scene is how it connects to a postscript offered at the end of the film where we learn that Tolkien’s and Edith’s tombs were ascribed with the descriptive “a mortal man who fell in love with an elvish princess.” Just as the brotherhood of four sit around the table sharing their own imaginations, passions and thoughts, now Tolkien and Edith sit around a table discussing the nature of a story, ruminating over how they fit into this unfolding narrative of treasure seeking, grand quests, conquest of dark and light, and adventure. As they are discussing the nature of language, at one point Tolkien accepts the challenge of Edith to place his love of language into the context of his story. As Edith proclaims, it is not language itself that is beautiful, but it is the marriage of sound and meaning that makes language, and things, beautiful. Therefore, Tolkien must learn to discover what it is that makes his words meaningful.

The word Tolkien has been throwing around here is the word celladoor, a word he has created. As he begins to weave it into a story, uncovering its possible meaning, we find him attaching it to a sense of place in a way that reaches back to the call of his mother to protect these images of his home in his heart. Image and meaning comes together. The trees, the water, the magic, all of this then imbues this word the notion of “seeing into the heart.”

It is this magic that brings in the other thoroughline in this narrative imagery, which is the people and forces that occupy his story. Here we see Tolkien talking about dragons much in the same way as the brotherhood was talking about hell, applying it as a slightly ambiguous fusion of both light and dark motifs. Later on in the film this causes Edith to wonder whether she is actually the dragon in this story as Tolkien quickly redirects her attempts to speak of a princess into the larger imagery that his word is now imagining in terms of their own relationship together. Tolkien takes the normal princess motif and turns it into something so much richer, which is where the girl as the dragon then merges with this image of the dragon cast against the war, once again returning us to the darkness on a cinematic level.

This scene from the war frames the proceeding scene back in time where Tolkien invites Edith to come with him to the meeting of the brotherhood, only to find himself torn by the darkness inside of him as Edith’s light begins to shine. In perfect, streamlined precision, and in character with the films narrative progression, the darkness inside of him gives way then to a scene of Edith likewise playing a dark tune on the piano, expressing the darkness inside of her, only to be asked to play something more cheerful, more happy. This single scene perfectly brings together the different threads of the film, including this notion of joy being something we must guard and protect, the themes of light and dark working together, the themes of dragons being both good and bad, the theme of Tolkien’s and Edith’s different backgrounds but shared understanding of what they have to overcome.

Throughout the film we find these parallel lines of the Tolkien and Edith relationship and his relationship with the brotherhood working together as well. In the billiard scene, a scene that is about loyalty, the script calls us back to his specific relationship with Geoffrey, which is brought upon by the both of them getting in trouble and Geoffrey’s father, who is also the headmaster, deciding to pair them up for the duration of the semester. Here the father’s lesson comes to fruition, with Geoffrey’s and Tolkien’s relationship forming an unbreakable bond based on trust, one which would later lead him straight across the battlefield, setting him face to face with the darkness that would come to shape him and help give his language meaning.

One of my favorite scenes in the film is when Tolkien takes Edith to the opera. Or attempts to. As Tolkien is trying to count out pennies and comes to realize he doesn’t have enough to pay for the only remaining seats (the more expensive ones), we see the both of them coming together around their shared reality of feeling like life and circumstance has them imprisoned, a prison they both want to escape from. This leads them to duck into a passageway underneath the auditorium in the hopes of finding a way to sneak in. With all the doors locked and once again feeling dejected and defeated, the music starts to play and the two of them suddenly come alive, acting out the play as if they are a part of the story, a story they are creating for themselves. The shot of the kiss is brilliantly captured, with the camera slowly panning out and moving backwards down the passageway, giving it the allusion of the path that Tolkien had described during their dinner together.

These kinds of visual touches and imaginative processing of the themes is what makes me love this movie so much. And yet, for as powerful as this moment is, we see them once again pulled out of their story as the Priest tells Tolkien, as his caregiver, that he is not allowed to see Edith anymore and needs to focus on his classes. This leads us back to the war and the shot of Tolkien still lying in a pool of blood. Here we find the question of hope being presented, and the call to not give up hope as we see Tolkien desperate to find Geoffrey, whom is also there with him somewhere on the battlefield. Back at home he is about to lose Edith, and here in the war he is about to lose Geoffrey. This sense of loss eventually leads to one of the more desperate moments of the film, finding Tolkien stumbling across the grounds of Oxford, where the Priest has sent him, drunk and speaking in his created language. It is like he is playing a role in his own story, but from a perspective of hoplessness. The darkness appears to have won. This becomes a pivotal moment for him, requiring him to answer the question, what story does he actually belong to and want to tell, with these working images of love intermixing with the images of war. With these two things seemingly competing for his attention and for his life, it once again comes down to the power of language to help bring these two ideas together in a meaningful way, the twirling images of shadow and light of the lamp in the beginning mixing with the image of the white horse standing in the blackness of the battlefield as its demons emerge.

There is a power sentiment that emerges from the film regarding this exploration of language. As he speaks with his professor, a master of languages, and shares his own stories and creations, he is reminded that language never steals. Language is shared. It is what we have in common. It is what allows us to define life together. In this way, the language we use is always influenced, and it always influences. We learn a word and it becomes ours. We give it a name that befits our experience, and embody it in a way that is meaningful to us. As the two of them, Tolkien and his professor, walk through the treed pathway, together they replay this idea of their story from the context of this movement of word to meaning to imagination, which ultimately leads back to a single truth emodied by a single sound (a word), but a sound that now holds and carries meaning, that holds history and understanding. A word without meaning is merely a sound. What moves it through this process, this history, is the push to define the word and give it meaning by locating it within our experience. In this sense, language isn’t merely about naming things, it is the life blood of a people, a culture.

This encounter with the professor gives Tolkien a way back into his story, this grand vision of Middle Earth that is unfolding in his context and with real meaning and attachment to his experience and his world and the persons that embody this world. But now the timeline of the film catches up with the war, being interrupted by its announcement. There is an amazingly captured scene here where, as the war is being announced and people are erupting in emotions, Tolkien keeps trying to tell his story, even as his words slowly fade amidst the greater reality.

It is a reuniting with Edith and the renewed expression of their love that brings these two frames, of light and dark, love and loss, together. In love, they must once again depart as he goes off to fight the war on the battlefield. Two dragons, one back at home, one he is about to face out there. One forming his darkness, one confronting his darkness and bringing it out. This is then twinned again with his relationship with Geoffrey, a narrative line that carries him through the war through Geoffrey’s death and his reuniting with Edith. The section that holds these two narrative lines together is a scene that finds him running helplessly through the battlefield, looking for the brotherhood but only finding tragedy, death, loss and horror. The film’s shooting of this scene brilliantly allows the chaos to gradually fade away, giving us an image of the Cross framed against all of the death around him, and ultimately leading him into the silence of what remains, alone with the demons of his imagination and his experience. All except for a single white horse that dots the battlefield, which contrasts with a rising figure cloaked in black. This is described by Edith as trench fever, the images given to someone scarred by what he has seen on the battlefield.

It is out of this then that the light is able to shine amidst the darkness, not by doing away with the darkness, but by placing it into context of the larger story. Life is both light and darkness which are constantly at war, both within us and around us. And it is our ability to give words to this reality, both hopeful and devastated, heartbroken and joyful, that allows us to enter into this as a story, one in which we find ourselves, and one in which we find ourselves in relationship to others and the world around us. As we walk through the final scenes of the film, we find that Tolkien is not just to be one voice, but rather the voice of the brotherhood. Death can make us loatheless and helpless as individuals, as Geoffrey says, but it cannot put an end to the immortal four, the stuff that gives such a word its meaning. As the Priest says surveying the darkness, he speaks the liturgy because there is a comfort in ancient things that lie beyond our comprehension, and the language of this liturgy then becomes the very thing that can speak meaning and beauty into the darkness, uncovering the light the lies within us, that is being protected in our hearts.

From out of the war we begin to gain a clearer picture of what it is that Tolkien has attached his words to, the stuff that gives him meaning. The pictures of the family by his bedside merge with the nighttime chat with his new family, the relationship with Edith and their now children. In another one of my favorite scenes, we find Edith challenging Tolkien as they sit on the steps under the night sky, the one who once wrote for pleasure and passion and now feels pointless and where language has lost its meaning, to decide what he wants from his stories, his writing. Find its meaning or abandon it. Here he returns to where the four of the brotherhood used to meet with Geoffrey’s unreleased poetry in hand. And then he returns home with Edith and his children, once again amidst nature, the images of the trees and the light that has been held captive and protected in his heart. As his family asks him what his story is about, Tolkien is finally ready to to attach his words to what is most meaningful to him. It is a story about treasure, and the treasure is love, companionship, friendship, light and dark weaved together to create something beautiful. It is a story about a quest and a journey, a fellowship, our fellowship with one another and with nature and with God.

In the final scene, it is out of the shadows that we once again see the lights dancing in the background as the pen writes the first words to the Hobbit, the words a “hole in the ground” reflecting the one he once lied in during the war, filled with blood, but also the hole he met in with the brotherhood, and the hole he now calls home with his most cherished loves, his family, God and nature. Darkness transformed into light, tragedy transformed into beauty, the stuff that every good and worthwhile story is built around.

My introduction to Director Kelly Reich was her film Certain Women (2016), an incredibly nuanced depiction of four strong willed women who are all different in character but whom share in a visible and felt struggle to overcome the burden of sexism and oppression. The film brilliantly fuses together three different sources under a singular vision in order to bring these character lines together in one cohesive and masterfully crafted story.

It wasn’t until I saw her 2010 film Meek’s Cutoff though, a fascinating and highly contemplative examination of fear and the nature of trust set in the barrenness of the Orgeon trail in 1945, that I really started to appreciate her brilliance. She uses the period setting and the western motif to offer a similarly nuanced perspective on modern, feminist ideals and the racial systems that keep us in bondage to feelings of fear and uncertainty, especially when it comes to embracing the unfamiliar, unforgiving landscaping and the uncertain future. Her ability to use things like space, the natural environment, and silence to her advantage is an incredible gifting that she has demonstrated quite adeptly throughout her career.

Revisiting Oregon: Firs Cow and The Telling of a Universal Story
Her latest film, First Cow, returns us to Oregon, this time set in 1820 and telling a single story adapted from author Jonathan Raymond’s book, The Half Life. Here she continues in stride, making what is one of the best films of 2020 so far in my humble opinion, but also putting together a distinctly universal story about what it means to not only co-exist, but to persist within the trappings of the great American Dream.

In the opening shot, Reichardt features a slow, almost laborious shot of a lone ship trudging down a river. It’s simple, spacious, and  basically devoid of surrounding activity. She employs this basic image as a way of anchoring her story in a narrative that transcends time and place, both in the imagery it evokes and in how it provides this central and establishing movement from the present day to the past.

Uncovering The Past And Seeing the Future: Parallels and Portraits of Contrast
This lone boat, which coincides with the proceeding scene where, set in the modern era, two skeletons are uncovered featuring two indistinguishable men whom apparently died side by side. This scene and this uncovering is used to parallel the ensuing arrival of this cow, in the past, which is literally the first cow to arrive to the Oregon settlement as a means of providing milk for the community. The proceeding scenes then introduce us to our two main characters, Cookie, a cook who is trying to make a way for himself amonst the fur traders by cooking meals for them, and King-Lu, a Chinese immigrant fleeing a murder (of a Russian man).

These two parallel scenes, of the ship and the arriving cow, connects the opening imagery of the unearthed skeleton with our working story of these two men coming to find company and comfort and even opportunity in one another, establishing a bond across different paths and through differing journey’s, one looking to escape and move on, the other immersed where he is in his particular ambitions

One of the most striking things about the portrait that Reichhardt creates here through these two working images, one of modernity looking backwards, or uncovering history, and the other looking forward anticipating what lies ahead, is how she imagines it within a landscape of diverse peoples, all coexisting around this single cow. The cow itself stands as a colorful and resonant symbol both of the growing bond between Cookie and King-Lu, but also of the nature of progress, it’s milk providing the means of sustenance, cooperation and care, but also demonstrating the essential image of opportunity, the chance for one to establish ones self and get ahead in the world by using the milk to gain a foothold in a competitive environment. The most interesting part of Cookie’s character, and King-Lu for that matter, is that they both imagine from their individual vantage points sitting beneath the shadow of others, that it is okay, then, given this competitive and unfair environment, to engage in certain activities or make certain choices that will allow them to get ahead. This moral line is crossed somewhat nonchalantly, in a matter of fact way that emulates the daily chore of gathering mushrooms and foods from the forest. This is simply what one needs to do. When the milk belongs to the haves, we must rightly take some of the milk in order to help ourselves gain a foothold, to gain some level of significance in this world and be seen with some respect.

Even more interesting is the fact that Reichardt draws this out within a landscape dotted with all kinds of people, from the settlers, to the Chinese Immigrant to the indigenous peoples. This sense of progress seems to be making its way up through this collage of peoples, providing a compelling picture to carry over into the present day picture of these two indistinguishable skeletons lying side by side. In this sense, the emerging social divide, the essential reality of those on the bottom and those on the top, does not discriminate.

Nature, Human Nature, and the Nature of Relationship 
The other thing that emerges in First Cow, or rather reemerges within the Director’s filmmography, is her obvious love of nature. She demonstrates an artistic interest in exploring humanities relationship to nature. In First Cow, the cinematography, utilizing an interesting aspect ratio that leaves plenty of room to apply different angles and close ups, is sharp and distinctive, giving the landscape an almost dreamy gloss, but one that seems to desire to uphold both the beauty of the earth and the rawness of nature’s complex form. It’s not simply that she uses the aspect ratio to bring the natural landscape into focus, it’s that she does so without romanticizing it. In a sense, she is not trying to locate the past in a glorified vision of its time, in its unfiltered and uninhibited optimism. She recognizes that this optimism is complicated and burdened by what we know of the future, and thus she imagines a largely unglorified landscape, but one that still, in some mysterious way, looks otherworldly and dream like at the same time. This allows the red cow, a color that stands out in the mix of imagined visuals and landscape like a reverent or sacred force of nature, to stand as a bit of an unusual but unavoidable symbol within the human drama, drawing attention towards it as things unfold, particularly as we see the story, history, unfolding in its ongoing pursuit of conquest, growth and progress.

Beautifully rendered, gentle in spirit, and patient in telling, this focus on nature in relationship to human progress ultimately leads to a film about the nature of relationship, or the power of friendship, both between a man and a cow (and all it symbolizes), and the two men travelling different paths drawn together by seemingly simple dreams and simple ideas. Paths that uncover this basic and universal human longing and human need to belong, to be seen as something and be taken seriously.

In the social system that we find being developed and uncovered in the film, there are those on top and those on the bottom, with the milk from the cow, the central possession of those on top, providing the means for getting ahead. As the economic machine forging from this opportune milk pushes forward, what becomes clear is that this single cow, in its sustenance and in its giving presence, doesn’t render everyone equal by becoming what is essentially a commodity. This is what makes the bond between man and cow so aware. It speaks to the relationship we have to both need and want, and the relationships this world has to the haves and the have nots of this world. It speaks of the respect we have for that which allows us to get ahead, the essential opportunity afforded to us in our visions and our willingness to act on our allusions of freedom. But it also speaks of the ways in which that commodity becomes utilized, corrupted, and used in ways that uncover the basic human problem- greed and suspicion of those above and those below. Which, in process, becomes the thing that not only that perceivable works to further distinguish between those on the bottom and those on the top, but also between the different peoples that are occupying this shared space by nature of how growth happens and moves forward.

Following in the footsteps of this working economic interest is the ongoing relationship that develops between Cookie and King-Lu. As their actions become exposed and their position in this settlement is compromised, both of them find themselves now on the run, equal in the condemnation afforded them in the eyes of the rest. What unravels in the chaotic final 20 minutes of the film offers a startling and genuinely fascinating picture of loss and gain. The attempting to gain prominence and to get ahead through some suspect, morally questionable choices, we can also see that this was driven by Cookie’s recognition of the unfairness of it all, which emerged from the label of being a bottom feeder, something of a servant, and now a thief.

At the same time, as we see him now on the run just as King-Lu was when he met Cookie, he is being chased or followed by a boy whom himself found himself the recipient of social neglect. Earlier we see the boy denied the last biscuit, the product of the milk and of Cookie’s aspirations, based on his loss of a place in line. So Cookie, now suffering an injury caused by his fleeing, eventually reunites with King-Lu, but given his injury only has the strength to go so far before having to lie down, seemingly to rest, but clearly with a hint that he seems to have little life left to live and give. His pursuits and his attempts for gain have caught up to him in his given poverty. This is where we see King-Lu faced with a choice, measuring the money, which he could salvage by leaving Cookie behind, in one hand, and his friendship and bond in the other. He ultimately chooses friendship, lying down next to Cookie and bringing the film firmly into the future and the uncovering of this grave so many years later.

It’s an astounding vision that Reichardt presents here, one of two people across ethnic lines being bonded together in struggle, and surrounded by others on all sorts of potential sides of this struggle. But what pulls these two skeletons back into the pages of history as fully fleshed out persons is the image of the cow. The cow is both a hopeful image and a damning one, depending on which perspective we are looking from, either ahead from the past or backwards from history. What’s interesting about the image that looks backwards is that, in some sense it is equally hopeful. This image of two people from diverse backgrounds rendered indistinguishable as skeletons imagines a better future that still could be. But it must be a future built on our true understanding and recovery of the past. How we imagine the Cow as a symbol for our current economic system, and how the Cow is used to achieve our dreams and our imaginings of prosperity and progress, is one of the most important imaginative processes that we can engage in today. This is something that needs to be reformed and redeveloped as we choose to consider the past. Caught between the admiration and appreciation and seeming worship of the Cow is the stuff that eventually leads everything to spiral into chaos in the film, ultimately built by way of competition and capitalist ideals and fueled by an awareness of social placement and division and the human need to belong.

The real question this leaves us with then is this. Seeing this picture from our vantage point, looking back on history, how does seeing history through Reichardt’s telling of this simple story about the first cow help to reframe our understanding of the future in a more informed and more meaningful, and dare I say more godly way? How is it that we will be able to learn how to detach ourselves from the delusions and falsities of the American Dream as a capitalist system based on gains and losses, haves and have nots, and draw it back to its most essential vision of a people working and existing together for the sake of true freedom? It’s a vital and important question, and one made all the more alive through Reichardt’s stylistic imaginings and the simple image of a red cow.

In exploring Iran’s important cinematic history, the most striking characteristic is the overwhelming presence of a liberated cinema which, for example, boasts an incredible representation of women in cinema, but which also bears the mark of a heavily oppressed and marginalized industry (heavy censorship).

There is a wealth of material attempting to make some sense of why this contrast exists, or how these two elements can manage to co-exist, with most authors narrowing in on the two basic and essential periods of Iranian cinematic history (defined as pre war: 1900-1929, and post war: 1950’s and on). What these two periods share is the following characteristics:

1. The prevalence of Iranian cinema as a “social cinema” (As it says in the article, History of Iranian Cinema, both the cinema of the first period and the cinema of the fifties and sixties must be seen primarily as a “social-oriented cinema”)

2. The growing privatization of the industry (which pushes back on cinema’s social interest)

I found that researchers tended to differentiate between these two characteristics in this way- nationalism (social cinema) and globalization/international (capitalist cinema), with one of the most fascinating aspects of Iranian cinema being the inversion of these ideas- the development of social cinema happens outside of its borders, while capitalism, or globalization governs cinema inside its borders. This leads to some interesting analysis about why this is this case.

(The first period) “was often critical of society and social conditions, of crude modernity and western invaders of an essentially traditional society, of the implications of society’s rapid urbanization and the disappearance of domestic values… (dealing with) the authentic problems of Iranian development…

due to the inherent demands of cinema, its nationalism, its reliance on the capital of the private sector and the return of that capital from the audience, it is forced to find clichés that are attractive to the public, and must give importance to the economic aspect of cinema.”
– History of Iranian Cinema

Leading to this further observation,

“Perhaps this very importance—a constant presence in countries where cinema depends on the private sector—is what pollutes cinema, and brought unwanted harm to Iranian cinema in its second period.”

As the author goes on to suggest,

“The start of film production in 1929 was the natural consequence of the general Iranian movement toward modernization. It was the wish of the system and the people to create a national cinema industry as yet another sign of advancement, and its failure was also a natural consequence of society’s rejection of the essence of modernity, for society had not yet released its stronghold on tradition or even clarified the existing relationship. Cinema, contrary to many other manifestations of modernity, was not a simple tool to be nationalized with the scanty efforts of a few westernized citizens and intellectuals.”

So, while encroaching, Westernized ideals start to creep into the Iranian landscape, cinema’s ability to lend a critical lens to certain social realities is crippled, pushing the social commentary of Iranian cinema outside of its borders, where it was able to speak more freely, resisting nationalist pressures in order to find and build a recognizable national identity. While capitalism appears to be a wanted value (the privatization of the industry in line with the American ideal), weirdly, on of the problems is that capitalism/nationalism and censorship, which is typically representative of more socialist leaning societies, appear side by side in Iranian Cinematic history, forcing Iranian filmmakers to “be aware of the dangers of both.” The end result? Out of his awareness births a recognizable national cinema and cultural identity, helping to give shape and voice to relevant social issues and creating a very real local industry and culture in a Country where heavy censorship and the need for progress (by way of capitalist pursuits and privatization) still co-exists.

With all this in mind, as I’ve been working through all the material I have been reflecting on this question- where does the power of film to change, influence, shape, create, and develop culture on a sociopolitical level come from, and what can Iranian Cinematic history teach me about the relationship of film to these sociopolitical realities in my own Country?

Cinema, The Development of the Modern Nation-State, Revolutions, and An International Cinema
Farshid Kazemi writes in Iranian Cinema about how the development of cinema in Iran is “inextricably linked to the development of modernity and the nation-state.”

“The cinema in Iran was an important site where modernity (tajadud) and the nation (mellat) were respectively constructed, contested, and negotiated throughout the long 20th century and into the new millennium.”

Kazemi goes on to talk about how the history of Iranian cinema was essentially defined by two revolutions that helped to determine its modern development (1905–1911 and the later Islamic Revolution in 1979). Considering that it is the Islamic Revolution where Iranian cinema finally starts to grow into something recognizable, a part of Iran’s specific and uniquely developed “revolutionary language”, a language shared by cinema around the world, is especially attuned to modern issues. And yet it is language that is rooted in a very real understanding of its past and Iran’s need and desire to develop a social cinema.

Reflecting on why Iran creates some of the world’s best films, author Hamid Dabashi, in an article published for BBC Culture back in 2018, wrote that, “There has never been a moment in the long history of Iranian cinema when it was confined to its current frontiers.” This gets to the heart of why and how we find such a deeply held focus on things like representation in Iranian film in a Country where censorship persists in ways that are usually seen in non-capitalist societies. Again, what is interesting is to note how Iran’s somewhat ironic journey towards a functioning industry was built through maintaining a consistent international presence. What makes this interesting is that the development of a strong and functioning cinematic identity typically depends on the ability of a Country to establish a national industry first, on which then allows it to establish its influential “as” a recognizable industry and culture on the international stage. What has often threatened smaller industries around the world is when their local industries are absorbed by international entities which then hinders and threaten a Country’s ability to build and retain a true national identity (and subsequently, preventing them from having a global presence as well). As Dabashi notes, Iran’s decidedly long and difficult path to actually get to the international stage (read: festivals), came in the reverse, and even more surprisingly seems almost uniformly international in its presence on both sides of that narrative coin. “The historical formation of Iranian cinema took place on a transnational public sphere – both in its origins and its destinations – from the East India Company film studios in India where the very first Iranian films were made, to these European film festivals.”

What you find is an Iranian film industry forced to develop a love for its Country and a social presence from outside of its borders, either making films from within the context of the larger empire,

“The very first Iranian sound film, Dokhtar-e Lor/Lor Girl, 1932, also known as The Iran of Yesterday and The Iran of Today, was produced by Ardeshir Irani and Abdolhossein Sepanta in the Imperial Film Company in Bombay. There is a larger frame of reference that extends from Europe to the Ottoman and Russian empires all the way to Egypt and India, which was the site of the rise of Persian prose and poetry as well as Iranian visual and performing arts.
– Dabashi

or having to “smuggle” films from inside of its borders to the outside (see Dariush Mehrjui’s The Cow (1969). As Dabashi writes, “The global staging of Iranian film offered some of its best works international attention, a crucial component that fed back, aesthetically and thematically, into the country’s cinematic repertoire and inspired successive generations of Iranian film-makers.” Both of these things feed into this inversion of the usual mode of development, working from the inside (national identity) out (global presence).

A CINEMA IN CONTEXT
Regarding the first of the two recognizable periods in Iranian film history, it says in A History of Iranian Cinema, “During all those years, from 1900—the year the Gaumont camera was bought by the Qajar shah, brought to Iran and installed in a corridor of the imperial palace—until 1937—the screening date of Sepanta’s last Indian-produced film—with all the “ifs” and “buts”, must be considered the first period of Iranian cinema.” With the filming of the Shah (film was brought to Iran by the King as a tool of entertainment for members of the monarchy and the royal court), Iranian Cinema goes on to develop along these shared religious-sociopolitical lines, giving an interesting frame of reference for the competing socialist-capitalist interests, while also offering a frame of reference for how film was introduced within a clear social divide (with film being the entertainment of the grand royalty, and subsequent development beginning a journey of making  film the voice of the Iranian people and culture).

So who exactly was Sepanta, as the Director of the very first talkie film in Iran? He was a scholar of the Persian world with a keen interest in finding and locating a true Iranian identity. Using the international industry (in India) as his inspiration, he, as a storyteller and historian (religious historian), he helped to plant the seeds of the Iranian cinematic identity and modern development. What’s so important about this, especially when set within the first period of cinematic development, a period that is considered largely inconsequential to the industries larger development, is that it helps to anchor the modern movement in Iran’s larger sense of history, formation, and influence. As it says in Iranian Cinema: Before the Revolution by Shahin Parhami,

“If one were to trace the first visual representations in Iranian history, the bas-reliefs in Persepolis (c.500 B. C) would be one of the earliest examples. Persepolis was the ritual center of the ancient kingdom of Achaemenids. As Honour and Fleming [1] state, “the figures at Persepolis remain bound by the rules of grammar and syntax of visual language…

After the Arab invasion and conversion from Zoroastrianism to Islam —a religion in which visual symbols were avoided — Persian art continued its visual practices.”

Given how this period of early development connects Iranian Cinema’s foundation to its storytelling past, the article goes on to say that “What has attracted international audiences to this national cinema is its distinct style, themes, authors, idea of nationhood, and manifestation of culture”, something that it owes to these older visual (and poetic) roots. And the reason why cinema is so important to this manifestation in terms of applying to the modern expressionistic landscape is that, “among all manifestations of modernity, cinema was the only one with a forty-year history.” (Iranian Cinematic History) So, even though the second period of Iranian is where we find the industry largely being defined and developed, predicated on the Iranian Revolution of 1977-1979, this early period was hugely important for establishing and protecting national roots beyond the nation’s borders where film was forced to develop.

Speaking more about this narrative influence as rooted in the history of the people and place,

“This cinema and this psychology and characterization, even its form and structure, is not rootless, but rather based on Iranian folk tales. The narrative mold is derived from the performance methods of storytellers and the structural mold, especially in comedies, is derived from Iranian performing arts such as takht-e hosi—traditional farcical theater performed outdoors—but transforms them to suit the cinematic medium. For dramatic molds it relies on a sentimental outlook and tone, highly emotional and mournful, which is the essence of Iranian folk tales.”
– History of Iranian Cinema

What the development of film at this time mirrors is the further development and exploration of these national roots as a part of true Iranian culture, which is the very thing that can bring clarity to the holding tension mentioned at the start of this blog.

A GROWING NATIONAL IDENTITY
What’s important to note then, as cinema shifts from being the concern of royalty to informing and being formed by the voice of the people, is the global development of Eastern and Western influences on this same historical front. Iran is a fusion of a deeply held, captured and protected sense of national identity that is tied to both its historical and religious roots (and Eastern ideals), even as Westernized influences competed to gain a foothold in the ongoing modernization of both industry and culture. Many of the articles listed in my sources talk about this marriage of influence and development as a key to understanding how it is that such a strong national industry emerges from what was predominantly an international stage. This fusion of roots is the central means by which social awareness and modernity is able to coexist alongside strong censorship and capitalism (privatization), which in itself remains a rather confusing mix of contradictory forces, allowing its given identity (in terms of historical placement and religious development) to hold ties with its sense of person and place while interpreting their culture from afar.

And it tracks this development through Evans Oganians, who “returned to Iran in 1929, with limited experience in cinematographic education but an ocean of enthusiasm, idealism and faith, in hopes of founding a “national cinema”, founding the School For Cinema Artists, which would lead the way for the building of the National Iranian Film Society in 1949 through Farrokh Ghaffari (shaped by the 1948 film, The Storm of Life, which is developed by way of Western, international, technological advancement in dubbing through filmmakers Esma‘il Kooshan and Ali Daryabeigi), and eventually, by way of the Iranian Revolution and Amir Naderi’s The Runner (shot during the Iran-Iraq War of 1980-1988 in 1984). In this string of connected presences we see the true development of a recognizable, national cinema that is built for the people, by the people, and through the people’s experiences, starting to take shape. Consider, for example, Forough Farrokhzad (1935-1967), a female poet and filmmaker who made the film The House is Black (1962). Her influence on shaping Iranian Cinema according to her strong interest in social awareness (it was filmed in a leper colony) comes by way of leaning into the power of old storytelling methods in order to flesh out and make sense of their modern reality. This is why “the years between 1948 to 1978 are on one hand Iranian cinema’s most productive periods and on the other the most misunderstood.” (History of Iranian Cinema)

“The most important characteristics of this cinema can be thus summarized:
The cinema of the first period is a very noble yet humble one. With very rudimentary and limited technical means, old and obsolete methods and no cinematic know-how, it is essentially based within the private sector. It receives no help from the government and must therefore stand on its own feet, relying solely on itself and its audience, and all this in the face of competition from the foreign films of the time.”

And yet, at the same time,

“It is at the same time a social-oriented cinema; often critical of society and social conditions, of crude modernity and western invaders of an essentially traditional society, of the implications of society’s rapid urbanization and the disappearance of domestic values. It deals with the authentic problems of Iranian development.”

leading to the ongoing working tension that flows from the social divide and which is made present in its Royal arrival, raising up the need for a people and Country to find their voice and identity in a slightly different way than normal.

New Wave and New Iranian Cinema: Distinct Styles and Modern Voices
More films start to get made in the 60’s after a largely silent period, leading to a period of New Wave films that would set the stage for the revolution as an “intellectually” based movement. This is defined though, once again, by a movement coming from outside it’s national borders (a Persian Literature movement, which held a distinct, sociopolitical romanticism). Here we see the legacy of Farrokhzad taking further root, with author Rose Issa writing,

“(Iranian film) champions the poetry in everyday life and the ordinary person by blurring the boundaries between fiction and reality, feature film with documentary… This new, humanistic aesthetic language, determined by the film-makers’ individual and national identity, rather than the forces of globalism, has a strong creative dialogue not only on home ground but with audiences around the world.” (Reel Fiction)

It would be soon after that we find the development of The College of Dramatic Arts, (1963), and the infamous story of The Cow (directed by Masoud Kimiai and Darius Mehrjui), the film that was smuggled out helping to establish the New Wave as a distinct New Iranian Cinema with a continued emphasis on a visual literacy, poetic imagery, and a fusion of fiction and realism. And it is out of this that we find the Iranian Revolution redefining the landscape as a whole. I found this lengthy descriptive from the Tavoos Quarterly regarding this transitioning from the first period to the second period to be helpful:

The storylines become simpler and easier. The dramatic turns are so matter-of-fact that they seem childish even to an average spectator. Of course the content still reflects the clash of tradition and modernity, but the narrative forms and themes have changed. The cinema of those years tried to compensate the shortcomings of society, thus, the most important social problem of those years being the growing gap between rich and poor, cinema attempts to close the gap through a fantasy approach. Of course the content of many films of the early sixties (and even later) still reflect the clash of tradition and modernity through new narrative forms. If the gap between classes in society is increasing, the classes are being reconciled in these films.

If in social reality, traditional values are being crushed by the forces of modernity, in these films, on the contrary, we witness a different phenomenon: many an urban woman who improves her life through knowing authentically traditional men, who takes refuge in religion and moral principles and thus reaches salvation; many a man who avenges women disgraced by citizens of no value, who rebels to regain values lost; and the dishonored women who have been victimized by men, who have through sheer will and effort defended their individuality against defamation.

All these various themes were already present in the cinema of the fifties, but in the sixties they become its main focus. Revenge, reconciliation of classes, and more than anything else, the tyranny of destiny, fatalism and religiosity are the dominant elements of narratives and themes. This very predestination which governs the lives of each character, rebellion against oppression and victim-adulation overshadow the content of the films (those of the first period as well as later films). They are so Irano-Islamic that there are no outstanding precedents in any other art form or period of art history in Iran… The importance of the cinema of these two periods lies in their focus on the social problems of Iran, and the socially critical mentality that is inherent in all of them. Consequently Iranian cinema of the fifties and sixties is a social cinema.

And yet, even in this time of change and in light of the revolution, the tension between social and capitalist interest remained and remains a demonstrable mark of Iranian Cinema, meaning that as the industry has developed from this point, it has continued to develop from the outside constantly pushing inward in an effort to capture, protect, and define a distinctly Iranian identity over against censorship and encroaching Western ideals. Rather than a consistency in policy, the consistency comes from a shared devotion to the cause of film and culture. This is where we find a persistent devotion to the raising up of modern voices, with the ebb and flow of the Iranian Cinematic development within its borders constantly being forced to bend to outside socialist concerns (such as in the election of Mohammed Khatemi, who provided the artists with more creative freedom within the borders of its Country).

Here we find another popular story in Iranian Cinematic History, the story of the 18 year old female Director Samira Makhmalbaf and her film The Apple which debuted at the Cannes Film Festival. Author Hamid Dabashi speaks of witnessing this moment, which helped reshape the public perception of Iran.

I was at the festival that year and saw how the global perception of Iran changed overnight from a bearded angry man (Khomeini) to the bright smiling face of a young film-maker. It was a transformative moment in the global reception of Iranian cinema and, with it, Iran itself.”

This is what is so interesting about Iranian Cinema. While it develops in international spaces with a real desire to build a National identity, the International stage at the same time is looking inward and measuring the face and shape of Iranian cinema based on what appears to be a confusing mixture of censorship and modernity giving way to a disorganized industry and a problematic culture. This is what makes Iranian filmmakers so integral and so important in their efforts to establish Iranian culture from the outside looking in. They had to do this while very much being stereotyped themselves. Which is why The Apple, and subsequently the undeniable and incredible rise of Asghar Farhadi, becomes so important. They are embodying Iranian identity through their representation and their art, and bringing it from those international places both to their home and back to these international places. “The global staging of Iranian film was a crucial component that inspired successive generations… outside Iran, and from the fertile ground of its transnational origins, a new generation of Iranian film-makers has emerged, chief among them Ramin Bahrani (Chop Shop, 2007) and Shirin Neshat (Women without Men, 2009). These directors, who have deep roots in the most enduring aspects of Iranian cinema, now carry its future into uncharted territories.”

This is where it is mind boggling and absolutely inspiring to consider that there are more graduates (from local film schools) and more female Directors than “most countries in the West”. This flips the script on how modernity happens and how cinema develops. The Diaspora, which collapsed many a global cinematic identity and culture, refused to see it as a set back, and did so in the face of danger, potential arrests, judgments and stereotypes, constantly having to adapt their language to constantly shifting and sporadic censorship, and ever shifting laws and lawmakers.

At the same time, imagine their relationship to the dominant voice of capitalism (privatization), democracy, and freedom of speech- America- has also been shaped through sociopolitical realities by way of ongoing hostilities, thus pointing them back towards the censorship within their own borders, and you have a cinematic industry that is built from the trenches and against enormous odds. And yet these filmmakers shine as bright lights, a way of travelling inbetween the competing forces of censorship and encroaching and powerful Western, capitalist ideals. An industry built as a social cinema, from the people, for the people, and while ironically built from the outside looking in, built with a love and care and concern for the culture and sociopolitical reality on the inside, both historical and present.

This is an excellent article for imaging the future of the industry, which looks even brighter as Farhadi continues to pave the way, proving that he is far from alone, and that Iranian filmmakers do not need to feel isolated in their shared endeavor:
https://www.tiff.net/the-review/the-future-of-iranian-cinema

Here is my Letterboxd watchlist of Iranian Films:
https://letterboxd.com/davetcourt/list/film-travels-2020-iran/

SOURCES
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cinema_of_Iran#:~:text=In%201930%20the%20first%20Iranian,Tehran%20cinemas%2C%20Mayak%20and%20Sepah.
http://www.bbc.com/culture/story/20181115-the-great-films-that-define-iran
Close Up: Iranian Cinema, Past, Present, Future (2001) Hamid Dabashi
‘Real Fictions’, Rose Issa
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Abdolhossein_Sepanta
“The Iranian Cinema: A Dream With No Awakening”
Iranian Cinema: Before the Revolution
M. Ali Issari, Cinema in Iran: 1900-1979
Iranian filmmakers and influence of Ancient Persian literature
Issa, Rose (1999). Life and art : the new Iranian cinema
Displaced Allegories: Post-Revolutionary Iranian Cinema
Iranian Writers, the Iranian Cinema, and the Case of “Dash Akol” by Hamid Nafici
Gönül Dönmez-Colin, Cinemas of the Other, Intellect
Hamid Reza Sadr, Iranian Cinema: A Political History
Najmeh Khalili Mahani, Women of Iranian Popular Cinema: Projection of Progress
https://www.oxfordbibliographies.com/view/document/obo-9780199791286/obo-9780199791286-0293.xml
Chaudhuri, Shohini. “Iranian Cinema.” In Contemporary World Cinema Europe, the Middle East, East Asia and South Asia. By Shohini Chaudhuri
Gaffary, Farrokh. “Cinema i: History of Cinema in Persia
Mottahedeh, Negar. “New Iranian Cinema.” In Traditions in World Cinema
https://www.bbc.com/culture/article/20200623-pink-flamingos-the-most-outrageous-film-ever-made
Iranian Cinema under the Islamic Republic by Hamid Naficy
https://www.bbc.com/culture/article/20181115-the-great-films-that-define-iran
http://www.tavoosonline.com/Articles/ArticleDetailEn.aspx?src=70&Page=1
https://offscreen.com/view/iran2
http://www.iranicaonline.org/articles/cinema-i
https://tirgan.ca/tirgan2019/event/history-of-iranian-cinema-at-a-glance-3/
https://merip.org/2001/06/iranian-cinema/
A Social History of Iranian Cinema, Volume 2 The Industrializing Years, 1941–1978 by Hamid Naficy

“It is more important to go slow and gain the lessons you need along the journey then to rush the process and arrive at your destination empty…

Every journey that we undertake should have a purpose and a deeper meaning to it. Without a purpose or intention, travel can become just a hollow pass time, a constant meaningless party, or just another thing to consume.

The journey is more like a seed we sow in the soil and it’s the intentions that’ll help us to grow and blossom, enriching the experiences beyond our imagination.”
– Riyanka Roy

“Life can only be understood backwards, but it must be lived forwards.”
– Soren Kierkegaard

“Problems are solved with solutions — destinations. They require no experience, no risk, no mystery. Experiences are what make up our journey, the stories we tell. The unknown, the yet to come.”
– James Prescott

Life is a journey. When we stop, things don’t go right.”
– Pope Francis

Six years ago we (my wife Jen and I) had the opportunity to travel to Ukraine as part of our adoption journey. In the Ukrainian international adoption process you travel to Ukraine before you choose and meet your child (and they choose you), not knowing for certain whether you will actually meet a child or if they will be okay with you (or the Court will be okay with you), how long you will be there (estimates put it at 2-3 months), or exactly how much it will all end up costing when it is all said and done.

Similarly, despite having taken two years of Ukrainian language classes before we left and Jen having Ukrainian heritage (we actually had a chance to track down and visit her family village while we were down there, which was a once in a lifetime experience), we were travelling to a Country we had never been to, knew very little about, and where even in light of our best efforts we could not speak the language. Stepping off that plane welcomed us to a whole different world, one that felt far removed from our Western, English speaking sensibilities.

While we were in Ukraine we were able to explore the South, all the way up through Odessa and the Black Sea to the very southern point of Izmail, a modest sized town/city snuggled up against the Romanian and Moldovan borders on one side, and the Danube river, which formed the border between Ukraine and “the River Delta”, on the top end. We were able to explore the West, travelling to Lviv to visit Jen’s family village in the foothills of the Carpathian Mountains, and of course we were able to spend some time in the Country’s grand central capital of Kiev, a massive city with a grand mixture of architectural styles reflecting its rich and storied history.

Ukraine is a beautiful and sadly often ignored Country, revealing a real and true diversity. One of the dominant characteristics of Ukraine’s diversity of character is its long history of being caught or stuck in the middle, representing geographic, religious and ideological dividing lines between the global East and West. This long history of being caught in the middle still persists today.

A COUNTRY STUCK IN THE MIDDLE OF HISTORY
The most recent and recognizable expression of this divide reaches back to The Orange Revolution in 2005, which ” brought Ukraine to the brink of disintegration and civil war” over its relationship with Russia in the East and it’s potential relationship with the West, planting the seeds for hopeful ties with the EU, but also finding itself mired in continuing political corruption, seat changes, accusations and convictions, eventually culminating in what became known as the Maidan Revolution (or the Revolution of Honor) of December 2013.

Funny thing. Or not so funny thing really. December, 2013 was when we were initially scheduled to leave for Ukraine, which would have had us staying in the Maidan Square (Maidan Nezalezhnosti) right before the conflict flared up, and stuck in the middle of the conflict. Some paperwork and some changes on the Canadian end of our adoption delayed our departure, landing us in Ukraine in August, 2014 instead. We were still able to witness the aftermath of the destruction, navigating the remains of burnt tires strewn across the square, finding a massive memorial lining the rails up to the central monument honoring all those who had died, and admiring destroyed building fronts now partially covered by massive Ukrainian flags.

Despite the turmoil though, the resilient spirit that we experienced in this Country, straddling the line between East and West, was apparent, life giving, and contagious.

This was particularly evident on Ukrainian Independence Day, which somewhat ironically happened to be the day we arrived in Ukraine, unbeknownst to us. I remember not being able to sleep (we had left early in the morning our time, and arrived early in the morning their time), and so, with Jen sleeping, I decided to go for a morning stroll around the Maiden square and up the main street (Khreshchatyk Street). As I was walking up the extremely wide boulevard, which it turns out actually gets shut down for pedestrians every Sunday, I suddenly saw what looked like an entire army of tanks turning a corner and heading up towards the square, their massive missiles turned upwards in a show of military strength.

I snapped some pictures (because of course that’s the first thing one does when tanks are barreling towards you), and then hastily turned to head back to our apartment, only to discover that I was now boxed in by security stops being set up along the street and blocking my way. I ended up having to make a really long and very anxious loop around so that I could sneak through the back way. By the time I got back to our apartment we figured out what was going on (Jen got a phone call to inform us that it was Independence Day celebrations, so to expect some activity around the square… no kidding) and decided, against the advice of the worker, to head out and brave the crowd as they gathered just outside our apartment to hear the recently elected President speak on their pride of place, their continued struggle, and their refusal to give in.

I have to say, this was unlike anything I have ever experienced in my life before. The power of the unified voices ringing through the streets resonated like a grand chorus amidst the massive structures, symbolically representing this iconic mix of Soviet era and ancient influence. Experiencing this definitely helped to give us a greater sense of context for understanding the struggle of a people long caught in the middle.

HISTORY AS CONTEXT
One of the things I did while we were in Ukraine was bring a few books on Ukrainian history. It was helpful for me then to set it all into context, especially as we wandered the Countryside aware of the Orange Revolution and the more recent Maiden War, which for all we knew could start again while we were there. We had been watching the news anxiously over the months leading up to our departure.

It was also helpful for gaining a greater sense of where we were geographically, and of the people who surrounded us. We might not be able to speak their language, but understanding their situation helped to bridge some of those unspoken gaps.

Not too recently in fact, on February 3rd, 2019, an important meeting took place at Saint Sophia’s Cathedral in Kyiv, Ukraine, at least partly in response to this war, which looked to grant and recognize independence to the new “Orthodox Church of Ukraine, transferring its jurisdiction from the church of Moscow to the church of Constantinople, located in Istanbul.” (Victoria Smolkin, Why a centuries-old religious dispute over Ukraine’s Orthodox Church matters today, The Conversation) Smolkin outlines why this vote was so important, locating it within Ukraine’s continued struggle for independence as a Country situated within the ongoing power struggle between East and West in religious, political, cultural and ideological terms. Not unlike learning to speak a new language, becoming somewhat literate in the political language allows moments like this to take on a new life and meaning, especially as I can frame it not just with a mental picture, but an actualized picture of being on its soil and walking with the people.

UNPACKING UKRAINE’S HISTORICAL CONTEXT: A PEOPLE CAUGHT IN THE MIDDLE
In his book The Gates of Europe: A History of Ukraine, author Serhii Plokhy, one of the authors who accompanied me on my travels, offers a more theoretical history of the Country and people whom represent arguably one of the most complicated histories in the world. Beginning, as most histories do, with a largely unbordered territory (at the time), one can only arrive at a full understanding of the Ukrainian story by way of its mix of influences and people groups, the constantly shifting powers that surrounded them, and different invaders. It is out of this that we can notice the gradual development of a recognizable mythos and origins, that of the “Rus” people taking root in what became known in its early form as Kievan Rus. It is here, in the raising up of the Rus peoples by way of the Kievan Slavs and Princely “powers”, where we can locate the Ukrainian people of today.

The challenge of unpacking and understanding the old “Kievan Rus” territory was that it gave way to what the book calls “three modern East Slavic States”- Russia, Belarus, and Ukraine. Given how Kievan Rus, the group that would evolve with the Cossacks into Ukrainains, was eventually deconstructed (by way of problematic terms of Princely succession that led to wars and conflict and complicated territorial realities along with invasions), this uncovered a need for something to bring a sense of unity. Constantinople (now Instanbul) helped to do this by way of bringing in a state religion (Christianity), connecting the “Rus” people to Eastern Christianity (Orthodoxy). A common religion gives way to a common identity and a common law.

Plohky helps to outline how, under the Princely rule of Vladimir the Great (980-1015), the grand prince of Kiev, now a center of power, and eventually under the successor Yaroslav the Wise (1019-1054), the most prosperous leader of the lands, the rise of Kievan Rus emerged from the shadows (or the light) of Constantinople, with a developed religion, language, and territorial ties providing the Rus people with that needed sense of common identity. As Constantinople declined, so did Kievan Rus, ultimately falling at the hands of the Mongols, which was the beginning of a long and tumultuous history of being caught in the middle, with the powers shifting from East to West and West to East as modern day Ukraine remained caught, in respect to its vision of trade routes, its image of being the bread basket of goods, and a symbol of shifting power and status on a global level (whoever held the land demonstrated global power).

“The arrival of the Mongols ended the illusion of the political unity of the Kyivan realm and put an end to the very real ecclesiastical unity of the Rus’ lands. The Mongols recognized two main centers of princely rule in Rus’: the principalities of Vladimir-Suzdal in today’s Russia and Galicia-Volhynia in central and western Ukraine. Constantinople followed suit, dividing the Rus’ metropolitanate into two parts. The political and ecclesiastical unity of the Kyiv-centered Rus’ Land had disintegrated. The Galician and Vladimirian princes were now busy building Rus’ lands of their own in their home territories. Although they claimed the same name, “Rus’,” the two principalities followed very different geopolitical trajectories. Both had inherited their dynasties from Kyiv, which was also their source of Rus’ law, literary language, and religious and cultural traditions. Both found themselves under alien Mongol rule.

Further outlining this history as it relates to (symbolic) Ukraine’s gradually developing relationship to (symbolic) Russia on the East by way of this divide, he writes,

“What could account for the transfer of Prince Yaroslav’s (eventual) remains all the way to the Western Hemisphere? The answer has nothing to do with American cultural imperialism but is closely associated with the Ukrainian claim to the legacy of Kyivan Rus’. Ukrainian clergymen leaving their homeland removed the relics so as to prevent them from falling into the hands of the advancing Soviet army. Concern that if returned to Kyiv, they might end up in Russia explains enough the continuing refusal of the custodians of the Brooklyn church to discuss the issue of Yaroslav’s remains with representatives of the Ukrainian government. Both Ukrainians and Russians claim Yaroslav the Wise as one of their eminent medieval rulers, and his image appears on the banknotes of both countries. The Ukrainian bill depicts Yaroslav with a Ukrainian-style moustache in the tradition of Prince Sviatoslav and the Ukrainian Cossacks. On the Russian note, we see a monument to him as the legendary founder of the Russian city of Yaroslavl, first mentioned in a chronicle seventeen years after his death. The Russian bill shows Yaroslav with a beard in the tradition of Ivan the Terrible and the Muscovite tsars of his era.”

ORTHODOXY, THE EAST-WEST SCHISM, AND UKRAINIAN (RUS) IDENTITY
With the complicated history of the Rus people lingering, where the story of Ukraine emerges in a more particular fashion is by way of its ties to Christendom, and more importantly Orthodoxy. In the article, “Why a centuries-old religious dispute over Ukraine’s Orthodox Church matters today”, Victoria Smolkin, Associate Professor of History at Wesleyan University, writes considering the most recent meeting in 2019 (mentioned above) to realign Ukrainian Orthodoxy with Constantinople,

“In the fourth century AD, Emperor Constantine made two decisions that changed the world: he made Christianity the official religion of the Roman empire, and he moved the capital of the Roman empire from Rome to the then-modest city of Byzantium, later renamed Constantinople after the emperor. With the fall of Rome in the fifth century AD, Constantinople became the uncontested center of the Roman empire, making Byzantium the center of Christian power. In the centuries that followed, the Patriarch of Constantinople challenged the universal authority of the Pope in Rome on both theological and political grounds. In 1054, this contest between Patriarch and Pope culminated in the “Great Schism,” which split the Christian world into the Catholic “West” and Orthodox “East” — a division that has shaped politics and religion to this day. Constantinople retained its position as the imperial center of Christianity for a millennium until the city fell to the Ottomans in 1453 AD. Importantly, even after the fall of the Byzantine empire as a political order and the change of the city’s name from Constantinople to Istanbul, the church retained its original name. It is the last remnant of Byzantium in the modern world. With Constantinople’s fall, Orthodox Christianity became a minority faith under Islamic rule. Moscow’s Orthodox Church became the most powerful Eastern Christian church on sovereign territory. This allowed it to position itself as the heir of the Christian empire.”

So just to track this development, a massive majority of Ukrainians are Orthodox, but where Kiev was once the center of power at the time of Constantinople, the power of Orthodoxy is now with Moscow, thus controlling the division of the Rus identity.

A GOLDEN GATE: THE CENTER OF THE WORLD
During one of our days in Kiev, we met up with Jen’s cousin Maria, a member of the family she had never met before. She took us on a tour of Kiev, which included taking us to the Golden Gate, reconstructed from the remains of the grand entrance way built by Yaroslav the Wise in 1037. It is a gateway built on the model of Constantinople, both to honor it, but also symbolic of Kiev’s interest in aspiring to be that center of power, to be Constantinople. For me, this was like, once upon a day, standing at the epicenter of the Roman ruins, touching the reconstructed Colosseum and recognizing the humble reality of standing in a place that holds so much of our Western history in its hands. Here, at the foot of the gate, I was able to imagine standing at the entrance way to the East at the center of the world, a literal standing in the middle of the East-West divide.

THE GREAT SCHISM AND UKRAINIAN ORTHODOXY
To understand the history of Ukraine in light of its claim to Orthodoxy, one needs to understand what eventually happened during The Great Schism (the sharp divide between East and West in terms of Catholicism and Orthodoxy, which follows in line with this division within Orthodoxy itself). The schism forced Orthodoxy at the time to find a way to distinguish itself in order to survive. And so it began the building of monasteries (in itself a reforming or reclaiming of the monastic traditions which began in Egypt, flowed through the East, and then to the West), an effort to attach Orthodoxy to its spiritual ideals rather than the visible and tangible structures of Roman Catholicism. This mirrors the journey of the Rus and Cossack people in a general sense, seeing them retreating into the Steppes and high lands of now Ukraine in an effort to retain their sense of identity and resist the encroaching powers. These monasteries became pilgrimage sites, a collective presence meant to help unify Orthodoxy across the old Kievan Rus lands.

One of these monasteries, built around the 11th century, was the Caves Monasteries in KIev called the Lavra (Kiev Pechersk Lavra).

Established in 1051, the Lavra is said to be the center of Eastern Orthodoxy. Connected to Constantinople, the Lavra continues to be an integral and important (and still functioning) monastic symbol of “Ukrainian Orthodoxy”, making it relevant to the battle of Orthodox lines still happening today.

Continuing to outline the central problem of Orthodoxy in Ukraine, Victoria Smolkin writes,

“Until the 16th century, Moscow remained under the religious authority of Constantinople for 300 years. But once Moscow felt powerful enough to assert its authority over Constantinople, it leveraged its position as the largest and wealthiest Orthodox church to establish its own patriarchate, the highest religious body within Orthodox Christianity… Ukrainian Orthodoxy was under the jurisdiction of the Russian church for over 300 years, until 2019.”

Which brings us to that meeting in March of 2019 and the announcement of succession. Given Ukraine has been forever stuck in the middle of competing powers, this has consistently made Ukraine dependent on these competing powers East and West. Given how tied their identity is to Orthodox religion, it also posits them within a Orthodox and Catholic divide between Moscow, Rome, and Constantinople. As the article outlines, Constantinople, pressured to protect against encroaching powers from the West, gave Russia control over the Orthodox Church in 1686, the very thing that Ukraine is trying to break in light of the Orange Revolution, the increasing divide between East and West, and Russia’s continued attempts to keep Ukraine under political, economical, geological, and ideological control. Aligning the Ukrainian Orthodox Church back with Constantinople is not only symbolic, but an actualized and realistic move to break those ties. Up until this point, the Ukrainian Orthodox Church of the Moscow Patriarchate, the Ukrainian Orthodox Church of the Kyiv Patriarchate, and the Ukrainian Autocephalous Orthodox Church… all vied for the position of national church of Ukraine on different grounds. Up until now, Moscow has been seen as the “legitimate” form, while the other two were schisms. “For Ukraine, the realignment of Ukrainian Orthodoxy from Moscow to Constantinople takes Ukraine out of the “Russian World,” an ideology that Russia uses to make claims beyond its political borders.”

To make things more complicated, “The Russian Orthodox Church, meanwhile, has broken ties with Constantinople and does not recognize the legitimacy of Ukraine’s new Orthodox Church. It continues to claim jurisdiction over Orthodoxy in Ukraine… Orthodox churches beyond Ukraine are now forced to choose between Moscow and Constantinople. The conflict over Ukraine has moved to the global stage.”

And so the great dance continues.

A SPECIAL COUNTRY
Ukraine, it is clear, holds both a special and important place in our global story, and a significant place in the stories of a people “caught in the middle” of entities fighting and clamoring for power at their expense. This was true with the Princely powers and the great schism. This was true with the developing and ever evolving powers of the Polish Lithuanian Commonwealth and the rise of the East following the Great War, with the rise of the Soviet Union, and in the modern Maiden War. Now only did this leave the land stuck in the middle, it left a people, culture, language divided according to its common Rus legacy, its Orthodoxy, its language, and its ideals. And although the relationship between memory and recorded history is difficult, what remains clear is that the people of Ukraine continue to inspire many of us (in other nations around the world) to take our own histories more seriously. This is true for the latest contests for Ukrainian land, and it was true long before they became an official nation.

ENCOUNTERING MY OWN SPIRITUAL JOURNEY: STUCK IN THE MIDDLE
Uncovering the story of Ukraine through my Western, North American perspective helped me to reconsider my own personal faith journey as well. Like many where I live in the West, I grew up under the long shadow of the Reformation, which itself stood in the long shadow of the Enlightenment. Growing up Pentecostal, my family roots reach back to the Wesleyan tradition, moving from the divided lands of Ireland with my ancestors to eventually settle in Canada. My foray into Pastoring led me to a Lutheran, a Baptist and a Mennonite Brethren Church, eventually landing me in a smaller, lesser known tradition born from Swedish Immigrants called the Evangelical Covenant Church, covering my Protestant bases and keeping me fairly sheltered from Catholicism and Orthodox traditions for most of my life.

Not unlike visiting Rome and the Vatican, which opened up my eyes to fresh insight and new curiosity regarding the Catholic Tradition (which my romp through Protestantism left me woefully unaware and afraid of), spending time in Ukraine with its grand display of Orthodoxy was equally eye opening and inspiring. Aside from the Lavra, where we got to talk with our guide, a wonderful woman of faith, and tour the cave where the old mummified saints were kept and buried, we spent time wandering through Churches and monasteries representing different sides of the Orthodox divide. Which, by the way, unlike Protestantism, isn’t built on a theological divide but rather a political and ideological one.

One of these Churches is named Saint Sophia’s Cathedral, which was just up the hill from where we were staying (and when I say just up the hill, I mean up a long enough hill to leave me out of breath by the time we climbed it, just in time for the Cathedral to leave me equally breathless).

Built around the time of the Lavra, or the Cave Monastery (around 1011, which puts it under Vladimir the Great), it is an incredible representation of Cossack tradition and architecture. Interestingly, this Cathedral stands in contrast to the nearby St. Micheals located on St. Andrews Descent, given that St. Sophia was protected from destruction by early Russian led forces while St. Micheal’s was destroyed, leading St. Micheal’s to be remade in the Russian Orthodox style.

A WORD ON THE COSSACKS
I remember one of the workers helping us with our adoption saying when she met our son Sasha that he was a true Cossack. I had no idea what that meant at the time. Now I know that it simply refers to the people of the land. Their ancestry was formed through a mixture of groups whom first occupied the land, and whom became known for being resistance warriors, a people constantly being pushed to the Steppes and into the Country side by incoming powers, and likewise pushing back. There are Ukrainian and Russian Cossacks (and more), but what distinguishes the Ukrainian Cossacks (or Zaporozhian Cossacks) is their geographical and historical association with the land, the culture, the language, and the peoples.

The Cossacks are known as the the first ones to distinguish a “Ukrainian” identity and legacy, and have long been heralded as the ones who fought to retain this identity and independence. An important part of this was, following the Mongol invasion and the shifting powers from Constantinoples decline and Russia’s rise, it was the Cossacks who, as Russia tried to consolidate the powers by taking all the territory, protected the Principality of Galicia-Volhynia on the present day Polish-Ukrainian border established by Kievan Slavs (the Rus people).

As Erhan Afyoncu writes in the article, Deep roots in history: The Russia–Ukraine clash, “Ukraine, the name of which is hypothesized to stem from “U” (at) + “Krai” (border) meaning “borderland” in Proto-Slavic, is one of the oldest settled regions in human history”, and this is primarily because it lays claim to this mixture of Cossacks and Rus (Kievan Slavs) peoples. To borrow from the dictionary definition, “Cossack’s descended from settled Khazars (Ukrainian: хозари; khozary), a seminomadic, Turkic-speaking people that appeared in southeastern Europe after the expulsion of the Huns in the 4th century and lived in the area until the 11th century. They were the eastern neighbors of the eastern Slavic tribes and then of Kyivan Rus.” Thus, these could be considered the original peoples of the land. And, as TETYANA MATYCHAK writes in the article Why Are Cossacks Key to Understanding the Ukrainian Nation, “Historians consider Zaporozhian Cossacks to be the first purely Ukrainian society. As aproto-state nation, it fought for the right to exist, develop, and resist hostile encroachments.”

A WINNIPEGER AT HEART: STUCK IN THE MIDDLE IN THE HEART OF THE CONTINENT
What’s also interesting to me is that this idea of being stuck in the middle is something that resonates on a geographical level as well as a spiritual one. A prominent voice from my hometown, Winnipeg, Manitoba, Canada, wrote a book a while back (and since then penned a sequel on Manitoba) called “Stuck in the Middle”. Author Bartley Kives writes,

“For the sake of an exercise, pretend your a god. You can go anywhere you want, by any mode of transportation you desire. What you’re most likely to desire is to travel as far away as possible from the coastlines of the continents, where the vast majority of humanity resides. This is a logical desire, as all gods consider homo sapiens a nuisance, if not a pest species. In geographic terms, they call such a place a pole of inaccessibility… in North America, however, the farthest place from anywhere is already occupied- by Winnipeg, home to more than 700,000 people and zero gods. More than any other city on the continent, Winnipeg is stuck in the middle.”

Perhaps this is why so many Ukrainians first immigrated to the Prairie lands (Winnipeg stands at a whopping 15 percent of its population). An interesting factoid. While the Prairies are reminiscent of the steppe lands in Ukraine, Ukrainian immigrants, initially choosing the prairies, established themselves strategically in the Aspen Parkland because it was reminiscent of the Carpathian Mountains, stretching from Winnipeg in an arch through Saskatchewan and into Alberta (you can follow this line on the Yellowhead Highway).

One of the interesting things about Kives’ book is how it sheds light on the relationship between being stuck in the middle and a Country (and its peoples) sense of identity. For Winnipeg, the struggle has always been measuring our wealth of natural resource and farmland and small town feel (with big city amenities) with the sense that we are stuck between the powerful economic and populated engines of Alberta on the West and Ontario in the East. As Kives writes, “There is… a half remembered sense of history. As children, most if not all of the city’s residents are imbued with at least a vague sense the city was once a very important centre, in the geopolitical context of North America as a whole. Winnipeg’s century long decent into ordinariness has given some of its residents a profound inferiority complex, as they compare the way the city is to the way it was and the way they want it to be.”

Add to this fact that Canada has a similar history of living amidst the ongoing push and pull of these East-West powers, and Winnipeg is situated within an interesting history, seemingly forever “stuck in the middle of two possible destinies”, as Kives puts it. Interestingly too, one of the defining marks of Winnipeg has been the rail road tracks that “literally” divides the city into two halves, demonstrating a clear problem of class and social struggle that doesn’t fit with it’s central motto- one with the strength of many.

For me, this curious mix of feeling stuck in the middle of this geographic and spiritual divide (between East and West) lended a particular power to my encounter with Catholicism, and then Orthodoxy in Ukraine. These grand traditions represented for me a whole new perspective and view of the world, broadening my perspective and challenging my own sense of normalcy. It’s easy when one feels stuck in the middle to consider catering to a sense of complacency and a “this is just the way it is and will always be” kind of attitude. It’s also interesting to consider the skepticism and cynicism of outsiders looking in on Winnipeg from the riches of the West or the culture of the East and laughing at our seeming “stuckness” where we are.

There is a similar feeling, then, when becoming informed and aware of these grand religious traditions that reach far back into the pages of our historical faith, predating the Reformation by quite a bit, that leads to a certain skepticism and ridicule by those who surround me in the West (beware the heresies of the East they exclaim). It reminds me of taking the bus in Ukraine, and, upon passing a Church observing the entire bus doing the sign of the cross and saying a prayer… for EVERY Church that we passed. It would have been easy for me through my Western eyes and mindset to simply write this off as strange, archaic, and even heretical. And yet, to actually engage the tradition, their faith, and their history is to grow in my perspective of my faith and become humbled in light of their own. It invites me into a greater sense of mystery, one of the great and powerful markers of Eastern Orthodoxy.

THE MISSISSIPPI: THE OTHER FORGOTTEN MIDDLE
This sense of mystery is something that becomes that much more aware for me in considering the other forgotten middle in terms of my own geographical location- the midwest. Of course the midwest gains its proper definition south of the border, largely defined by that once (and in my mind, still) majestic body of water called the Mississippi, which winds its way from the northern point of Minnesota to the mouth of the ocean in New Orleans.

When we planned our trip down the River Road a number of years back (a year before we left for Ukraine in fact), one of the great interests for me was encountering the rivers romantic past. This of course is largely thanks to Mark Twain (Samuel Langhorne Clemens). Ever since reading his book “Life on the Mississippi”, I was fascinated by this piece of Americana.

My fascination though came namely from it’s positioning as that great dividing line between East and West. As the American East became populated, it was the river that initially informed its dream of expansion. It was the river that first began to mythologize the great American narrative by way of romantic visions of life based on its confluence of trade, development and (steamboat) culture.

At the same time, it was the push to expand Westward and the eventual development of railroads and roads that rendered the river and its culture and allure somewhat obsolete, causing it to become part of a bygone era (somewhat like Route 66). This of course meant that once aspiring cities like St. Louis, named the “Gateway to the West” because of its once upon a day desire to be what Chicago became (kind of like Kiev tried to the be the gateway to the world), would struggle in that forgotten and neglected middle space inbetween the prosperous East and the glorified West, feeling somewhat neglected as history moved forward in its wake.

Another interesting factoid- Winnipeg once upon a time also took the moniker “Chicago of the North”, aspiring to be what Chicago became.

What is left of the river culture is now mostly nostalgic in its northern sections, with the exception of Minneapolis and St. Louis which remain two grand centers of river life and culture striving to fight back and retain their unique sense of identity and location. It is not until you get all the way South that you begin to gain a sense that this river, this dividing line, still has a purpose and still leads somewhere on its way to New Orleans and the great expanse of the ocean. And yet, for travelers aware of the history, there are signs still of a river that holds both life and a sense of purpose.

THE MISSISSIPPI AS A SPIRITUAL METAPHOR
Looking back on my experience of travelling the Mississippi river road, I’ve been struck by this thought that I got from the book Old Man River: The Mississippi River in North American History by Paul Schneider. Speaking of the river’s historical development, Schneider writes,

“It’s intuitive and comforting to imagine that all rivers carve themselves a channel through the landscape, so that except in times of flood their water level is below that of the surrounding countryside. A curious feature of deltaic rivers such as the Mississippi, however, is that left to their own devices they slowly raise themselves above the level of the surrounding countryside in a twofold process that takes place over the course of thousands of flood and low-water cycles (sediment gets continually dropped raising the floor of the river and building on its foundation)… the result is that over the centuries a deltaic river rises like an aqueduct, until it is literally flowing above the surrounding countryside between levees of its own making.”

Following this process, it goes on to talk about how, prior to the 20th century and man’s attempt to control the river by building structures to keep it from changing course, that whenever the elevation became unstable, the Mississippi would jump its own banks and carve a shorter path to a lower elevation. Similarly, the river today just keeps pushing back. As the author posits, “there’s nothing that man can do that nature can’t overcome.”

I found this to provide a fascinating line of thought relating to my own spiritual journey and development. What builds the river is its foundation. What drives the river is the freedom to then explore, to question, to grow, to carve new paths. But it does this in the strength of its foundation, looking to return to this foundation when things get out of control. This reminds me of the spirits work in my life, forming me against the foundation of my faith in new directions and new perspectives as I move and flow in the direction of Jesus.

What’s interesting to note in terms of the river metaphor is the mix of both natural inquiry (changing courses or growing in the faithful expression of a flowing river) and challenges (floods, natural disaster) as influential forces. It is out of the challenges and questions of life that the foundation is made re-aware and our our faith constantly reformed. This then frees us and enables us to grow and be shaped by our challenges and our questions by the spirit (the water).

There is a line in the book that really struck me as it helped shape my own exploration of the river in this fashion. It said, “You can never step into the same river twice.” This is what it means to grow. And as we grow, we grow with the ever revealing flow of the river (the spirit), never the same as we were before, constantly being made new and renewed.

Here is what’s interesting about the Mississippi in a geographical sense to this end- it now sits in the shadow of man made progress. The life that once populated the river has faded with the development of the American dream, with the grand shape of cities like St Louis and Minneapolis and small towns like Hannibal and Davenport defiantly protecting its identity in the face of these challenges, declaring that life still happens in these forgotten places, a life that is continually defined by the river that humankind has tried to control. As the author writes, “And why should a river that remembers the mile-high ice and the rising of the Rockies worry itself with the pathetic concrete fiddlings of the Army Corps of Engineers?… Sure, the occupation of all rivers is to tear down mountains, but their great talent and art is to provide a home for all manner of riverine creatures, native and volunteer alike.” Life being carved anew by the spirit inspite of our need and desire to try and control and remake this world in our image.

STUCK IN THE MIDDLE: A LONELY BUT DEFINING PLACE
Being stuck in the middle can be a lonely, frustrating, uncertain, and tough place to be, persist, and exist. Whether we are talking about an ancient, age old conflict that reaches back centuries, threatening to undermine the identity of a whole people according to the ongoing and ever evolving power struggles between east and west. Or whether we are talking about our hometown, a city that sits geographically distant from anything of significance,  itself caught up in the never ending power struggles and impossible allure of east and west. Or whether we are speaking of a forgotten river culture bound to the romance of its past and forgotten by the interests of advancement, progress, and expansion from east to west. All of these shared realities can say something significant about the spiritual journey “as” a journey. The more we experience and the more we become aware of our surroundings, including the history, the more this can challenge our perspective on faith and spiritual growth, precisely by making us aware of the struggles, particularly the struggles of being stuck in the middle. This awareness can then open us up to opportunities for growth and new discovery, challenging our givenness to the status quo and complacency.

For me, this was the inspiration I found when I stepped onto Ukrainian soil, a people aware of that sense of struggle, and given to not allowing themselves to be pulled in one direction or the other. As their history goes, so does their awareness of a distinguishable and developed Ukrainian identity, with this identity, in all of its grand Orthodoxy, providing them with a recognizable foundation on which to stake their cause and forge forward in faith and hope of newness and transformation. This was the whole purpose of Orthodoxy in the first place.

Similarly, faith as an idea moves forward in the confidence of its foundation, affirmations which can provide us with a common identity and a shared foundation, affirmations that point us towards the possibilities of discovery and growth. Faith encourages us to ask questions and to struggle, and to submit our need for certainty and answers to the foundation for the sake of this exploration and wrestling. Faith calls us not to stay stagnant and comfortable (or uncomfortable), but to be constantly striving forward in a sense of vibrancy and life and wonderment.

THE NEED FOR A FOUNDATION: IDENTITY AND FAITH
In Winnipeg, one of our biggest challenges, as Kive’s puts it, has always been the feeling that we need to “be” someone else, something else other than we are. The need to align with the more powerful West or East, to model ourselves on this model of change and growth so that we can control our destiny and become the Chicago of the North. That has always been the thing that has held us back, causing us to destroy our heritage buildings and to invest in the suburbs and the endless sprawl of new neighborhoods. Winnipeg’s strength has been, and will be found, in its common identity of a Canadian people peculiarly stuck in the middle together but leaning into our strengths, be it the arts, our Indigenous culture and story, our Exchange District, our railway system and waterways, or even our peculiar but uniquely bizarre road and pathway systems.

For the river culture, the idea of being caught between the powers of east and west falls similarly towards this idea of progress and enlightenment ideals. The kind of progress that has rendered this area of the Country a shadow of its once upon a time ambitions is a vision of progress that demonstrates the trappings of our modern, Western society. The kind of progress it imagines, one that is built around the economic engine and the American dream, is what caused the River Road to fall into decline. As it says in the book Wicked River The Mississippi When It Last Ran Wild by Lee Sandlin, “The river grew at a time when laws (or the lack of them) required people to get inventive and creative in how they purchased, managed land and approached civil life together. There was, according to the book, an extremely pervasive (and necessaary) sense of individualism required in order to surive in the developing river towns.”
And yet, to know anything about Minneapolis’ strengths is to find a city built around the waterways and its natural climate, bringing a sense of togetherness in the common love and appreciation of its natural landscape. The land of lakes and the river city is one that is carving its own path seemingly stuck in the middle of America’s grand East-West dichotomy. Similarly so for St. Louis. It’s civic and cultural revival (or many revivals) came from letting go of the need to be Chicago and figuring out what it means to be St. Louis (with a park that rivals Central Park in size btw).

For Ukraine, as it struggles in this push and pull between the Western and Eastern powers, it’s own liberty will be found in being freed to forge its own identity, not  necessarily on Western or Eastern ideals, but on its own rich, Cossack and Orthodox history. To visit Ukraine is to be left awestruck by how unique and rich in history it is, and that is very much a product of being stuck in the middle. This reality has nevertheless been the same thing that has led to its ongoing struggle, leading to much oppression. But it’s future does not depend on becoming someone other than who it is, a spirited land and people with an incredible claim to civilized history, religious formation, and a devoted way of life that sits somewhere between the Turkish awareness of antiquity, the staunchness and gruffness of the Russians, the religiosity and cultural convictions of the Polish, and the romanticism of the Italians. In other words- they are distinctly Ukrainian, and that is what will lead them into the future, beholden to mystery and wonder of the world, not conformity.

LEARNING TO EMBRACE THE MYSTERY: THE NATURE OF THE JOURNEY
As the extremely talented writer Blake Collier puts it in an article on our need to know (amidst prevailing conspiracy theory in film, in his case).

“We are uncomfortable with limitations. We are uncomfortable with the inability to make sense of things. It is the long legacy of the Enlightenment bearing down on us from the 1700s. Back when we believed that science and human perception and reason would be able to reveal the dark shadows of the gods and bring about a utopia borne of this newly revealed knowledge. Yet 300 years of history has only shown us that the mystery never ends, it just recedes into the microcosms of molecular particles and expands out into the galaxies of space and potential alternate universes. Humanity is forever chained to the mysteries that follow in the wake of new discoveries.”

There is a poignant reminder regarding this embrace of mystery though that surfaces in the book Old Man River when referencing the Mississippi river’s end, Louisiana. “So Louisiana continues to sink into the sea under the weight of its load of ice-age mud, while the only thing that can save it- the river of mud that made it in the first place- is shackled from top to bottom. The bayou, in other words, has been sold down the river.”

All the efforts to control the river in the name of human progress, in the name of human knowledge and human effort are actually the thing that could sink the city that sits on the confluence of the river and the great ocean. And much of that is because progress has happened at the neglect of its foundation. It’s a reminder to remember our foundation so as to be able to rekindle and swim and flow in the freedom found in the rivers unpredictable flow. The spirits ability to reshape and remake us according to those virtues, according to its unfolding mystery, forms from its foundation.

LOOKING FROM WEST TO EAST AND BACK AGAIN: GAINING A MORE GENEROUS ORTHODOXY

“The East will tolerate any amount of schism, but no heresy. The West will tolerant any amount of heresy, but no schism. We desperately need each other.”
― Charles A. Coulombe

A part of what encountering some of the amazing aspects of the Eastern Orthodox and Catholic Traditions over the last number of years has taught me is that a deeply important part of the spiritual journey is a willingness to simply embark on the journey. I think the quote above, or at least how I’m taking it, is using it in a more generalized sense to connote the common divisions between the two sides that I have perceived in the 3 geographical places I referenced above. I was always taught as a Protestant that Catholicism and Orthodoxy was heresy and dangerous and strange and just to avoid it at all costs (even going so far as to say it would condemn me based on a false prophet). The irony is that the East looks at the many schisms in the West and sees within that a long list of theological “constructions” (read: heresies) that have set it, in some cases, far off of Orthodox (faithful Christian) belief and practice.

This while the West basically continues to differentiate itself based on the “right” Gospel, using that as the measure by which it condemns Orthodoxy as heresy while denying its own rampant schism.

The spirit, though, is seen in recognizing that we need one another. Growing in my awareness of the Christian tradition, and broadening my perspective beyond the East-West divide has allowed me to cultivate a spirit of exploration and wonder, enchanted by the sense of mystery and magic that Eastern Orthodoxy retains in the face of a far more rationalistic West. I have been taught to measure everything by my inherited Enlightenment ideals, and yet setting foot on Ukrainian soil opened me up, in my particular awareness of what it is to be stuck in the middle of my own East-West divide, to my need to give up control and the need to know. It ignited in me a spirit of humility, and gave me a way to reconnect with my sense of wonder and awe that I had seemed to have lost. For that I am forever grateful.

A GREAT BIG WORLD OF FAITH TO EXPLORE
To realize how big our world of faith actually is is to be in tune with the flow of the river, finding a common foundation made of mud and sediment holding this diversity in place, but also finding that the river is willing to jump those barriers and those banks as we grow, even against our attempts to control it and limit it to our ideals. Eastern Orthodoxy need not be heretical or scary. This truth is especially pertinent in a Western society that has been especially keen to build barriers and try and control the river so as to make it do what we want and what we expect it should do (according to our enlightenment ideals). Coming back to the general flow of the river, in its freedom to move and explore and forge new paths as it carves its own unique identity within us as persons, as peoples as Countries and as movements, is a freeing thought to me, especially understanding that the value of Tradition and Orthodoxy is in providing me with a foundation that allows me to do this as part of the sacred and embodied spiritual practice. Allowing us to uncover the mystery, not to simply call us to be content and confine myself to a singular perspective. And what a beautiful thing faith has become to me in light of this.

To quote Eastern Orthodox Elder Thaddeus of Vitovnica, “One should preach not from one’s rational mind but rather from the heart. Only that which is from the heart can touch another heart… (in this way) “humility is a Divine property and the perfection of the Christian life.” To be driven by humility is allow the river to carry us where it will, trusting that its foundation will carry us through to the grand ocean of the new creation that awaits.

One last quote from Paul Evdokmov regarding the grand image of the Cross in relationship to humanity across that East-West divide:

“The East is unfamiliar with those confessions, memoirs, and autobiographies so beloved in the West. There is a clear difference in tonality. One’s gaze never lingers on the suffering humanity of Christ, but penetrates behind the kenotic veil. To the West’s mysticism of the Cross and its veneration of the Sacred Heart corresponds the eastern mysticism of the sealed tomb, from which eternal life eternal wells up.”

SOURCES:
1. (https://www.britannica.com/place/Ukraine/The-Orange-Revolution-and-the-Yushchenko-presidency)
2. https://www.reuters.com/article/us-ukraine-church/ecumenical-patriarch-signs-decree-granting-ukraine-church-independence-idUSKCN1OZ0AO
3. https://www.washingtonpost.com/world/europe/tensions-between-russia-and-ukraine-spill-over-to-byzantine-world-of-orthodox-church/2018/10/10/89222b92-c802-11e8-9b1c-a90f1daae309_story.html
4. https://www.pri.org/stories/2019-02-19/why-centuries-old-religious-dispute-over-ukraine-s-orthodox-church-matters-today#:~:text=Its%20origins%20date%20to%20988,Rus’%20was%20subservient%20to%20Constantinople.
5. https://www.dailysabah.com/feature/2018/12/06/deep-roots-in-history-the-russiaukraine-clash
6. https://ukraineworld.org/articles/ukraine-explained/why-are-cossacks-key-understanding-ukrainian-nation
7. Ukraine: The Essential Guide to Customs and Culture
8. Awesome Ukraine: Interesting Things You Need to Know
9. Feasting On Asphalt: The River Run by Alton Brown
10. Old Man River: The Mississippi River In North American History by Paul Schneider
11. Ukraine: An Illustrated History by Paul Robert Magocsi
12. Suck in the Middle: Dissenting Views of Winnipeg by Bartley Kives
13. Wicked River: The Mississippi When it Last Ran Wild by Lee Sandlin
14. The Gates of Europe: A History of Ukraine by Serhii Plokhy

Hirokazu Kore-eda, the celebrated Japanese Director (Shoplifters) has returned with his latest film, The Truth. This is the first movie the Japanese writer-director has made in another tongue or country. It also finds him shifting his focus from East to West, the Truth being a French-English film focused on life in its French setting.

A typical marker of Eastern narratives is that they tell stories using a circular structure rather than the more linear, progressive arcs that we find in the West. While Western storytelling tends to be concerned with showing how a character moves or grows from point A to Point B, representing clear pictures of consequence or reward, Eastern storytelling tends to frame its stories through bookends, which allows the body of the film to then explore, often in a more nuanced and less than linear fashion, characters, questions or ideas in a way that brings us back to where the story started with a greater awareness of the character, question or idea. If one pays attention to the story structure in The Truth, you can notice the use of book ends in establishing the film’s central question. We find our main character, played by the wonderfully nuanced and embodied Catherine Deneuve, speaking to reporters in the opening sequence and being asked the question, “what will you say when you get to Heaven.” This is the question that the film then explores, with the Director infusing The Truth with a recognizable Eastern flavor in terms of how he approaches the story in a Western context.

The Film Within a Film: Plot Devices and Character Development
The Truth uses the “film within a film” plot device as a way to explore the central question. Deneuve’s character Fabienne is an aging film star and a mother to a daughter (Lumir, played by Juliette Binoche) whom has decided to pay her a visit along with her husband (Ethan Hawke) and daughter (Clementine Grenier) while Fabienne is shooting her newest film. The film Fabienne is shooting is a science fiction film that tells the story of a mother-daughter relationship, providing an obvious literary (or visual) parallel for the actress’ own relationship with her daughter Lumir.

The film within the film is also a story about aging, exploring the passage of time and the idea of memory, which then becomes a mirror for the struggle that exists between the actress and her daughter as well. These parallel story lines position the characters along a sharply defined generational line. We have the daughters daughter, an optimistic, energetic little girl who looks at the relationships around her with a bright eyed, inquiring disposition. We have the daughter and her husband, representing two, complicated but complimentary nuanced characters whom are trying to navigate life amidst their own struggles (such as Hawke’s character’s past struggle with alcoholism). And then we have the aged mother, whom is forced to look back on her life and contend with her story in light of this broken relationship with her daughter.

Generational Lines And Finding Meaning in the Passage of Time
Littered among this is a cast of auxiliary characters whom provide different shades of perspective on these working generational lines. My favorite is the older family member, I think he is an uncle, and the daughter, whom seem to be lost in their own little, joy filled worlds, even while the relationships around them are breaking down. There is Fabienne’s husband, who is trying to be a voice and a presence in Fabienne’s life while also giving her room to figure things out at her own pace. And there is the fellow actress, whom plays a role alongside Fabienne in the film within a film.

The discussion of these generational lines looks to find meaning in the passage of time from different ends of the spectrum. On one end, the young daughter lives as if she has all the time in the world. On the other end, Fabienne is trying to come to terms with both her life and her career. Through the film’s central question, what becomes clear is Fabienne’s inner struggle. She knows her mistakes and her failures, but she is looking for a way to rewrite her narrative. This translates into material terms, as she describes a concern for sacrificing her soul rather than her body. She chooses to find meaning and worth in her life through her art, but in superficial terms that actively try to disguise the feelings she has of herself on the inside by seeking after admiration and status. She chooses to ignore what her relationship with her daughter was actually like, and as the film goes on, the way that she views her art is also revealed a less than accurate picture of the truth. We see this in her need to compare herself to the actress she is acting alongside in the film within a film, and also in her need to tear down her daughters husband, a self described ‘second rate’ actor who has just happened to find a way to make a living doing what he enjoys. There is a heartfelt honesty to the way that Koreeda depicts Hawke’s character as subtly self aware, offering his genuine appreciation and being in awe of Fabienne’s career and talent. While she tears him down, he keeps on being her biggest fan.

The Performance and The Truth
The presence of her daughter is what keeps the mother from being able to define herself according to these ideas she has created for herself, with her daughter reminding her of her past and forcing her to face it in a more truthful light. This part of the narrative develops alongside the film within the film, offering us a fascinating picture of art informing life, and of life informing art. Increasingly, we get this sense that as Fabienne comes to term with her truth, her performance in the film becomes more and more embodied and more realized as well, which then becomes a cathartic and informing thing for Fabienne that tries to breathe truth back into her off screen relationship with her daughter.

The film’s setting should not be undersold here either. As the daughter and her family are walking up to this grand palace that is their mother’s (and grandmother’s) house, they note its presence as almost fantasy like. This alludes to something of a grand facade, which contrasts later with scenes of them looking out from the house into the grass and the trees and finding a clearer truth, a more defined beauty. The larger setting is Paris, but the house feels isolated and somewhat removed, belonging to a narrative that appears to bound to its own sense of place and time. In this we find a kind of tragic beauty, and a joyful sorrow. There is the lamenting of time lost, time passed, of mistakes that can’t be undone, even as we get this inner longing for second chances, honesty, and renewal. The truth must be faced before it can be reconciled or recast, and these family dynamics persist through the film’s interest in uncovering the truth as that which is hidden, held bondage to the passing of time. It’s as if time wants to forget, but time can also not move forward in a meaningful way until it contends with the past. Which is ultimately what calls them into the present moment.

Facing The Past in This Present Moment
My favorite moment in the film to this end was the dance sequence. It’s such an unexpected scene that breaks through the tension of the relational dynamics and places the film’s question about time, memory and retrospection into the beauty of a moment. It is spontaneous. It’s the one moment in the film where time truly seems to just stop, and we get to see these characters let go of the burden of the passage of the time. It’s the kind of  touch only someone like Koreeda could afford, and it captures with such intimate and careful observation this idea that recognizing conflict and tension within ourselves represents a way forward, not the kind of kind of condemnation that leaves us bound to our past. Mistakes and lost opportunities don’t need to render us failures or leave us unloved. In fact, it is in making our failures aware within our relationships that we find freedom, acceptance, forgiveness and understanding. 

Bookends and Circular Storytelling: Shedding Light on the Question
As the film returns to the question that we find in the beginning, bookending the journey, we arrive back at this place with a much clearer picture of the truth of who these characters are and the struggles they carry. This helps to shape the central question from within a new and more informed light and understanding. Is Fabienne defined by her failure? Or is her value and worth found in learning to acknowledge her weakness. She allowed her uncertainty about who she is, her disatisfaction with who she is, and her fear of being revealed for who she really is, to build these protective walls of defense, choosing to find her worth in the failure of others rather than in her acceptance of her past. She demeans Hawke’s character, a second rate actor who struggled with alcoholism, while silently struggling with alcohol herself and ignoring what she did to make her way to the top. As her husband says at one point, she needs to feed into her crew and her cast, let them know that she couldn’t do what she is doing without them. She quietly admits to knowing this is the truth, even while still slipping into harmful patterns.

And this is what Koreeda does so well. He has an amazing ability to reach into these different familial and relational dynamics and pull the truth of who they are to the surface, not in a sense of doing away with the struggle and giving everything an easy resolution, but in helping us to imagine the struggle, helping us to see what it is to carry a burden. The film is about coming to grips with the idea that life is not perfect. As Koreeda ruminates on the idea of the passage of time, how we remember, and how we lean into memory in particular ways, becomes a key part of locating and finding the truth. It is a reminder that the ways in which we are shaped by time is intimately connected to ways in which we are shaped by relationship. This is why reconciliation is a relational concept. It is a way of saying, despite our failures we are loved and we can love in return, precisely for who we are and what we are. This is both the risk and the reward that we take when we allow ourselves to face the truth of our lives, helping to bring beauty out of the pain, and helping to recast the truth of who we are over and against the false self, that which is hidden in a performance. And as the film within a film demonstrates, sometimes it is the performance that can help to reveal our true self as well, particularly when we allow our performance to be shaped and informed by our real life experience.

In the  book Magical Reel: A History of Cinema in Latin America by John King, King writes about the nature of studying, or trying to study Latin American Cinema, suggesting it is a complicated endeavor given that “Latin America Cinema is (made up of) a whole bunch of imperfect sources.” He goes on to suggest that this has played a role in Global Cinema looking in on Latin America and assuming that it only holds relevance in the past 30-40 years, and that anything else is hidden by the absence of any real industry or disagreeable “socialist” politics. This unfortunate assumption is part of the challenge trying to gain an accurate glimpse of cinema’s development in Latin America, particularly as it tries to locate it within the pages of a diverse yet interconnected history.

In my previous blog on Mexican Cinema, a necessary starting point for following Latin America’s cinematic growth and development, I noted that Mexico represents a key point of discussion primarily because of the way it acts as a defining line between the ever shifting influence of Mexico and America as competing and dominant industries. A secondary, if slightly later sort of influence arises from Cuba. In both cases, Mexico and Cuba position Latin America Cinema within a picture of revolution, and ongoing revolution. An understanding of Latin American Cinema comes through an understanding of the force and necessary power of smaller film industries set over and against the dominant influences.

One of the ongoing narratives of Global Cinema is the growth and dominance of “Hollywood” set over, sometimes in partnership to and sometimes over and against, competing forces of influence. In most, if not all cases, what you find hanging in the balance is a connection between a Country’s ability to find and discover it’s own voice, and thus the voice of it’s Country’s socio-political narrative, and identity. Closely connected to this is a Country’s ability to also relocate it’s identity beyond these international influences and towards the story’s of the indigenous people’s, whom hold a Country’s ethos captive in what are often lost narratives to histories of power and money. This might sound counter intuitive, but small industries matter more than big ones in terms of the relationship of art to the shaping of politics and social realities/struggle. The film industry, as the most dominant and visible art form of our time, is intimately tied to the development of these Countries given its emergence in the pages of history alongside the development of these Countries. It is the primary “social” art of our day.

This is indeed the familiar story of many of the Countries that make up a collective Latin American identity. The struggle to develop a cinematic identity mirrors their struggle to give voice to their people and culture, being subsumed by the pressures of money and power. And yet, to dig underneath these competing powers and influences is to find the story represented within the ongoing struggle that forms these national identities, particularly as one tries to locate an equally important “Latin American” identity.

REVOLUTION AND THE ROLE OF FILM
What holds our understanding of Latin American Cinema together, then, are two complimentary “revolutions”- Mexico’s “ready made” revolution and Cuba’s developing revolution. “The beginnings of Latin American cinema correlate with the the incorporation of (uneven) Latin Economies into the world (King, Magical Reel: A HIstory of Cinema in Latin America)”, and the doorway into the world (international presence) flows first form Mexico, in which we find the history of the Mexican revolution handing the primary influence of Latin America Cinema to Mexico over and against America, and then out of Cuba, out of which we find a working template for revolution for the diverse forms of “New Latin American” cinema that empowers the many smaller industries of this geographical based identity.

“Unlike other Countries in Latin America, Mexico’s revolution gave it a ready made presence, theme, topic, substance and purpose. (Magical Reels)”

“It is difficult to underestimate the importance of Cuba in helping to shape the growth of a radical consciousness throughout Latin America…. the Cuban model for revolutionary change might not have been successful in other areas, but it definitely had achievements in art and stands as symbolic. (Magical Reels)”

I’ve already written much about the influence of the Mexican revolution and their development into a key cinematic influence, so perhaps my time here will be better spent narrowing in on Cuba on that incredibly influential period of the 60’s and 70’s (informed by the 40’s the 50’s) that led to the rise of the “New” cinema. However, let me at least say this. One of the biggest outcomes of Mexico winning that cinematic tug of war between itself and America is the protection of a “socially” minded or “socialist” identity. What could have been defined as a negative force that needed to be abolished in America’s push to democratize (and therefore liberate) colonized nations and countries under its influence was actually allowed to grow and develop according to a larger European led mindset regarding socially driven ways of thinking and viewing their world and history. Perhaps the most important aspect of this is the resistance of Latin America to economies burdened by American style growth of industry. What I found in these different Countries is an opportunity for both the story of their present and the story of histories to emerge unscathed and ready to be embrace and challenged in different ways through the power of cinema. And of course, the way this happens is through the embrace of “revolution”.

In any case, the language of “revolution” was already written into the story of Latin American’s development, and what an understanding of the Cuban Revolution then provides is a way into a ready made environment in which people were craving an opportunity to allow the cinema of the present to inform their past for the sake of their future.

THE CUBAN REVOLUTION AND THE GROWTH OF NEW CINEMA
As King suggests in Magical Reels, the “New Cinemas”, which is about to emerge from the 40’s and 50’s, “grew up in the imagination of revolution” that Mexico set the stage for and Cuba helped to define. That this happens through complicated regimes, dictatorships, and growing understandings of socialist values is the most wondrous and informing aspects of Latin American cinema.

A basic understanding of Cuban film begins with recognizing the shift of a period in which, leading up to the 1960’s had a significantly small repertoire of film (the stats suggest around 80 films in total, which according to Mike Gonzelas in his article on Imperfect Cinema, “were almost entirely light commercial films linked to the entertainment and sex industries that were Cuba’s main source of foreign earnings after sugar”), and a post revolutionary period that saw a cinema reclaim (or even claim) an identity. Of course this comes out of the Country’s connection to it’s past, but it is most defined by the development of the ICAIC (Instituto Cubano del Arte y la Industria Cinematográficos ), itself born from the “first culture law” of the revolutionary government. This institution recognized film as “the most powerful and provocative form of artistic expression, and the most direct and widespread vehicle for education and bringing ideas to the public.” Move beyond the wikipedia’d information of this institution though, and you will find that it’s development is connected directly to Cuba’s widespread influence on the “New Latin American Cinema” movement throughout Latin America particularly as it frees Countries and their people to “imagine” revolution in their particular contexts. Not only are the 10 years proceeding from the development of this institution considered the “Golden Age” of Cuban cinema, it claims and reclaims the golden ages of films across the region, largely in conversation with their own unique cinematic histories in tow and conversation.

THE THREADS OF A CINEMATIC REVOLUTION
You can’t talk about the ICAIC without talking about the Latin-American ICAIC News  (Noticiero ICAIC Latinoamericano). “The Social Documentary in Latin America” is a wonderful source of documented and studied information of the integration of “news” and film as an “interpretative” source of the stories that inform the different Countries that make up Latin America.

“The main thing that distinguishes Cuba’s newsreels from elsewhere is that they do not limit themselves to recording a given reality, but offer a specific and explicit interpretative vision of the various realities they record.”
– THE SOCIAL DOCUMENTARY IN LATIN AMERICA

There is a fascinating conversation that emerges from this article that talks about the relationship Cuba saw between News sources and film as a marriage of “forms”. If “news” can be determined and shared as an “interpretative” process, that means that news is what informs all of art as an active “social commentary”. The difference between forms, as the article suggests, be it press, radio, television, film, and books, is defined by the speed in which they reflect on information. This is where Cuba saw value in the form of film, in its necessary lack of speed in creation (even in the sense of distribution as well, given that the amount of reels they had was far outnumbered by the amount of cinemas or screens they needed to be screened on), as something that can reflect news or information in a more timeless, valuable, and permanent way. Film, by nature of its form (film language, according to the article, has two essential means of interpreting reality in “form”- framing and editing) evokes the universality of the working image. It can, by way of this form, reflect on information in ways that are as valuable, or even more valuable, than quicker forms, which often get caught up in the immediate antagonizing nature of socio-political voices and entities. It is about creating permanent interest, and often does this by way of existing beneath the politics. In what I thought was a brilliant way of describing this, the article makes this working distinction- information is closed work, interpretation is open work. Interpretation plays the role of “denouncing injustice, mobilizing support, bearing witness, inciting viewers to analyze or combat powers and information”, and these things should not be above scrutiny themselves. That is the nature of a perpetual and ongoing revolution.

Another great source for understanding the development of this institute and the Newsreels is Iconoclasm & Experimentalism: From Revolutionary Roots to Today’s Cuban Cinema. It helps give definition to how the relationship of Cuba to both Mexican and American influence positioned it in an almost ironic position in terms of the breadth of its influence post revolution, and the current state of its modern industry amidst new found agreements with America. Much of what it helps point out is Cuba’s ability to rethink and rediscover the value of socialism, particularly in relationship to film as an art form rather than an industry:

“Three months after the dictatorship was overthrown, the new regime created a film institute, the ICAIC, which would quickly demonstrate that where there’s a will there’s a way. The new institute (an effectual state monopoly) was empowered to function as producer, distributor, and exhibitor, (but) it was also designed to operate autonomously—an autonomy it would fiercely defend over the coming years, first against liberals who attacked it as hardline Marxist and then against hardline Marxists who attacked it as bourgeois.

The new Cuban cinema was entirely modern. It represented the confluence of the two avant-gardes, the political and the aesthetic, and its revolutionary ideology was shared by political filmmakers across Latin America. The difference was that Cuba had escaped the domination of its screens by the US majors and was liberated from the cultural imperialism of Hollywood… although the new independent filmmakers do not see themselves as part of the old project of revolutionary cinema, they readily acknowledge Cuba’s rich revolutionary film culture as a significant source of inspiration, especially its tradition of iconoclasm and experimentalism. They are not in oedipal rebellion against their artistic fathers: they have what (is) called a “genealogical conscience.” But in assuming a critical eye towards their reality, they do so from another angle, through another prism.

Inevitably this leads to political tensions. Film has always been seen in Cuba as a primarily artistic rather than commercial endeavor… (however) the future is uncertain. The rapprochement with Washington in 2014 led to a loosening of restrictions, and Hollywood was quick to respond… it (now) looks more like a return to the fate… in which Cuba serves Hollywood primarily as an exotic location. Meanwhile it remains absolutely true that in the current order of things, making films in small underdeveloped countries is never going to be easy.
– Iconoclasm & Experimentalism: From Revolutionary Roots to Today’s Cuban Cinema

As the article suggests, “Cuba was destined to remain merely an outpost of the Mexican film industry and occasional host to Hollywood films seeking exotic locations” until revolution helped it to break free from the grips of these dominant powers. The sad reality today is that increased American infiltration into its landscape actually sets it in danger of being cut off from it’s shared roots with Mexican cinema as well, and therefore the story of its influential presence throughout Latin America by nature.

THE VOICE OF THE PEOPLE AND THE VOICE OF THE GOVERNMENT: A WORKING CINEMATIC CONVERSATION OF SOCIOPOLITICAL INTERESTS
This living and existing beneath the powers and the politics in by way of an afforded autonomy, saw in the 70’s a growth of films dealing with modern sociopolitical issues in Cuba (by way of the ICAIC, under the new leadership of Julio García Espinosa). You find an increase at this point in history in the recognition of Cuban Cinema as as whole, and in it’s influence in the construction of important Latin American cinematic functions, such as the International Festival of New Latin American Cinema. One of the most important sociopolitical realities of this time was the demise of the Soviet Union, which complicated international relationships and confused the relationship between Cuba’s politics and it’s art. Historical study recognizes the impact of its ability to retain its influence through artistic growth during what is known as the “Special Period” (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special_Period), an understudied component in Latin America Cinema.

This also heightened the reality of what history knows as the Cuban Diaspora, which is an important distinguishing line in terms of Cuba’s ability to establish an ethos and a particular “Cuban” culture and Cubans who are making films abroad looking in on Cuba from the outside, which of course comes with particular perceptions. This is a common thread in global cinema at large, and often forms of the heart of the struggle in terms of a Countries ability to build and establish a culture. These diaspora’s which happen in times of sociopolitical struggle and war, can often be seen as a form of liberation for those who have escaped oppression, which it of course is and can be. But what is often less documented, particularly for those places that have welcomed this immigration, is the long term impact this has on the Countries ability to retain its culture. You see this in Germany, where you see a long standing struggle to embrace its past and build on its past. You see this in a place like the Philippines, where mass exodus has meant a large struggle for that Country in building its culture and establishing its culture moving forward.

All of which sheds light on both the future of Cuban art and culture, and the ways it’s past can inform it in particular ways. The future is defined by this positioning caught between two powers, both it’s reestablished relationship with Russia via Putin, and it’s recent policies which have allowed American influence to gain a firm hold on it’s cultural landscape. The past, in which it finds a wide spread influence as a relevant voice in creating and building a uniquely “Latin American” culture, can best be viewed in Cuba’s most recognizable movement, “Imperfect Cinema”. In 1968–88, which provides a dividing line between the future and the past, “the most common and desired form of film used in Cuba was Imperfect Cinema.” As Julio Espinosa continues to say in his article “For an Imperfect Cinema”,

“Nowadays, perfect cinema — technically and artistically masterful — is almost always reactionary cinema. The major temptation facing Cuban cinema at this time — when it is achieving its objective of becoming a cinema of quality, one which is culturally meaningful within the revolutionary process — is precisely that of transforming itself into a perfect cinema.”

The author goes on to establish why this important.

Imperfect Cinema, seen in light of the Cuban cultural ethos, “was creative, innovative and possessed a distinctive style that is typically a very thought provoking original work of art (wikipedia).” It is an embodiment of “revolutionary” filmmaking according to Anna Taylor, a recgonizable voice on Latin American Cinema. If, as Mike Gonzela stated, the 80 feature films that were produced in Cuba before the 1959 Revolution were “almost entirely light commercial films linked to the entertainment and sex industries that were Cuba’s main source of foreign earnings after sugar”, then what history also shows is “Fidel Castro was quick to recognize the importance of cinema in promoting and consolidating the revolution.” The wikipedia page on imperfect cinema in Cuba quotes this well from its sources, saying that “Imperfect films captured the viewer’s attention because the relevance of the story line matched what the audiences were experiencing in their own lives”, going on to quote from Garcia saying that, “only in the person who suffers do we perceive elegance, gravity, even beauty; only in (them) do we recognize the possibility of authenticity, seriousness, and sincerity. Not only does imperfect cinema represent the struggles of the people it also reveals the process which has generated the problem (Espinosa, Julio Garcia. For an Imperfect Cinema).”

Garcia further describes it this way.

“The subjective element is the selection of the problem, conditioned as it is by the interest of the audience-which is the subject. The objective element is showing the process-which is the object. Imperfect cinema uses the audience as the subject to show the process of the problem as the object.”

So why is this important to a study of Latin American cinema? Because in this depiction of “Imperfect Cinema’ we can locate the language of “revolutionary cinema” that informs the Countries, made up of smaller industries, that make up Latin America.

THE CHALLENGE OF SMALLER INDUSTRIES IN A BIG INDUSTRY DIGITAL AGE
With this as our working backdrop- the revolution of Mexico and the revolution of Cuba, I can now move to look at Latin America cinema at large. What’s important to recognize here are two central developments in cinematic history:
1. The invention of the digital age- Digital film brings with it both increased possibilities and increased challenges. One of the biggest opportunities digital film brings is the opportunity for smaller industries to create film on smaller budgets. One of the biggest challenges that digital film creates are blurred lines between culturally formed and informed cinema and international presence.
2. A growing and largely undefined global cinema- History is the story of competing powers and politics, and in the modern age this has been informed by and through cinematic development (on a sociopolitical level). In the digital age, the increasingly blurred lines of an international industry and global cinema can create an ongoing tension and struggle in the relationship between a Country’s sociopolitical struggle (their story) and the investment of art, primarily in how it translates internally in terms of “investment” in a Country’s particular cultural formation. This makes the power struggles that still exist within the industry less obvious and less immediately aware, with the smaller industries being the ones that tend to suffer the most.

In nearly all of the Latin American Countries, one can note the presence of this strength and its challenge.

ARGENTINA: TANGO, REVOLUTION, AND AMERICAN INFLUENCE
Moving from Mexico and Cuba into the larger Latin American Cinematic landscape, the two most recognizable of the smaller industries are Brazil and Argentina. What sets these two Countries apart in terms of their cinematic identity and its relationship to “revolutionary cinema” is their ongoing commentary on race and politics from a particular Latin American history and perspective.

For Argentina, you can see a gradual development shaped by Argentinian born stories. That most of their films were adaptations of Argentinian authors and stories is what helped to shape their identity according to a specific awareness of class representations in their Country (as one descriptive puts it- impoverished or poor heroes and rich villains are a staple of Argentinian cinematic identity). To simplify this into the Argentinian sociopolitical identity, one can break it into five essential parts- the early years (1896-1930’s), (1930’s-1950’s), (1950’s-1980’s), (1980’s-1990’s) and (1990’s-present). These working parts can help narrow in on the development of Argentinian Cinema (in relation to Latin American cinema) and different points of necessary revolution.

If the early years in Argentina provides the foundation for this working commentary on socioeconomic classes, an interesting point of historical development begins to emerge along the border between Uruguay and Argentina in a complicated fashion. Given the widespread recognition of Tango, which comes by way of Argentinian films (and in arguably more tainted ways in international depictions of Argentinian culture), holds in its hands Latin America’s colonial past and the tango’s indigenous and African roots. This emerges as well in the story of Brazil and Brazilian cinema, which has a more particular and aware Afro-Brazilian representation struggle, but in the case of Argentinian cinema, it is fascinating to follow the development of Argentinian Cinema from the lens of Tango, given the ways Tango was associated with corrupted forms of life and culture (in terms of seeing it as a less than conservative expression of lifestyle, sexuality, and liberation). In Argentinian Cinema, the Tango is used largely to demonstrate the class struggle, and thus becomes an important interpretative voice in their culture. This is connected to early cinema which filmed “the estates, the money, and the upperclass” as a way of shedding light on Argentinian class distinctions.

In the 1930’s, you see the global development of sound cinema, which carries with it a common global development of narrowing cultures according to language. As cinematic history reveals, it is much easier to translate across cultures by way of silent film than it is through language, which still exists in a resistance to “subtitles”. As a small industry, it is sound that helps give voice to a more established Argentinian industry (through the development of local studios) that builds on its dedication to Argentinian voices (literature).

In the 1950’s, where we see the growth of television, we can locate Argentina within the revolutionary language of Cuba by way of “Third Cinema”, one of the first expressions of the larger movement of “The New Latin American Cinema”. This is again an oversimplication of a larger political reality (read: https://clas.berkeley.edu/research/argentina-persistence-peronism for context), but as  Veronica Herrera describes, “The Peronist movement redefined Argentina in 1946, forever changing the political trajectory of the country.” This flows out into cinema, carrying it’s focus on the divide between the social classes with it. This gives us a backdrop for this focus:

“At the turn of the century, Argentina seemed destined to become a regional leader. Early industrialization attracted a large influx of European immigrants, and the country’s population grew sevenfold from 1887 to 1930. Argentina enjoyed increasing economic prosperity by exporting grains and high end products such as beef and leather goods. The conservative elites who dominated these industries ensured their own political survival through the electoral fraud that dominated Argentine politics until 1916. It was then that their traditional rivals, the Radicals, won control of the presidency with the election of Hipólito Yrigoyen. The first of many military coups ended Yrigoyen’s administration and returned the conservatives to power. This tension between military power and popular democracy was a fitting backdrop for the rise of the iconic populist, Juan Domingo Perón.”
– Herrera

This backdrop then leads to Peron, who divided Argentinian by way of his modeling after Italy’s Mussolini, which he then translated to a particular Latin American form in Mexico’s revolution and Cuba’s revolution. Thus you have a defining, and uniquely applied sociopolitical divide in the Argentinian landscape  between the left (the voice of the people, or the poor, the working class) and the right (the voice of the military conservatives, the rich).

Apply this to the development of cinema in Argentina and you also find the interconnected challenges of the Catholic Church (and censorship), and American influence (which is where Mexico’s history helps to create that buffer, winning the battle in terms of  being the dominant voice of revolution in Latin America by way of its cinematic industry over and against, or in relationship to, the grand influences of America’s cultural reform). What emerges from this is the Cinema Law of 1957, a Law formed to protect Argentina from international influence and to help foster a unique Argentinian language. Thus the emergence of Third Cinema, which, as Gonon writes about Third Cinema, is where “filmmakers sought to review the values, histories, and hegemonic culture of the nation.” Describing this further, Gonon writes,

“Deeply rooted in the needs and aspirations of their own people, the filmmakers of the Third Cinema were determined to preserve and cultivate Argentina’s cultural heritage and to reinforce it against deforming cultural exports from the developed world (Burton 1976 33). For this reason, Third Cinema sought to shed light on the truth, elucidating causes rather than documenting effects. Genuine national reality, according to Solanas and Getino, was the national or people’s truth and that any form of expression which tried to express that reality was automatically received as subversive by the dominant sector (Burton 1978 58)

As revolution resurfaced (or continued) in the 1970’s and into the 1980’s, what one finds is the increasing manifestation of cinema as the voice of the people. For those interested in the role of cinema in Argentinian development, this is a great read: https://library.oapen.org/bitstream/id/e0ad5de4-e0c6-4942-82c4-f77abbec9a01/648152.pdf

The important part flows from this descriptive:

The mass culture of the 1950s, 1960s, and 1970s broke in three important ways from the patterns established in the 1920s and 1930s. First, whereas the radio and cinema of the earlier period addressed its audience as a popular mass defined in opposition to the rich, post-Perón-era mass culture spoke primarily to the middle class, a class that had coalesced in opposition to the Perón regime. Second, the marketing of mass cultural products specifically to young people was also novel. Finally, the intense
politicization of the 1960s and 1970s had no equivalent in the earlier period. In the 1930s, consumer choices—whether to listen to tango, folk, or jazz, for example—did not tend to indicate specific political preferences, as similar choices later would.
Nevertheless, there were also significant continuities. The Argentine mass cultural marketplace remained—and remains—fundamentally transnational. In both periods, Argentines consumed substantial amounts of foreign, particularly North American, mass culture. Likewise, in both periods, this imported culture offered more prosperous Argentines a means of achieving distinction: those who disdained local films in favor of the latest Hollywood releases prefigured middle-class porteños.

This brings to light the relationship between a uniquely bred Latin American “revolutionary language” and international influences. This tension would persist through the Argentinian new wave in the 80’s, the development of the INCAA (Independent Argentine Production) and the National Institute of Cinema in an effort to reclaim Argentina’s independent identity through cinema (which looked backward into Argentina’s unique story and narrative). It filled a need to find voices and film that could speak to that unique story in light of present economic struggle (related to the division of class).

BRAZIL: RACISM, HOLLYWOOD MONEY, AND FORMING A NEW CINEMATIC IDENTITY
Brazil, the third most dominant industry outside of Mexico and Cuba bears some similarities to Argentine in terms of the challenge of encroaching American influence, international forces depicting Brazilian culture as seductive and immoral, and an undercurrent of class division. Where the story of Brazil travels a different path is in the story of it’s Afro-Brazilian community and the influence of colonial powers.

In the book Magical Reels, it talks about the ways in which the Brazilian film industry was built on “vertical integration”. This means that art is controlled by big money, which informs this picture of resources and opportunity funneling downwards from investors. The problem is, when it came to big money Brazil couldn’t compete with the big players in Hollywood, which caused early momentum to stall and falter and for Hollywood to begin to push their way in. With the lack of infrastructure (and according to Magical Reels, widespread availability to electricity), this threatened then to define the trajectory of Brazilian culture according to American ideologies. “North American cinema, with its hegemonic control over taste, was also a purveyor of cultural modernity.” Early Brazilian film were often based on local crimes, moving after the War to diversify in terms of its focus. With European and Hollywood influences, particularly on the part of America, this diversification gradually began to shape some of the depictions of the Brazilian people, particularly the women whom were being sold as something “exotic” (The Art of Seduction: Representation of Women in Brazilian Silent Cinema). The stats read that “85 percent of film” being screened in Brazil in the 1920’s were American, so not only was this the depiction on the foreign soil, but it was the depiction being fed back into the Brazilian landscape. 

At the same time, Colonialism was threatening to define Brazil according to “European imperialism”, which continued to inundate Brazil with foreign film and a foreign vision for it’s Country. As the book Magical Reels defines, colonialism wanted to render Brazil as an attractive outpost and tropical setting to visit, film in, and imagine within the European narrative. It is absolutely fascinating, especially as someone from North America, to read about how these two influences, European Colonialism and American Capital, affected the Afro-Brazilian peoples. On one hand, they were removed enough from some of the narratives that would plague places like America with rampant racism and oppression. On the other hand, these outside forces were involved enough to direct Brazil’s cultural and social history in very particular ways. One of the ways this happened was by trying to control the narrative. Whereas Afro-Brazilians were fairly firmly established in the Brazilian landscape, and by and large made up the majority of the population, what these outside forces did is tried to write the narrative, using film, according to what Magical Reels calls the “Indian as a brave warrior.” Whereas Afro-Brazilians were a positive force for revolution and resisting oppression, the “black rebellion was ignored while Indians were depicted as those who resisted slavery.” The reason for this was because the “Indians” were a bit removed from their own European history, removing them somewhat from association, while the black rebellion was too distinctly “Brazilian” while at the same time largely relevant to European and American Colonization. Magical Reels makes a fascinating point by recognizing that foreign film makers were also not too keen on depicting the people they (white people) had replaced, associating Afro-Brazilian culture with a white narrative (with things like Samba, an Afro-Brazilian creation). The irony is, by doing this they also ignored what colonization did in displacing the Indigenous peoples, helping to foster in Brazil a problem of “redface” rather than “blackface”.

According to the paper Fade to Black, while the dominant Afro-Brazilian population, and their revolution, was still strong enough to resist these forces, even to the point of gaining representation on screen in different ways, it wasn’t until they Brazilian “New Cinema movement” (which was part of the New Latin Cinema forming from the Cuban revolution) that it “reached back into the lost corners of Brazilian people and culture and brought to the surface Black Cinema.”

The New Brazilian Cinema movement in the late 1950’s, or Nevau Cinema, which was modeled after the French New Wave and Italian Neo Realism, sought to apply the social interests, documentary styles and inexpensive productions that defined those movements through a particular Latin American lens. Art with a conscious is what the book Magical Reels describes it as, flowing from Rio by “transforming the poverty of means into stylistic invention.” Cinema Novo tried to emphasize the tropical setting, but rather than being an European and American outpost, it was used to bring clarity and definition to Brazilian culture, the Brazilian character, and most importantly the Afro-Brazilian story. Brazil would travel some ups and downs, but as these new movements overtook Latin America, and as Mexico continued to offer a buffer from dominating American influence, Brazil gradually began to reclaim cinema from the big money and colonial imprint, developing a modest industry that has been able to tell the Brazilian story more honesty and more intimately, with Brazilians making films that are less dependent on widespread international presence. In many ways they set the pace and the model for small industries throughout Latin America as they adapted to this new language of revolution within their individual borders.

SMALL INDUSTRY, REVOLUTIONARY LANGUAGE, AND SOCIOPOLITICAL CONCERN: LATIN AMERICAN CINEMA AS A FORCE FOR CHANGE
Whether we are looking at a Country like Uruguay, which earned the moniker “the Switzerland of Latin America” due to the dependability of it’s welfare state, or Paraguay where “the daily routine, the monotonous and insistent rituals, the power of religion and the grinding poverty are all captured (through film) in an implacable portrait of this land without men and men without land (Magical Reels).” As in Paraguay, a Country that wasn’t able to make films until the mid 1950’s, and which suffered under a repressive government for nearly 40 years, the National Film Institute of Paraguay didn’t develop until 2017 in a Country where this small industry, revolution, and awareness of their socioeconomic issues was desperately needed (or like Peru, where the industry remains non-existent), what marks all of these Countries in one form or another is small (to non existing) industries, revolution (or the need for reform), and in intense focus on socioeconomic issues that is shaped by the language of revolution and Latin American’s unique “socialist” approach.

PEURTO RICO AND BOLIVIA: REVOLUTIONARY LANGUAGE, NATIONAL AND INTERNATIONAL CINEMA
Consider Peurto Rico, an industry shaped by the American Invasion in the late 1800’s (and the camera’s they brought for documentation) and emerging slowly as a definable culture that began the first Peturo Rican film, Los Peloteros (1953), leading to a growing industry now in relationship with Mexico. You can see an ebb and flow in their cinematic story in terms of when their cultural identity languishes and when America has an increased presence (such as in the 70’s and the 90’s). Where Peurto Rico has been able to find something of a voice in film is by way of its given autonomy and self governance. It’s rich indigenous and Spanish history in terms of its relationship to Latin America, it’s lengthy history of arguing over its status and independence. This becomes a great study of the challenge of fostering and building a true culture and identity, particularly in relationship to a Countries ability to produce film, as so much of this culture is caught between the invasion of American culture, the exodus of filmmakers to American soil as that money and influence sits in contrast to the greater Latin American ethos, and the freedom to find and tell a collective story that can help capture the history of its peoples. This is a Country that is no stranger to the want of revolution.

Contrast this with Bolivia, who’s film industry is probably not big enough to be called an industry, and you find this want of revolutionary language being expressed through a national revolution, giving rise to film that depicted the story of their people in terms of socioeconomic struggle and their need for change. Labeled “New Bolivian Cinema”, Bolivia took the language of the Cuban Revolution and applied it to “making film for people together with people.” They resisted Hollywood influence, and saw the value of Brazil’s New Cinema’s focus on low budgets, non-professional actors and real locations (as influenced by Italian neo-realism and French New Wave). Like the Cuban Revolution, this was considered an intellectual revolution that gave voice and representation to their indigenous communities. While the industry is small, the value of this revolutionary language being applied to the film industry is important for it’s continued cultural and socio-political development. Small companies and schools have created opportunity for the people to the story of their people, becoming an important link to the indigenous peoples past. To use the words of these filmmakers, “Video serves as a medium to save that which our grandparents can no longer tell.”

CHILE AND HAITI: CENTRALIZATION AND DECENTRALIZATION
In Chile, their cinematic story begins a bit more centralized, with the film dependent on the money from the mining industry. A modest start gave way to Pedro Sienna, still one of the most important voices in Chilean film history (making the first Chilean future length feature, The Hussar of the Dead). The Chile Films Project, which paved the way for The New Chilean Cinema, was in need of a revolution to actually help it break through as a voice and a purveyor of Chilean culture and identity, and the revolutionary language that informed much of New Latin American Cinema, fighting through a mass exodus and an eventual victory that led to a developing industry in the 90’s. What gave it shape though were the filmmakers whom continued to capture Chile and it’s spirit both at home and abroad, believing that it had a story to protect and to tell. And although it’s industry is modest, it demonstrates strength and character and resilience through a homemade national art fund that has worked to inspire and empower Chilean filmmakers young and old.

In contrast, Haiti is a story of mass and forced decentralization that prohibited them from being able to develop a film industry and tell their story of ongoing poverty and struggle. U.S. Occupation followed by a 28 year dictatorship led to a total of “4 films” being produced, with the general diaspora and persistent poverty preventing the Country from being able to rally around a sense of its cultural identity as a story to be told and a story to be heard. With no established industry, and nothing in the way of policies or directives to empower filmmakers and given them the means to tell these stories, the result is a sociopolitical reality that has long been ignored and not heard. Haiti is a testament to the importance of art in affording people that necessary revolutionary language. There are glimpses of what is very much worth celebrating though, such as “The Motion Picture Association of Haiti (MPAH)”, which works to celebrate the Haitian culture, people and film.

COLUMBIA AND FOSTERING A CINEMATIC CONVERSATION
Country like Columbia can perhaps provide a landing point here in terms of the working relationship between the language of revolution, sociopolitical issues, and the power of small film industries to help give voice to these people and raise up it’s culture. At the heart of the Columbian Film Industry is the Grupo de Cali (Caliwood), which played a big role in the growing developing New Latin American Cinema. “Caliwood alludes not to desire and nostalgia, but to a playful and ironic defiance to the traditional vision of Hollywood as superior and unattainable (Routledge).” Led by young voices, filming their city raised the value of film as necessary and important, arriving with the vision to actively form Latin American Culture from their uniquely Columbian perspective. From this movement we get Caliwood, Tropical Gothic (which challenged depictions of Horror as a lesser form, arguing for it’s artistic merit) and pornomiseria.

What’s interesting about following the Caliwood movment in line with the New Cinema that was forming Latin America is to see it’s own revolutionary language in play. It thrived on conflict between politics and art, and it is actually where New Cinema started to create art that both depicted and helped form sociopolitical realities that Caliwood lost it’s force. Columbia faced a bit of an odd positioning in forging it’s own identity within something uniquely Latin American. This ground level movement met the more developed New Cinema (with it’s infrastructure), even as it shared a desire to raise art above mere entertainment. If Latin American Cinema is understudied and difficult to to unearth it’s diversity of voices and experiences, what we find in the different “clubs” of Columbian Cinema (La Casa de la Amistad de los Pueblos, Nueva Generacion, and Cine Club de Cali), all of which rose to prominence in the 70’s, is rich and vital discussion regarding Latin American culture and it’s value.

What clearly identified Columbian culture was the 1000 Days War, which basically settled the Country around the idea of a centralized government. This informed the film industry and it’s revolutionary language, especially when Panama separated from Columbia. Part of the discussion that was happening within this landscape is an interesting implementation of a critical term called Pornomiseria, which was all about how it was that film captured and depicted human misery and struggle. This is just one example of the rich dialogue that Columbia was able to foster with it’s deep interest in exploring the relationship between film and culture.

The later years essentially develop through the creation of what is called FOCINE (Cinematic Development Company and the funding for film), which enforced international relationships (with Europe), and the later Law of Cinema, which attempted to reemphasize a necessary focus on developing a local film industry (passed in 2003). This “standardized” the industry within it’s centralized form of Government, creating a working relationship between taxes and the filmmakers/artists that could feed and foster an influential industry and local culture. This has not only given the Country the means to have a voice, but it has allowed it to become influential in the way that it exhibited filmmakers willing to sacrifice their own time and energy and finances to keep telling the Columbian story.

LATIN AMERICAN CINEMA: A NECESSARY CULTURE
As I hope I have show, Latin America is a rich and diverse region built on a strong history of revolutionary language that became a pervasive and influential force in industries across the region, both big and small. A mark of these industries are their unique sociopolitical concerns, with Countries exhibiting different types of struggles with both their internal realities and outside, international forces. In this we can find wonderful examples of film helping to bring change, film helping to give voice and tell stories that were otherwise silent or hidden. In this we find the power of art to not only change history, but to hold history, particularly where the people meet the politics, and where social realities meet social change. It stands as a reminder of why we need these industries to help establish a region of such diversity, upholding the uniqueness of each of these Countries stories within a wider narrative of revolutionary language and socialist development. This uniqueness, after all, is what makes culture, and the stories that help to develop it, so necessary.

If you are interested in exploring Latin American Cinema, here are some places to start:
https://www.amexessentials.com/best-latin-american-films/
https://www.buzzfeed.com/morganmurrell/latin-american-movies
https://culturacolectiva.com/movies/best-latin-american-movies
https://www.imdb.com/list/ls003792898/
https://www.cinematropical.com/10-best-films
https://library.brown.edu/create/modernlatinamerica/chapters/chapter-15-culture-and-society/latin-america-at-the-movies/
http://www.tasteofcinema.com/2014/30-essential-latin-american-films-you-need-to-watch/
https://letterboxd.com/toricardoso/list/latin-american-cinema/
https://letterboxd.com/marcos_campos/list/the-non-exhaustive-cinephiles-guide-to-21st/

SOURCES
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cinema_of_Argentina
http://www.slate.com/articles/life/welltraveled/features/2006/scenes_from_buenos_aires/the_quiet_revolution_of_the_new_argentine_cinema.html
https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/1356932042000247002?journalCode=cjla20
https://cinapse.co/10-amazing-argentine-movies-youve-probably-never-heard-of-92a97124fc41
http://calgarycinema.org/new-argentine-cinema
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Latin_American_cinema
Cinema of Latin America by Guy Hennebel and Alfonso Gumucio Dagrón
Material for a prehistory of Haitian cinema by
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cinema_of_Chile
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cinema_of_Colombia
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cinema_of_Brazil
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cinema_of_Paraguay
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cinema_of_Haiti
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cinema_of_Bolivia
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cinema_of_Peru
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cinema_of_Puerto_Rico
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cinema_of_Uruguay
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cinema_of_Venezuela
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cinema_of_Argentina
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cinema_of_Cuba
Libia Villazana, “Hegemony Conditions in the Coproduction Cinema of Latin America: The Role of Spain
Shaw, Deborah. Contemporary Latin American Cinema: Breaking into the Global Market.
Burton, Julianne. Cinema and Social Change in Latin America
Ana M. Lopez, “An ‘Other’ History: The New Latin American Cinema.”
Michael Chanan, Cuban Cinema
Patricia Aufderheide, “Latin American Cinema and the Rhetoric of Cultural Nationalism: Controversies at Havana in 1987 and 1989.
Davies, Catherine. “Modernity, masculinity and Imperfect Cinema in Cuba
“The movie industry in Argentina”
“Argentine Cinema History (1896–1945)”
Company of contradictions: Puerto Rico’s Tropical Film Company (1916-1917). Naida Garcia-Crespo. Film History.
Johnson, Randal; Stam, Robert (1995). Brazilian Cinema
Stam, Robert (December 1982). “Slow Fade to Afro: The Black Presence in Brazilian Cinema”
Stam, Robert (1997). Tropical Multiculturalism: A Comparative History of Race in Brazilian Cinema and Culture
Bicalho, Maria Fernanda Baptista (1993). “The Art of Seduction: Representation of Women in Brazilian Silent Cinema”.
Hernando Martínez Pardo, Historia del Cine Colombiano
Brazilian Cinema Randal Johnson, Robert Stam
https://translate.google.com/translate?hl=en&sl=es&u=https://www.senalcolombia.tv/cine/caliwood-grupo-cali-luis-ospina&prev=search&pto=aue
The Routledge Companion to Latin American Cinema
https://prezi.com/0mqacabgphk6/the-evolution-of-cinema-in-colombia/
A Companion to Latin American Cinema edited by Maria M. Delgado, Stephen M. Hart, Randal Johnson
South American Cinema: A Critical Filmography, 1915-1994
The Social Documentary in Latin America by Julianne Burton
https://walkerart.org/magazine/michael-chanan-cuban-cinema
https://theconversation.com/how-the-cuban-revolution-kickstarted-the-countrys-golden-age-of-cinema-109342
Magical Reel: A HIstory of Cinema in Latin America by John King
https://www.ejumpcut.org/archive/onlinessays/JC20folder/ImperfectCinema.html
https://www.ejumpcut.org/archive/onlinessays/JC20folder/JuanQuinQuin.html
http://socialistreview.org.uk/351/imperfect-cinema
https://clas.berkeley.edu/research/argentina-persistence-peronism
Argentine Cinema and National Identity (1966-1976) By Carolina Rocha

Third Cinema in Argentina

Click to access 648152.pdf

“The Art of Seduction: Representation of Women in Brazilian Silent Cinema”
https://www.history.com/topics/us-states/puerto-rico-history
Latin American Cinema: A Comparative History by Paul A. Schroeder Rodríguez

We started our adoption blog when we left on our journey to Ukraine about 5 and a half years ago. The hope was to continue with our blog every year until our son Sasha graduated. We decided to wait a little bit longer to complete this final adoption update because this is Sasha’s adoption year. We are sad to say that we can’t seem to sign on to update our blog on Blogger anymore. Not sure if they made a transition or updates or changes that rendered it obsolete. And so we will have to do our final update via Dave’s personal blogspace here.

Here are the older posts just to tag them here and give some cohesion:
http://adoptingukraine.blogspot.com/

GRADUATION
So we are proud to say, Sasha graduated.
And sad, and torn, and elated… a mix of emotions all rushing in at the same time.

We know many of have said this on route to Sasha’s Grad over these past few weeks, which given the nature of the times has traveled a long and uncertain path to say the least, but it feels impossible to believe that this man-child, now standing a good deal taller than both of us now, first walked through our door just over 5 and a half years ago. That is crazy to think. And believe us when we say we’ve been thinking about that A LOT lately.

We still remember sitting around the tables at our initial seminar meeting and thinking, are we really doing this? Is this actually happening? The long and somewhat tumultuous ride to get to Ukraine, which was happening at the same time as the Maiden war breaking out in Ukraine, had us genuinely wondering if it would indeed happen. But the moment we saw his photo and encountered this young, slightly mischievous but caring and emotionally present kid bounding through our door in person, carrying all that uncertainty, anxiety, and fear, we knew our family had been made complete. The rest of course of history, a wonderful history that now culminates with proud parents witnessing the proudest moment, seeing him hold up that certificate. This is not to brag on our own kid… okay, maybe it is a little, or a lot… but this guy who came to Canada not knowing even a word of English, stayed dedicated enough during the Covid shutdown to finish every last assignment on the list. And his teachers sent A LOT of work, so this was no small feat. It’s something he can now carry with him and be proud of as he enters into a new phase of life.

Struggles and Joys: Our Journey Together
If we are being honest, the past year and a half hasn’t been a cake walk by any means. And that would go, we know, for all three of us. And yet there is a sense of resilience that we all feel in navigating it together. The heated conversations, the tricky foreign territory that comes with him being the first 18 year old in his Grade 12 class, the struggle and need for Sasha to find some independence when so much of his circumstance has forced him to remain dependent on others (necessarily so) in the different aspects of his life, it all gets filtered through our 5 and a half years as a family, doing our best to try and do and figure out life together.

A Personal and Collective Spiritual Journey
One of things we did as well over these past few weeks as we prepared for Sasha’s grad day is, we sat down as a family and revisited our spiritual journey together by walking through the Christian story. Given that faith is an important aspect of our life together, and that faith holds both a personal and communal component, one of the questions we tried to table was, where are we in this story of faith, together and individually. There is a good kind of healthy fear that comes with Sasha finding that space, through time and age, to figure that out as he will, and as parents as well to learn how to lean back into the same weight of those prayers that we feel guided us towards his direction 5 and a half years ago. By revisiting the Garden narrative in Genesis, and trying to travel the emerging line from this story towards Christ, one of the striking things about this journey is that while we can discover a linear line, our place on this line is far from linear. That is the beauty of the journey. What forms our faith as we now find Sasha’s line starting to carve an even more distinctive and defined path in his own particular direction, is this grand picture that we find in the Garden of the angels protecting “the way” to the Tree of Life. As it writes, “therefore the Lord God sent him forth from the garden of Eden, to till the ground from which he was taken. He drove out the man; and at the east of the garden of Eden he placed the cherubim, and a sword flaming and turning to guard the way to the tree of life.” Encountering this scripture, we saw a picture not of fear and condemnation in light of being sent out into the struggles and joys of a life lived and developed in relationship to the land, people, and culture, but of angels also guarding the way forward to the Tree of Life, that great source of life that continues to inform our lives no matter where we find ourselves, as individuals and as family, on this journey called life, even, and maybe especially, when we remain uncertain and unaware of it and of what lies ahead.

And the beautiful thing about this story is that what is being revealed through our journey, in our successes, our failures, our hardships, struggles and accomplishments, is God’s heart for us and the spirits work in us. These graces are the things that we can bring out in each other and inform in one another. And these are the same graces we believe will cover Sasha as he finds his own way forward. This takes on a new weight perhaps as we consider that he was born on September 12th, 2001, the day after 9-11, that we adopted him right after the war in Ukraine ended with the remnants of that war still visible, and now he graduates in the midst of a global pandemic that has shut the world down. Talk about some character shaping realities to add to his story.

Changed Plans and a New Normal
We had great plans back in March to celebrate Sasha’s accomplishments and our life together by taking Sasha skiiing in Banff (he still loves to snowboard), and to get him to one of the wolf sanctuaries in the mountains (he loves and has a special connection to wolves). Those plans have obviously been put on hold, even as time moves ever so slowly forward into what is hopefully some better days. For now, he is simply looking to get a job, enjoy a summer of paintball, and figure out his plans for the fall. Even without the chance to celebrate properly, those things feel momentous in and of themselves. 

TRYING: Looking Back on our Adoption Journey
Over the past couple weeks, we have both been watching a new show on Apple TV Plus called TRYING (it has some mature elements, so be aware, but it is so, so good). It’s the story of a couple that tried to have kids and couldn’t, and then they end up in the adoption process. It is shocking how accurately the show gets the adoption process, and for those who have been through it I imagine the same trigger points would be there for you as they were for us.

We are a long ways though from those days of having our lives poked and prodded and put on the table for all of us to see, warts, weaknesses, faults and all. We are a long ways from the days of facing the reality that we have to prove ourselves to be competent parents while also being forced to face our deepest fears, greatest struggles, and biggest weaknesses at the same time. We are a long way from thinking we were getting a younger child and coming home with an older young man. It is not an easy process by any means. And yet the tables turned for us the moment we set foot on Ukrainian soil. This was no longer just our story, it was now his story, and understanding his story became our central role as parents as we tried to work to find ways to bring our stories together.

Watching the show has been cathartic in a way, helping us to walk back through that journey and reflect on how it has changed us. There is a definite sadness to knowing that things are transitioning, to new opportunities for him and new adventures for us, but we do this knowing that family is that unbroken and unquestionable bond. And we do this knowing that we, all three of us, are not the same people we were when our paths crossed 5 and a half years ago. And that is a good thing. That feels good and right.

One Last Word For the Journey
So to sign off on this part of the adventure, bringing this adoption blog to an end, the adventure that watched him grow from a 13 year old boy with an 8 year old spirit learning and discovering things in a different Country anew, to an 18 year old feeling proud and accomplished and desperate to make his mark on the world and find his independence in a world now made up of his peers, let us simply say this- it has been the greatest joy we could have asked for. Our family was not only made complete, it was made complete for a lifetime of new adventures, knowing that the central line that continues to forge the way before us still holds us together, and that there is a lifetime ahead of watching how that non-linear line shapes Sasha in unique and exciting ways.

On the surface, Spanish Cinema tells a familiar story along the lines of most of Global Cinema. A promising start is interrupted by war which leads to an eventual social revolution, a democracy, and then new found growth and success in cinema.

As I continue to travel the world through film in 2020 though, I am finding that while the template is familiar, every Country applies this narrative to different points of their cinematic history with a slightly different weight and nuance to particular, culturally located realities. The development of film is intimately tied to a Country’s ethos, and mirrors the socio-political reality. And thus the rise and fall of a film industry, and when it rises and falls, says something significant about the Country and its people.

For Spain, the emphasis is put on the contrast that exists between its modest and quiet start and a now thriving modern industry. Most of the interest of its cinematic development is weighted on the attention the Country has garnered by critics and viewers in the last 30 or so years, with the long shadows of Italy and France, and even Mexico, the three primary international film industries that partnered with Spain along the way, finally giving way to something that is now distinctly Spanish culture. This recent emergence has led to greater awareness of Spanish films, Spanish film companies, and Spanish culture, elevating both art and viewer in the eyes of critics and viewers across the world.

An Emerging Industry and the Demise of Spanish Colonies
One interesting aspect of Spain’s film industry is that the eventual emergence of films around 1896 coincided with the demise of Spanish colonization. In a sense, the early years of of the silent era wasn’t able to gain much momentum, either on a cultural or political front, leading to a modest start and a very gradual subsequent development following the arrival of the Lumiere Brothers and this new, mysterious technology. However, as film developed, so did a dictatorship, rising from the ranks of the monarchy (and the monarchies fall) to try and rally Spain around a new vision for its people. What sets the stage for this to happen is what history describes as The Spanish Civil War.

The Civil War, National Identity, and a Coopted Film Industry
To try and tap into a socio-political narrative and voice, a necessary facet of film’s development, presence and success, early silent films of this time tended to try and reach back into the pages of their history to locate a semblance of a time of unity and national identity. You see this same thing happening in Countries in the East at times of fracture, as locating a narrative from the past can help give them a sense of purpose and identity, a place to locate themselves within the less than ideal circumstances. Filmed mostly in and around Barcelona and then Madrid, Spain struggled to find a unified story in the divided peoples, eventually shifting into the sound era without much of an established industry, even despite the development of the the Spanish Industrial Film Company Inc. (1930), which tired to supply some direction and vision.

The Civil War started in 1936, seeing a push back against the monarchy happening alongside the rise of Franco, a fascist dictator who wanted to see the monarchy remain. This period saw the loss and destruction of all but “10 percent” of their silent films. Film became censored propaganda, with the industry being pulled into both sides of the war by way of competing studios and interests (with those on the side of Franco setting up the “National Department of Cinematography” to aid his purposes). This pushed Spanish culture and Spanish artists further into the shadows in the immediate onset, ensuring that a local industry had even less of a presence. What did happen in the midst of this though was the continued growth of international film industries coming into Spain, something that would pose even further of a challenge to finding a true Spanish Identity in film.

“Even if the indifference of Franco’s fascist regime to cinema meant the indigenous film industry progressed only in fits and spurts, the country took advantage of its unique landscape and low production costs to become an important location for international producers in the 1960s.”
– Spanish Film History

By the time the Civil War ended, the Spanish film industry would become known for three central international relationships- Spanish-Italian films, Spanish-French films, and Spanish-Mexican films. The only real presence in terms of Spanish culture at the time of The Civil and Second World War (which ironically Spain stayed out of, at least in part because they relied on American imports, including their filmmakers, coming in to shoot films) was a filmmaker by the name of Buñuel.

The Legacy of Luis Bunuel
Luis Bunuel might be one of the most important figures in Spanish cinematic history, and not just because of his films, but because of what he represented. A boxer from the upper class, Bunuel’s life was built on a desire to erase the lines that divided social classes in Spain at the time. He rebelled against state religion and the upper class rules, instead creating connections with the people and the stories they wanted and needed to tell. He is known for helping to inspire The Surrealist movement by way of his presence and time with the people. His own films bear the mark of someone who held a complicated relationship with himself and his past, bearing numerous emotions and flavors, including the surrealist film, undercut with a serious horror and expressionist vibe, Un Chien Andalou.

Since Bunuel traveled between Spain and France and Italy and Mexico, this well tread road also helped to instill the international presence in Spain as well, including the development of one of Spain’s more well known genres, the Spaghetti Western. When Franco died in 1975 (after 36 years in power), the monarchy would once again be established before leading the way, under King Juan Carlos 1 into democracy, and this would be where these Spaghetti Westerns would play a key role, with international collaborations, in helping to build something of a foundation for the Spanish Film Industry that was just now starting to find a sense of purpose and vision.

Eventually, José María García Escudero became the new Director of Spanish Cinema in 1962, and “Escudero helped spur on Spanish cinema” through the development of the “Official Spanish School of Cinema.” This became a key part of the rising voice of a people gradually beginning to push back against Franco, trading realism for metaphor, and eventually paving the way for what is known as The New Spanish Cinema, a movement and style which was just ready to break free. This school was ready to tap into emerging young filmmakers being cut on neo-realism of Italy and France. Even without the necessary “infrastructure”, these young voices were becoming the face of the future. This led, on the eve of the end of Franco’s reign, these young voices and this new school to helping lead the way towards Spain’s “first internationally acclaimed masterpiece with Victor Erice’s, The Spirit of the Beehive”:

“The story, in which a young village girl became obsessed with Frankenstein, was seen as a sly criticism of Franco’s regime. The dictator’s death two years later led to the liberation of creative ideas and a rush of activity from writers, directors, artists and playwrights. At the vanguard of the new Spanish cinema was a small town filmmakers named Pedro Almodóvar.”

An Industry and Culture Ready to Emerge
The rest of course is recent history, with a film industry in waiting now moving to take the world by storm. One could make a good argument that of all the film industries around the Globe, Spain seems to be the one with the most visible and obvious positive growth. One of the most under considered movements in fact is the Countries lengthy investment in English language films alongside Spanish language films, something that allows it to translate across cultures. One thing’s for sure, with so many years lost to the shadows of regimes, wars and international pressures, it’s about time they had their day in the sun. Their talent it just too great to keep a secret, and their culture too rich to stay hidden. And it just proves that it’s never too late to begin to find and discover your own story and carve your identity. In many cases this comes from the struggle. For others it comes from new found freedom.

Here is my working list of films that I have watched along my film travels, ranked, rated and reviewed:
https://letterboxd.com/davetcourt/list/film-travels-2020-spain-in-process/

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cinema_of_Spain
https://www.enforex.com/culture/spanish-films.html
https://www.theguardian.com/film/filmblog/2011/mar/29/short-history-spanish-cinema
https://www.volta.ie/#!/page/619/a-short-history-of-spanish-cinema
https://scholarworks.gvsu.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1048&context=cine
“The Cinema Industry in the Spanish Civil War
Jordan, Barry. “Spain’s ‘new cinema’ of the 1990s
A History of Spanish Film Cinema and Society 1910-2010 by Sally Faulkner
http://people.wcsu.edu/mccarneyh/fva/B/LBunuel_bio.html

If there is a single narrative that emerges from the shadows of Denmark’s modest but significant cinematic history, it would be its ability to foster an ongoing conversation regarding the relationship between art and culture. You can see this conversation present on either side of the Occupation, in the early establishment of a “golden age” of Danish film, and the later emergence of a “vow of chasity”, a movement meant to protect and inform the value of art as that which informs culture, rather than culture informing the art.

Most of this conversation comes from Denmark’s socialist systems, flowing from the nature of state funding and the subsequent push and pull of private investment. This is a common narrative one finds in cinema throughout the Nordic Countries, although you find a greater consistency in Denmark, with its state funding arriving with slightly less controversy than it does in France, and it’s ability to find and recover a national identity in Danish film less burdened by international growth than a place like Norway, for example.

A Golden Age and the Building Blocks of a National Identity
To describe Danish Cinema one can reference a few of the earlier films and the development of the Nordisk Film Company, the single most significant development in their history, but one could only do that with the recognition that an “established” cinematic identity didn’t really emerge until the 1990’s.

That is not to say that these early years should be glossed over, and there is a bit of irony to be found in the fact that these years are still considered Denmark’s “golden age”. A “golden age” simply refers to, at its most basic definition, a period when significant or important things happened. This could describe the rise of successful Directors, the birth of an influential movement, economic success, technical innovation. Golden Ages tend to point to those moments, those artists, those innovations, that set a Country and their films apart and give it definition.

Who and What is Denmark and Danish Culture
So what set Denmark apart? It could be the rise of Asta Nielsen, the first female movie star in Europe, and considered the first international movie star. Nielsen, a force in the silent film era, was a dreamer- she went on to establish her own film studio in Germany, where she would make 70 of the 74 films she starred in; she was an innovator- she helped shape and usher in a commitment to realism and naturalistic and artistic integrity in an era defined by a more produced style; she was boundary pushing- she imbued her films with a recognizable eroticism that gave voice to female empowerment, a fact that interestingly kept her out of sight of Americans in her international growth and appeal; she was ambitious- for someone who was given to quiet and isolation, she was not content to simply make films that would not be seen, going on to pave the way for future international ambitions; and she made art with conviction- not only did she pour her life and soul into her films, she made her films with an eye for what excited and bothered her in culture at large. There is much documentation about her abandonment of her studio in Germany in the face of the Nazi regime, and the efforts she made to funnel her money into helping assist Jews whom were facing oppression. As one quote from M.S. Fonseca says, “Asta Nielsen” means the power to speak of pathos, to see pain, and to find the middle path between Baudelaire’s flower of evil and the sick rose of which Blake sang”, a descriptive that feels both apt and prophetic.

Or maybe it’s The Passion of Joan of Arc, the single most recognizable title of Denmark’s golden age. To quote the ever insightful Ebert,

“You cannot know the history of silent film unless you know the face of Renee Maria Falconetti. In a medium without words, where the filmmakers believed that the camera captured the essence of characters through their faces, to see Falconetti in Dreyer’s “The Passion of Joan of Arc” (1928) is to look into eyes that will never leave you.”

Ebert goes on to describe the films innovate design and structure in a period where German Expressionism and French Avante Garde were the major forces of the cinematic world in Europe at large.

“He wanted it all in one piece (with movable walls for the cameras), and he began with towers at four corners, linked with concrete walls so thick they could support the actors and equipment. Inside the enclosure were chapels, houses and the ecclesiastical court, built according to a weird geometry that put windows and doors out of plumb with one another and created discordant visual harmonies.”

Ebert points out that Falconetti only made one film, but “it may be the finest performance ever recorded on film.”

It would be rare, if impossible, to find a “greatest of all time list” that doesn’t recognize this film’s influential force and dynamic presence. What might be undercut or undersold is the way in which this film embodied the spirit of Denmark’s cinematic and cultural ethos, bringing the ever important and necessary conversation between art and culture to the surface in a unique way.

The Nordisk Film Company and Danish Cultural Identity
Or perhaps it is simply the Nordisk Film Company that gives definition to Denmark’s golden age. Danish film has a modest start (in 1897), with the first feature length film arriving in 1903 (The Execution) and the first movie theater opening in 1904 (going on to establish a chain of theaters all over the Country), but it is really the establishing of the film company by a man named Ole Olsen in 1906, a company that remains the central guiding force of Danish film still today, that the Danish film industry really starts to emerge. There is a connection between these theater chains the film company, given that Olsen, an amusement park operator, was behind the opening of the Biograf Theater in Copenhagen, an endeavor that would inspire him to establish the company. And what was his motivation? To develop Danish films that could establish his theater as a signature of Danish culture, and to help spread Danish film and culture around the world.

What the Nordisk Film Company also played a significant role in was the visionary push for longer run times and greater feature length film. Coming from this business and cultural background, but also employing and holding a value for the arts, this mixture of concern flowed out into competition, which gave rise to a film called The White Slave Trade, a film that was a revolutionary 40 minutes in length (the data explains that as being three reels long when the maximum at the time was one reel), which then gave rise, in the spirit of not so friendly competition of course, to the Nordisk Film company stealing the film and beating them to the punch. That’s what happens when you have established economic clout mixed with an eye for the evolving art form.

History describes this as a gamble. No one honestly could have known that audiences would respond to films of this length, but as history shows, it’s in taking the risk that you find innovation. While the Film Company would face a brief period of bankruptcy and eventually be reestablished through the strength of state funding, what makes it such a significant part of a Danish film industry that is marked by the emergence of policies and taxation and socialist idealism was and is its embodiment of this conversation between art and culture. The greatest challenge Denmark faced, and continues to face outside of its brief period of Occupation, is the threat of being swallowed up by international growth and international powers. It faced it at the time with Germany, France and Italy pushing in from a myriad of different directions, and it continues to face it today in a more fractured European environment that has isolated these Nordic markets and made it tough to establish a true sense of cultural identity with economic concerns tending to force a consistent and recognizable imbalance in the ongoing conversation regarding the relationship between art and culture. Once upon a time,

“despite the small size of its native market and its relatively limited resources, Denmark reigned supreme for several years (1909-14) as Europe’s most prosperous film center. Its films rivaled those of Hollywood, for popularity on the screens of Paris, London, Berlin and New York (Efraim Katz, Film Encyclopedia).”

Much of this came by way of the silent era, which could translate across cultures without the barrier of language, yet, as time moved forward “sound made it difficult for Danish films to be exported because of the language barrier”. and Denmark’s industry faced the increasing challenge of having the means of making Danish film without the economic gains of an international presence. What sets Denmark apart though is that through all of this their strong social policies, aided by the strength of the Nordisk Film Company, has kept the value of art and artistic integrity at the forefront of their socialist values, allowing it to function in a more modest fashion without getting swallowed up by the economic machine. This characteristic helps to continue to distinguish Denmark as a model, even amongst its small circle of Nordic Countries.

Across Europe there exists a fascinating discussion surrounding the power, pitfalls and successes that comes from state funding, taxation and policies that value and consider art as a necessary social function. In Denmark we see this surface in 1913 with the emergence of state “control” through policy. While this flirts with censorship, which is par for the course, the greater concern was for establishing an early, successive and functional system of taxation, one that would grow and evolve through the years into a consistent and assumed part of Danish culture.

Social Policies, Social Reform and The Conversation Between Art and Culture
The other dynamic in play here for Denmark was a directive that looked to establish forms of “licensing” that could act as a long term investment for artists and the Danish arts. One source defined this as a “type of artistic pension.” Recognizing the value of upholding the conversation between art and culture in a meaningful way, Denmark emerged from its Golden Age, which would be interrupted and stalled by the Occupation, with this system firmly in place, a system that would survive occupation and eventually give way to the establishment of the Danish Film Institute, which re-imagined the conversation of art and culture from the lens of the onslaught of television, the economic burden television placed on the film industry, and a reinvigorated investment in film as a public and architecturally dependent art form that remained integral to cultural reform and cultural identity. Once again, you can see the value of this conversation about the relationship between art and culture guiding the Danish concern, and “the Danish Film Institute was founded in 1972 to provide state subsidies for selected Danish movie projects. In 1989, it broadened the definition of films it would support, a development that laid the foundation for a revival of Danish film.”

As is true with any form of oppression, struggle and Occupation, these kinds of experiences tend to give shape to the kind of art that emerges and the kind of stories that we find with a particular cultural narrative. This was true for German Occupation, which ultimately shaped and affected Denmark by helping to shape a distinguishing and distinctive style informed by the darkness of this era. Challenge and struggle give way to  more serious films, and a more intense focus on exploring Danish identity through a new wave of filmmaking following the Occupation. It gave greater purpose to the established laws, taxations and policies implemented to help foster Danish voices and Danish art, allowing it to ultimately gain greater reward in the form of the raising up of filmmakers and the protection of Danish film.

“Between 1940 and 1945, the German occupation of Denmark during World War II pushed the film industry toward more serious subject matter. The darker tone during these years paralleled the rise of film noir in Hollywood.”

What began as films bent on realism and darker tones emerged out of the Occupation with a desire to direct this towards a critique and examination of culture at large. This mirrored the growth of a greater diversity of genres and films as the Denmark film industry moved into the 60’s and towards the 70’s. Two films that capture this transition in its resistance are Bodil Ipsen and Lau Lauritzen Junior’s The Red Meadows (De røde Enge) and Johan Jacobsen’s The Invisible Army (Den usynlige Hær).

“Henceforth Danish cinema delved into a more realist direction, a critical humanitarian realism with a focus on everyday fate” and “cultural issues”.

The Danish New Wave (60’s) and the Danish Film Institute.
Once you dig into this cultural and socio-political shift, what emerges is a very clear awareness of Denmark’s ability to navigate this ongoing balance between culture and art as it marries to economic growth, concern, and independence. The Danish Film Institute stands as an example of holding this middle ground, operating in tandem with social policies while standing apart from politics. This does, however, happen with an ongoing, and perhaps necessary, tension in tow. Part of the issue with these more isolated cultures is that, without being a dominant player in the international market, the weight is re-positioned onto the culture itself rather than the economics. It forces the culture to articulate the value of art, and then to establish it as a part of their social and political reality. This is where the Danish Film Institute really made its presence know as a cultural touch point. While it becomes a point of contention and conversation in terms of where that line exists between state and independent control, what helped Denmark to retain its cultural identity “as” an ongoing conversation of the relationship between culture and art is this working tension. This narrowed the separation that existed between popular art (privately funded, economically viable projects) and cultured art (state funded, socially valued) in a Country with a relatively small population, which enabled a relatively small population to foster a strong cultural presence and voice. When you read of how Danish policies, which informed the film industry, developed and adapted, it really is quite astonishing how much of it ebbed and flowed as a response to this tension between art and culture. As one article put it, with this holding tension, “25% of an entire year’s worth of financial support would be allocated for this purpose”, from which “the film support definitively changed from an artistic backing to a cultural backing”.

And yet, it is the foundation of Denmark’s social policy and support that helped to keep this from being subsumed by the economic machine. It is from this tension that we find a new, reengerized focus and concern for the conversation between art and culture that has pushed and pulled Denmark along the way, finding in the 90’s a new wave and a new interest in the importance of film and art as an informing voice of culture. This is progressed by Denmark’s most visible voice, Lars Von Trier (Europa), and was defined by what history sees as a shift from reflection to “optimism” in this newfound “realism” that was shaped out of the Occupation. Who is Denmark, what makes and distinguishes Denmark as a culture, and what informs the people of Denmark, becomes the mission of the “Vow of Chasity”, as informed by The Dogma Manifesto, that “Lars von Trier, Thomas Vinterberg, Kristian Levring and Søren Kragh-Jacobsen” undertake. These questions sit in contrast to the economic machine they observe taking over the international game.

This was a new found commitment to artistic integrity and social awareness. One of the great film studies of Danish film history is Per Fly’s trilogy (The Bench, Inheritance, Manslaughter), which helped to distinguish three definable social classes existing within Denmark’s social fabric, being a great example of how the conversation between art and culture happens. Another key focus of this push for artistic creativity was the strong social value of investing in youth and up and coming artists. Policies and funding recognized that to raise up voices who could comment on and speak to culture’s ongoing formation on a social level requires an investment in art that can give voice to the youth of their country. One stat I read said that 25 percent of all film directed subsidies are designated to making youth and children’s film.

A Country Built on Quiet Influence and Cultural Integrity 
A general thoroughline in all of the sources I read through below is that what makes Denmark so distinctive as a film culture is the perseverance of art as an integral part of culture, even in the face of cultural forces and cultural demands. As one commentator put it,

“The state controlled film industry might limit innovation, but it also maintains focus, intention and a high level of professionalism.”

https://denmark.dk/people-and-culture/film
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cinema_of_Denmark
David Bordwell: Essay on Danish Cinema, in Film #55, Denmark 2007
https://www.dfi.dk/en/english/danish-film-history/danish-film-history-1896-2009
http://www.filmreference.com/encyclopedia/Criticism-Ideology/Denmark-THE-GOLDEN-AGE-AND-AFTER.html
https://encyclopedia.1914-1918-online.net/article/filmcinema_denmark
M.S. Fonseca, The International Dictionary of Films And Filmmakers: Actors and Actresses
https://www.rogerebert.com/reviews/great-movie-the-passion-of-joan-of-arc-1928

“In a country where there was still no debate about the war that had just ended, the films produced by the Polish Film School set out to engage the public in a deep emotional dialogue that would prove to be therapeutic. Through stories which unfold in a near past, they touch upon different current topics: the Poles spirituality and their future perspectives.“
– Film critic Professor Tadeusz Lubelski 

It’s 1989, and a Country plagued by a tragic and storied history finds itself finally standing on the precipice of change. Tadeusz Mazowiecki is almost quietly brought into power, representing the first democratic and non communist government in Poland’s postwar history. And yet, what is most interesting about this shift in power and politics is how it can reveal the difficult nature of rebuilding and re-imagining oneself following unimaginable tragedy. 

A Thriving Jewish Industry and The Promise of a Culture
An industry once driven and imagined by Jewish businessmen, it is documented that 70 of the 170 Jewish films brought out between 1910 and 1950 were made in Poland with over three million Polish Jews. This was particularly true for Poland’s celebration and representation of Yiddish culture, which, according to Nathan Gross (Jewish film in Poland) forms a key part of Polish cinema during the inter-war period. The tragic irony, according to Gross, is that an industry driven by Jewish businessmen and celebrated and formed from Yiddish culture had “no anti-Semitic films produced in Poland during the twenty years of the inter-war period”. Contrast this with the fact that Poland lost “90 percent of its Jewish population with the onset of the Second World War, which makes up half of the total population lost during this period. One source cites that as almost “22 percent of the entire population”, and the fact that Poland would also be the first Country to make an anti-Nazi film is just a reminder of the pain and the horror of Country that had now ceased to exist on that fateful day in September of 1939.

Any hope of rebuilding, in which film often plays a key role, would be halted by the eventual Soviet take over and subsequent Communist rule. This would include what is known as the “small stabilization (1960’s), which is described as a further irony of false prosperity under Wladyslaw Gomulka (Communist Party Leader), and the period of Martial Law that carried Poland through the 80’s, cutting spending, reinvesting in small budget fare, and bringing the film industry to the forefront as a measure of Communist propaganda and censorship. If it is true, as one writer suggests, that The chaos and destruction wrought by the second world war meant that “Poland had to reinvent its film industry from the ground up” following the complete devastation of the Second World War, then this final shift towards eventual democracy would represent simply the beginning of a long road forward, one forged out of the memories of their past.

Potential and Promise in An Emerging Industry and an Interwar Period
Perhaps there is a special tinge of sadness that accompanies the incredible real life tragedy in knowing the incredible potential that Poland held to make its mark on the cinematic landscape in a special and influential way. It is, in fact, its Jewish visionaries from Poland that planted the seeds, built and founded some of Hollywood’s most recognizable studios. More so though, they, not unlike Germany, were at the forefront of developing those initial ideas that eventually led to the formation of the “moving image” projector. In Poland two ideas emerged, one called the “telectroscope”, which belonged to an inventor coined the “Polish Edison”, and the other called the “Phantoscope”, created by Siegmund Lubin. Both of these were said to be in strict and powerful competition with Edison’s Kinetoscope, eventually culminating in the Cinematographe by way of the charismatic Lumiere Brothers from France, whom went on to take over the world’s imagination. Poland is one of the few places in the world that still hold to the story that Edison actually preceded the Lumiere Brothers in inventing the movies. In Poland, all of this would result in the first “cinema” being established in Lodz in 1899, and the very first Polish film maker of significance, Russian filmmaker Wladyslaw Starewicz whom relocated to what was then the Polish-Lithuanian commonwealth

What makes all of this significant is that, following World War 1, Poland regained its independence after 120 years of occupation, giving them the environment they needed to begin to develop a cinematic and cultural identity, two things which often go hand in hand. Sitting at the heart of and being in the thick of cinema’s emergence, getting to watch it unfold from an intimate and fortunate angle alongside Germany (whom they would actually share productions with during and after World War 1), they felt a deep connection to the rise of the art form, particularly as it mirrored a rise in independence. This is where we can see the rise of what is known as Polish Avant-Garde films, which is simply a way of saying “experimental film. Kamila Kuc writes all about this period in the book Visions of Avant-Garde Film: Polish Cinematic Experiments from Expressionism to Constructivism, pointing out that “avant-garde film was a direct reaction against films that had “scenarios and stars”, using lighting and effects to push creative boundaries beyond static objects, and explaining that “various critics in the Polish territories analyzed the new cultural and social reality in relation to (these) freshly emerging artistic movements.”

Finally empowered with the ability to build and create culture, Poland was set to challenge the status quo, examine the meaning of their socio-political values, and give voice to a people finally ready to emerge from their oppression. This makes the events of the Second World War and the subsequent Communist overtaking and rule an equally starling force of a oppression, stripping Poland completely of this chance to build an identity. All of the promise and dreams that surfaced with Poland’s Golden Age, from its earliest silent films and the first sound film (The Singing Fool, 1929) to films like Black Pearl (1934) and Pawl and Gawel (1938) were met with a crushing blow that 1989’s proclamation of democracy could only represent as a bittersweet victory over.

A Hopeful Voice in the Midst of Tragic and Devastating Loss
It is no secret to the pages of history that the most haunting and lingering affect was the disappearance of the Jewish communities and culture that once led Polish Cinema and gave it its signature voice. And yet there is something inspiring to uncover the persistence of a largely silence culture that history also records, specifically in the development of the Lodz Film School in 1948. It would be here that we find Andrzej Wajda, Polands most formative and important voice and creative in the post war years. Following his first film, A Generation (1955), Wajda would go on to spark a fire in the collective consciousness of Polish identity, even in the face of persisting oppression and the “social realist doctrine” that would be forced onto Polish Cinema against its will. Wajda, and his accompanying classmates, would strive to push back, risking their own well being to provide a different narrative, one of social concern, to the people who so desperately needed it:

“Out of the ashes of the war, a current in film arose in the 1950s – the Polish Film School. Its followers set out to create works that would help in coming to terms with the war. Most of its students were from the generation born in the 1920s . The war had interrupted and ruined their young adulthood and they became adamant about showing its consequences on camera. The current was represented by several directors: Andrzej Wajda, Andrzej Munk, Jerzy Kawalerowicz, and Wojciech Jerzy Has.”

The Power of Film and Story To Help Rebuild a Culture and a People
One of the benefits of Communist rule is that, despite the control the government had over the kinds of films and the kind of productions that could happen, they ensured that film going and film watching stayed a vital and important (and even prestigious and intellectual) part of Polish culture. So when Stalin died and the Soviet Regime started to disassemble and fall apart, the film industry was primed to rise in its place, with those voices from the Film School ready to echo through its spaces as a means of making sense of this second chance at independence. But finding that necessary space to confront and come to terms with their story was not easy, as it not only no longer had its prominent Jewish voice, but it also had to filter through the false narratives that had dominated Soviet Directed film for so long. In the spirit of the Film School though, they continued, and continue, to fight and push for a true Polish narrative and character to find its way forward through the mess. And film, as it did in the early years of the century and through the interwar period, lies at the heart of helping that to become a reality. And if there is something that the Polish Spirit and perseverance can teach the world, it’s that one of the best things one can do when tragedy strikes is to find a way to keep speaking, to keep the voice of those people and their story alive in the Countries collective identity, and to allow those voices to be represented through the possibility of a better future. This is what makes film, and especially Polish film, so powerful, as it has the ability to help a collective community climb from the ashes of one of the greatest horrors history has scene, not just to document it, but to liberate it and give it purpose. And from out of Poland’s greatest films, including the spiritually laden The Mill and the Cross, the recent cultural touchstone Cold War, and the existential Ida, comes a spirit of resilience, contemplation, maturity, and reflection, all characteristics of a Country that has a rich heritage to share with the world. 

Here is a link to my working list of films for my Film Travels 2020:
https://letterboxd.com/davetcourt/list/film-travels-2020-poland-in-process/

SOURCES
https://www.moma.org/calendar/film/795
https://www.nytimes.com/2015/03/05/arts/international/polish-cinema-on-the-rise.html
https://www.theguardian.com/film/filmblog/2011/apr/06/short-history-of-polish-cinema
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cinema_of_Poland
https://culture.pl/en/article/a-foreigners-guide-to-polish-cinema
https://openjournals.uwaterloo.ca/index.php/kinema/article/view/1109/1308
The Red and The White: The Cinema of People’s Poland by Paul Coates
Polish National Cinema by Haltof Marek
Cinema of the Other Europe: The Industry and Artistry of East Central European Film by Dina Iordanova
Polish Cinema in Ten Takes by Nurczyńska-Fidelska, Ewelina, and Zbigniew Batko, eds. 
Polish Cinema: A History by Marek Haltof
Contested Interpretations of the Past in Polish, Russian, and Ukrainian Film
https://culture.pl/en/article/a-foreigners-guide-to-polish-animation
Visions of Avant-Garde Film: Polish Cinematic Experiments from Expressionism to Constructivism by Kamila Kuc