“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

“The peasantry during and after the Revolution of 1910 – 1920 fell from the frying pan of dictatorship into a revolutionary fire caused by internecine feuds between the caudillos engaged in bloody warfare. Whether it was the cause of secular Revolution against a corrupt dictator, in defense of Catholicism against an atheist state, or to create a Marxist utopia by pulling society up by its roots, the result was always the same. The people, fleeing to cities or to work the fields in the southwestern United States, went to the movies to remember a Mexico that they had never known because it had never existed.”
– Mike MicKinley

On my journey to travel the world in film in 2020, it quickly became evident that any entry point into Latin America was going to go through Mexico first. This is true not only for understanding the diverse cultural identity that Latin America represents, but of the ongoing relationship between culture, politics and film. There are very real parallels one can find between a discussion of Mexican and Italian film industries in this regard, mirroring its development amidst cultural revolutions, war, and the liberation of its people.

The Politics of An Emerging Film Industry
Most of the available data dates Mexican Cinema to the “late nineteenth century” and the Presidency of Porfirio Diaz. As is a common mark of cinema worldwide, the early emergence of films, which of course were still of the silent era, fufilled the purpose of “documenting” (documentaries) a Countries political interest, most often in the interest of controlling the narrative. Film represented a new way to influence the masses, something his presidency saw in Salvador Barragan’s  Don Juan Tenorio (1898).

This is also how (and why) a documentary style would emerge as a way to give voice back to the people later on in Italy, with Mexico being no different. In terms of the Presidency, these early images (short films) were used to create what history refers to as an “idealizing” image. This became a mark of the Mexican Revolution, a socio-political struggle that has come to be defined as a ‘national” transformation (see: Alan Knight and “Mexican Revolution: Interpretations”). An underreported aspect of this revolution is the failure of Diaz’s attempt to control the narrative of the Country by way of film, which really depended on the reality of a succession of power. Where film could be controlled by the elite, it also exposed the voices of the people, creating a chaotic landscape in which we find a succession not of powers, but of revolutions (including the Ten Tragic Days). All of this, history suggests, hinges on the development of the Mexican Constitution (1917), an idea that lingered for a while amidst these back and forth revolutions which divided the Country into many different pockets and circles of social, economic and political powers. As historian John Womack, Jr documented, “Economic and social conditions improved in accordance with revolutionary policies, so that the new society took shape within a framework of official revolutionary institutions.”

All of this marries back into the development of the film industry as a key factor and role player in unifying a fractured Country by way of allowing the people to tell their stories, beginning in the trenches of the industry that first began to erect these house of “moving pictures”, but even more so, in like minded fashion to other global areas, via travelling shows (called Carpas, or tent shows in Mexico) that saved these stories from simply being a product of the elite. This is what played a key role in not allowing a singular political narrative to be established. The industry was actually being built on the backs of the common people, whom were the artists and the creatives developing the art form as an image and expression of Mexican culture.

A Unifying Culture and the Progression of a Developing Film Industry
The historians that I read seemed to be unified in the understanding that in a fractured Country a unified industry is difficult to establish, which meant that one of the key factors that weighed on the film industry as Carpas disappeared (largely due to problem of highly flammable film not lending itself to longevity and consistency) and the industry started to define itself as something uniquely “Mexican” was the question of distribution. A diversity of voices were making film, but getting those films seen and heard beyond the borders of these socio-political pockets proved difficult. Levels of attempted censorship that emerged out of these revolutions also played a role in how films could emerge from these circles.

This meant that any semblance of an industry was relegated to a narrow selection of smaller companies (see: Carlos Mongrand). Being in such close proximity to America as well, with all of the socio-political and economic developments that flow from that, meant that any discussion of an industry was being measured by what historians call “the genius of the system”. “This concept of what André Bazin referred to as “the genius of the system,” and its subsequent stability would ultimately prove the undoing of the very system it nurtured, as the industrial production process became ossified and incapable of innovation.” (See: The Genius of the System: Hollywood Filmmaking in the Studio EraBook by Thomas Schatz). What this quote points to is the tension that exists, especially as the film industry marries to socio-political realities, between the “social” and the “political”, the (liberated) people and the (controlled) system. It is for this reason that you see one of the greatest influences of Mexican system actually coming from Italy, a Country which mirrored Mexico’s own struggle.

From Italy to America to a Mexican Film Industry
When one studies the Mexican film industry, what gets uncovered is the deep “influence” of Italian filmmaking. It helped to anchor Mexico’s own cinematic development as a ground level endeavor. Out of the shared chaos of both Countries, filled with shared revolutions comes a dedication to protecting film as the “voice of the people”.

Which points to an interesting development following the exodus of filmmakers following the World War to America. Between the wars, there is documentation that shows how America tried to use the film industry to gain influence and control over Mexican development (which flows from their political involvement as well in Mexico’s ongoing revolutionary state). As one historian states,

“In the 1930s, once peace and a degree of political stability were achieved, the film industry took off in Mexico and several movies still experimenting with the new medium were made. Hollywood’s attempt at creating Spanish language films for Latin America failed mainly due to the combination of Hispanic actors from different ethnicities exhibiting various accents unfamiliar to the Mexican people.” To simplify this idea, America misjudged an assumed uniformity of a Latin American culture, causing them to make films that stereotyped a diverse culture into a single entity that made no sense to the diverse peoples that made up the Mexican landscape, culture and experience, and thus Latin America as a whole. Somewhat bridged by Mexico’s adherence to socialist and socially minded systems (see Italy and even Russia, by way of Sergei Eisenstien’s travels to the Country around 1930), what ended up happening is that this created a protective barrier between Mexico and America that allowed Mexico to develop its own style of industry alongside America, also making Mexico the most significant influencer of film industries across Latin America rather than America.

Mexican Film’s Golden Age
As information seems to establish, it would appear that as the 1930’s hits, we find a Golden Age of Mexican Cinema starting to emerge. As one writing suggested, “It’s widely accepted that the Fernando de Fuentes films Allá en el Rancho Grande (1936) and Vámonos con Pancho Villa (1936) set the wheels in motion for what would become Mexican cinema’s Golden Age.”

As with the development of the global industry, distinguising itself as a culture and amidst other cultures is often measured by way of the rise of recognizable “figures” or stars. What might be an underdocumented aspect of Mexico’s rise in the film world during this period is the fact that the second World War left them free to navigate a developing industry outside of the view of America and Europe. Which connects to Mexico’s eventual joining “in the war” when a German submarine destroyed a Mexican tanker. Mexico was looked at kindly as an outside entity joining the greater cause, which resulted in Mexico being provided with (gifted with) the necessary tools to make film at a time when other industries were struggling to maintain and keep afloat their industries. Being somewhat distanced and removed, and yet also sacrificially involved, meant that Mexico’s already established diversity was able to afford their films cherished stories that had nothing to do with the war. This is where you see the voice of Mexico essentially establishing a long lasting influence in the rest of Latin America as well (it is said that film development tripled during World War 2 in Mexico).

Yet another underdeveloped topic of Mexico’s rise in cinematic dominence is how this diversity filtered down into the mimicking of the “star system” that dominated other global entities, especially in America. In America, the system held power over the stars, while in Mexico the gradual and slow development of its constitutional awareness gave control to the stars to direct the industries within their diverse presence. This made for a cultural diversity and a diversity of genres that was unique to Mexico itself, protecting its culture through its lack of uniformity. And while different degrees of socialism formed an ebb and flow within Mexico’s socio-political growth, this diversity was interpreted in more fascist governments in Latin America as the freedom of language, people and culture. “Mexican films served as a conduit for a complex of ideas and influences: Mexican music, slang, performers, and folklore were popularized throughout the Hispanic world; on another level, the ideology and social view of the Mexican bourgeoisie were disseminated throughout Latin American society. In other words, Mexican cinema has practiced “cultural imperialism” just as Hollywood is so often accused of doing.”

Socialism and A New Mexican Cinema
As with the rest of the world, Cinema in Mexico went through some challenging times with the advent of television and changing political realities. What one finds is a similar narrative as well in terms of how the Mexican governments responded to these challenges by way of government funding, sponsorships and policies. “State supported film” helped lead the way to a revitalization now known as New Mexican Cinema. What makes Mexico stand out in this endeavor however is how this revitalization has persisted even to this day. The establishment of an industry during the war meant that they were able to develop filmmakers from the inside (through film studies, courses, education centers), and a marriage of private and state function/investment has helped to give it a necessary longevity, which gives it not only an authentic voice, but an established voice in terms of serious art. What continues to define Mexican cinema is its dedication to “independent and diverse voices, something that sets it apart from its American counterparts. What has aided in this longevity is Mexico’s dependence on and interest in a variety of local festivals in a Country without a unifying presence of a “Hollywood” type entity. It gives these individual entities more power, rather than filtering this power through singular entities. And what will continue to foster this strong relationship between people, culture and film is a ground level investment in film as a “social function”. This is something that Mexico’s “socially” minded progress has continued to uphold, even as other industries have gravitated towards more individualistic, market fueled, and industry based approaches (see the streaming wars). A wander into Mexican Cimema can feel like a retreat back to the good old days of film as a social presence, only in a curious way it arrives as a modern expression. This quote sums up the power of Mexican Cinema as well as any:

“In many of these (Mexican) films, we observe most clearly the clash of the diverse factions of Mexican society riven by centuries of unresolved cultural, class and gender disconnects and intersections — indigenous vs. Spanish, peasant farmer vs. landowner, factory worker vs. capitalist, religious vs. secular, folkloric vs. commercial — these elements all collided and simmered in the rich social heritage of indigenous and Spanish society that created Mexico.”

*I am still working on my personal list of Mexican films, but here is a decent watchlist for those interested
https://letterboxd.com/davetcourt/list/mexican-films-watchlist/

SOURCES
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cinema_of_Mexico
https://www.laits.utexas.edu/jaime/cinesite/history/IntroMexCine5-05.pdf
http://www.oxfordbibliographies.com › view › obo-9780199791286-0170
https://theculturetrip.com/north-america/mexico/articles/the-golden-age-of-mexican-cinema-a-short-history/
https://www.americasquarterly.org/content/and-el-oscar-goes
https://http://www.bfi.org.uk/news-opinion/sight-sound-magazine/features/deep-focus/deep-focus-golden-age-mexican-cinema
The Genius of the System: Hollywood Filmmaking in the Studio EraBook by Thomas Schatz
John Womack, Jr
Alan Knight and “Mexican Revolution: Interpretations”

The author of Matthew goes to great lengths in his Gospel to reposition Jesus within the Jewish narrative, the story of the Israelites, and in my previous reflections I have noted how Matthew emphasizes, expounds on and elevates the Old Testament references in order to retell the story of Genesis and Exodus and essentially create a new Pentateuch that establishes Jesus as the new temple in the coming “Kingdom” of God. Understanding the nature of this Kingdom is paramount for the author, especially as he positions it as a contest between two Kingdoms, in which the religious leaders (Israel, the Jewish nation) is caught inbetween.

A Coming Death, A Coming Kingdom, and A Kingdom for the Least
In Chapter 16 we arrive at the first of three foretellings of Jesus’s coming death (16:21-23), where we find two essential markers of this coming Kingdom. First, it reemphasizes the context of the temptation narrative, in which Jesus and the devil drive this contest between the two Kingdoms. Which is interesting, because Matthew positions the confession of Christ as the “revealing” of the Father in line with his resistance to Jesus’s Kingdom as the work of the “devil”. When Jesus (in Matthew’s narrative) then moves to say “If anyone would come after me, let him deny himself and take up the cross and follow me”, he is giving definition to where the disciples are following him, which is to the Cross. This revealing gives way to the Transfiguration, which has Jesus once again ascending a mountain, which in ancient Israelite tradition is where God is often revealed (the root of that word “apocalypse” or “revelation”). In keeping with Matthews concern for establishing a new Pentateuch, this is where Jesus climbs the mountain with Elijah and Moses where Moses had his apocalyptic encounter with God (note the voice from the cloud), positioning John as Elijah and Jesus as the fulfillment of the Law (Moses). And then once again, as Jesus descends the mountain, he descends to do his work, which he says is to die and then to rise again (17:9). Just as Elijah came and suffered and died at the hands of their resistance to God’s Kingdom building, so must Jesus.

Here we get a crucial point of Matthew, which is this deep connection between the contest of the Kingdom of Rome and the Kingdom of God, the contest between the Devil and Jesus as the ones driving these Kingdoms, and the contest that exists within ourselves, both externally (the Kingdom of Rome and the person of Jesus) and internally (the spirit of the devil and the Spirit of God). It is a Kingdom that they are being asked to take up residence in, and this Kingdom is Jesus. And the way to this Kingdom, the straight path that John pointed us towards, is through the Cross as that which sets the Kingdom of God in contest to the Kingdom of this world.

This becomes the point of the Beatitudes, where Jesus on the mountain establishes the Kingdom of God as a Kingdom for the least. What we find in the temptation narrative is a contest of “powers”, and what the Cross does is reposition power towards the weakness and shocking nature of the Cross itself. In death comes life, in weakness comes power. This is what Jesus is dong in willingly settings himself under the powers of this world, under the powers of sin and death so as to establish a new Kingdom that proclaim liberation for the oppressed. This is the measure of the Cross.

As we now move towards the Cross, we once again find an establishing of this Kingdom nature sandwiched between what will be two more foretellings of Jesus’ death and resurrection (17:22-23; 20:17-19), beginning with this grand statement that declares children to be the greatest in the kingdom. “Whoever humbles himself like this child is the greatest in the Kingdom of Heaven (18:4).” Pushing this further, Jesus says, “whoever receives one such child in my name receives me.”

Here Jesus connects His own ministry to the ministry of his disciples, saying that what you do to them you do to me, and to receive them means you are receiving Jesus. Jesus raises up the idea of children as an embodiment of someone who is not yet formed by an understanding of the Law in the way the religious leaders were. They simply come to Jesus and are giving a place in the Kingdom apart from the Law. This is a disassociating of works from salvation, finding Jesus as the new Law, and this forms the idea that where we find Jesus is in the least, the oppressed, the marginalized, the Gentiles, all those who have been marginalized by the Law.

Doubling down on this idea of a Kingdom for children (or coming into the Kingdom as “children”), Jesus now moves to add that “whoever causes one of these little ones who believe in me to sin… (18:6)” would be better to have fastened a stone around their neck and thrown themselves into a lake then to face the woes that we find in 18:7-9. For it is necessary that temptations come, but woe to the one by whom the temptation comes.

This is obviously hyperbolic language, but it leaves a question about how Matthew is framing the attention of these verses pertaining to “children” and “temptation”, which Matthew’s Gospel seems to suggest are “necessary”. I think two things can help us as readers make sense of these verses- understanding who the children, the tempters and those being tempted are, and understanding how this relates to the Kingdom Jesus is establishing by way of the Cross,

The first clue I think is recognizing that Matthew is structured so as to kind of bookmark this passage about children with the later verse, “Let the children come to me and do not hinder them, for to such belongs the kingdom of heaven (19:15).” I found this helpful to read this almost like a “so then…” moment. The Kingdom of Heaven is framed by the question, “who is the greatest”, to which Jesus says whoever comes like a child will enter the Kingdom… “so then”, let the children come to me and do not hinder them.

Notice how this naturally shifts the focus away from them to those Jesus is calling into the Kingdom. This means the entire collection of passages are intended to speak to how those asking the question about who is the greatest (the disciples) are called to bring people into the Kingdom.

And who is Jesus bringing into the Kingdom? This is where Jesus positions the religious leaders (that brood of vipers) as the religious elite (the mature in the Law) over and against the gentiles, the oppressed, the marginalized, all those whom the Law has isolated ignored for the sake of building their Kingdom. “See to it” then, Jesus says, that “you do not despise one of these little ones. For I tell you that in heaven their angels always see the face of my Father who is in heaven.” This is curious language, but this reference to angels and “face” (note the face of God hidden to Moses and in the Cloud at the Transfiguration) alludes us to the ancient context of this understanding of the “hosts” of heaven (angels surrounding God in his throne room) and this freedom to imagine God as dwelling with us, watching over us. This is ultimately about the ways in which Jesus has come to reveal God, and in Him all those who are weak and burdened and sick and hurting find rest.

Pushing this further now into the heart of God in his Kingdom, we then find this passage connected to the 99 sheep, and the shepherd (Jesus) going out to look for the one. “It is not the will of my father who is in heaven that one of these little ones should perish. 18:14”

So again, who are the children, the little ones? This is the world that Jesus came to save. It is the Gentiles, the sick, the marginalized, all those who have been neglected by the temple establishment. This is why Jesus is coming to rebuild the temple as Himself. This is then positioned into a discussion of encountering the people, the ones Jesus is bringing into the Kingdom, in light of the law. Jesus says, “if your brother sins against you”, forgive him (18:15). “Let him be to you as a Gentile and a tax collector”, which is whom we have found Jesus reclining at the table with earlier in Matthew’s “call”. And if you want to find reasons for why someone should not be in the Kingdom, consider how many times we are meant to forgive our brother. Forgiveness here has not measure, for the Kingdom of Heaven is forgiveness. Therefore woe to you who does not forgive, because (as is often the argument that flows out of these positions), this will simply mean that this limiting of forgiveness will flow back on you.

All of this is wrapped up again in this “so then”. If this is who the Kingdom is for, “so then”, don’t stop one of these little ones (cause them to sin) from coming into the Kingdom. To accent this frame of reference, which is all pointing us towards the Cross, we get a story about a rich man coming to Jesus asking about what it means to follow Him into this Kingdom. Jesus once again flips his reference- if you would be perfect, well what you possess and give to the poor, and you will have treasure in heaven. Don’t present the measure of the Law, present the measure of Christ and that will be given back to you. For, and here is the great proclamation that forms this entire passage as a collective force, “many who are first will be last (19:30), the last will be first, and the first last (20:16).

Who Then Can Be Saved?
There is a really curious dialogue that is worth puling out of the Rich Young Man story in 19:16-30. It says that the rich young man turned and went away “sorrowful” because he had great possessions and knew that he did not want to sell them. I imagine this sorrow coming not from a resolute position, but coming from the revealed tension that the two Kingdoms in contest raises. This causes Jesus to say, “only will difficultly will a rich person enter the Kingdom of heaven.” Matthew’s Gospel gives a great focus on the topic of money, but I think this can be expanded not just to riches, but to the measure of our desire, which is really what the temptation “narratives” in Genesis and in Jesus in the wilderness is all about. One exposes the desire of our heart, the other exposes the heart of God for the world. Which leads the disciples to say, well then who then can be save!?, which arrives with a sense of exasperation. Jesus’ response is to turn their focus back on God’s desire, saying that nothing is impossible with God (19:23-30). Jesus then raises up the 12, which Jesus has brought into His Kingdom work, as the “judge” of the 12 tribes of Israel. There is a lot of context that can be explored within this imagery, but what this ultimately expresses is this ongoing dynamic of God’s Kingdom beginning in Israel, with the disciples bringing the Gospel to the synagogues, and the placement of Jesus as the liberating work of God’s covenant with Israel. There is a connection that exists within the NT understanding, as it breathes life back into God’s indwelling and absence in the temple and life of Israel, between Israel’s stumbling, the Kingdom being built on the Gentiles (the least), and the fulfillment of God’s covenant promise with his people (Israel). This forms the sweeping nature of God’s Kingdom as it presents Jesus as the temple and us in Jesus (God’s dwelling among us).

In any case, the important idea of this judgment comes in how the disciples are raised up as workers, which we find in the parable of 20:1-16, and the Kingdom where the last shall be first and the first last. It is fitting that Israel is both the first and the last in this Kingdom paradigm as Jesus reorients our idea of power in weakness. In this way this judgement has a restorative work, which following the 3rd and final foretelling of the Cross and resurrection in 20:17-19 once again declares that “whoever will be great among you must be your servant 20:26.” The answer to their question is found at the Cross, the very image that we find foreshadowed in the Triumphal entry into Jerusalem (21). He comes in humility and weakness, riding on a donkey, the one who becomes the measure of the Law which is summed up as the “greatest” commandment, Love your neighbors and love God (22:37). You cannot have one without the other. This is what becomes embodied in the placement of John’s death where it is in the narrative, a move that allows it to foreshadow and point to Jesus’ death. What we see is John’s own suffering revealing Jesus’ liberating work in world, and as Herod mourns his death and falls back in on himself, Jesus mourns John’s death and it pushes him to heal and comfort in 3 subsequent narrative stories that underscore this entire repositioning of the Kingdom as for the least.

The Cross as Judgment and Liberation
So, as we recognize this paradigm in which Jerusalem comes both first and last in this Kingdom formation, this establishing of Jesus, we come to this grand collection of 7 woes or judgments directed to the scribes and pharisees, which leads Jesus towards a lament over Jerusalem. Here it is said that in the restorative work of the Cross, the house (the temple) is being left desolate, which alludes to the destruction of the temple (24:1-2), and will eventually be once again overtaken by the Kingdom of this world. All of this arrives as the “signs” of the end of the age, the abomination of desolation, the coming of the Son of Man to bring this new Kingdom to fruition. The image of the fig tree reemerges here as a sign that the season is now upon them, and that the Kingdom has now come. As it says, this generation will not pass away until all of this takes place, and then, when the kingdom is established, the parable of the ten virgins and the parable of the talents allude to the great reversal of power which calls them to not sleep, to work for the Kingdom (for the least) and to be ready. What the final judgement depicted here, in the heavily symbolic language of heaven or eternal fire, brings to the surface is the contest of these two Kingdoms being decided and declared through the Cross and the Resurrection of Jesus. And in the most poignant of expressions, raising to light the character of the Kingdom and the desire for the world that is declared in Jesus at the temptation narrative, Jesus proclamation of the “final judgment” in 25:31-46 asks the question, when did you feed the hungry, attend to the least and the marginalized, because when you did, you attended to me. As you did to the least of these, you did it to me.

All of this judgment is fixed within the raising up of Jesus’ disciples as the judge of Israel. This is whom these words are directed to, is the tradition of God’s people, the temple. As they find themselves caught between Jesus and the Kingdom of Rome, what we have are these images of both the temple and the Kingdom of Rome coming to destruction. The necessary question that emerges from this then becomes, how is this going to happen, and to what end is this moving as Jesus is being established as the new temple and building God’s Kingdom. The answer to this is what we find at the Cross itself.

The repositioning of power that we find Matthew building through the raising up of Herod as the contest of the Kingdoms in the earlier chapters, the the representing of John as power coming in weakness, now positions us into this picture of Pilate and Jesus. The two Kingdoms have now come to a head. What is important to note about Matthew’s Gospel, is that the familiar picture of Isaiah’s Servant in Matthew’s portrayal of Jesus’ death actually kind of fades away. Instead, the Righteous Sufferer of the Psalms emerges. Matthew’s appeal to Isaiah 53 in 8:17, his most definitive dealing of the suffering servant, is actually associated with Christ’s healing work, not his death. It is restorative in is suffering. Matthew underscores most prominently the larger image for Jesus’ death as set within the “righteous sufferer”. Isaiah 40-55 is what actually provides Matthew with the framework for the new Exodus, not the death. What is read into the death is Psalm 69-71, which coincides with the idea in Hebrews of Christ being made perfect “in suffering”, which is what establishes the new Kingdom over and against the powers of the world. The righteous sufferer is actually what frames our understanding of the Cross as both the judgement of the powers and the reforming of the powers. It is framed around one who is “cast out”, which is also how we come to the scapegoat imagery of Yom Kippur, who carries the load of our sin out into the wilderness (those who had been cast out by the religious leaders and institution), and who’s blood becomes the blood that saves the oppressed in the Exodus story on the doorstep.

What is really interesting about working through the Cross by way of the Psalm and by way of the scapegoat imagery is that the sin that God forgives (the sin which the the religious leaders have used to cast out people) is paired with the Sin that holds the world in bondage, forming into this larger language of judgment that positions the religious leaders (in whom the tradition of Yom Kippur would have held value) alongside the Kingdom of Rome. The force of the two goats of Yom Kippur can be seen seen in one of two ways- Jesus emboddies both, or Jesus and Barnabas represent the two goats. In either case, the image that the Cross evokes, when set within Matthew’s desire to present a new Pentateuch, is one in which the sins are being carried away, but also the power of Sin is being defeated. This is what would not have been represented in the usual sacrifice for sin. And all of this in Jewish/Israelite tradition has to do with the presence and dwelling of God in their midst. What is necessary though about Yom Kippur and its context, is that the death of the goat and the sending of the scapegoat into the wilderness are two different things. One sends the sin away, the other sends a message of liberation to the oppressed..

It can’t be missed as well the relevance of the Cross taking place at passover. This is where it emerges as the New Exodus, and this is where Jesus’ blood arrives in the way that it did for the Israelites. And so as we walk through the passion narrative- the plot to kill Jesus, Jesus annointed at Bethany in a way that becomes the expression of the Cross’ reveersal of power, the passover meal, the prayer in gethsemane as a prayer for the work of the Cross to made true for the world, the betrayal and arrest, Jesus set on trial and delivered to Pilate, Jesus before Pilate, the choosing of Barnabas (perhaps as the scapeboat imagery), Jesus then mocked, beaten, crucified, died and buried, the story of Genesis, Exodus, the giving of the Law, the building of the temple, all of this is supposed to come alive in the story of the righteous sufferer.

The necessary focus becomes the understanding of the role of the two goats as that which centers our understanding of what the death on the Cross is doing. It seems to me that this is the part that becomes so misunderstood. If we follow Matthew’s Gospel, he has set up Jesus as a retelling of the Genesis-Exodus narrative (fleeing to Egypt, coming out of Egypt, coming through the water, going into the wilderness, and then establishing life in the promised land (the new Kingdom of his ministry). This reaches forward to the Law being given to Moses in the transfiguration, and Jesus’ resurrection being the building of the temple.

In this sense, what happens with Jesus is He is bearing the weight of sin that has outcast those from the temple, and taking it away from them so that the presence of God can dwell among them freely (they can be invited into the Kingdom). This fits with the imagery of the suffering that leads to the Cross, which is what happens with the scapegoat symbolically before being let go into the wilderness. The death though falls in line with the painting of the door frames, which is a story of liberation, of the Powers (of Egypt) being subverted, and the power of God being made known in the liberation of the oppressed. The difference now though is that the Kingdom has come.

So many conflate the two and miss the force of this story arc, arriving at a retributive God who demands death because of sins. That misses so much of the story itself, which in context of the traditional context functions as both a removal of sins (the righteous suffering of Jesus’ ministry) and a restorative work (the death) which is what subverts the power (of Rome).

And what is so interesting about the way this plays out in the Gospel of Matthew is that it all seems to be in service of Jerusalem, the people of God, the Jewish people/Israelites. They are once again the first and last to emerge in this picture of the powers being subverted, the subject of the judgment that this subverting of power creates. It takes us back to that journey of the Israelites in the wilderness, and what seems to stand on a precarious and unsettled line in this story is this picture of God’s Kingdom being built inspite, and in light of their stumbling and rejection. But what comes after the Cross and Resurrection proclaim the Kingdom here in the not yet reality of their current oppression (under the Kingdom of Rome), is that the wilderness is something we still have to trudge through. the Resurrection moves us back to the way to the Cross as the way this Kingdom is being established. The story is not finished. Jerusalem has been judged, and now it is being rebuilt. To me this leaves so much room for that tension that the Gospel holds of this ultimately being hopeful for Israel itself, of the salvation of the Gentiles breathing God’s liberating force back into Israelites story and history. In rewriting the story (or revealing it for what it is declared to be in Jesus), this question, who then can be saved, comes back to their own story. With God all things are possible become the refrain.

And as we come to the end of this Gospel, we find Jesus once again on the mountain, where they saw him and they worshiped him. And yet some doubted. What an extraordinary picture of this not-yet reality. The Kingdom is here, and yet it arrives in the same doubts that John the Baptist had. The answer comes in the same fashion as it did to John though. If you are doubting, look to the healing work of Jesus, and let that push you to “go make disciples of all nations, baptizing and teaching them to obey.” And as we do so, we do so knowing that He (Jesus, the incarnate presence of God) is with us always, to the end of the age.

How do you recognize false prophets? Sheeps clothing but fruits reveal… tree with bad fruit is cut down and thrown into the fire… many who say “Lord Lord” will enter the kingdom, but Jesus will say “depart from me, I never knew you” (7:21-23)… the relationship between hearers and doers- house on a rock (7:24) or house on the sand (7:26)… fruits and trees from chapter 3
– all of these teachings astonished the crowds, because he was teaching “as one who had authority” 7:29

“Whenever religion becomes a depressing affair of burdens and prohibitions, it ceases to be true religion.”
― William Barclay (The Gospel of Matthew)

While the author of the Gospel of Matthew remains anonymous, tradition has long positioned it to be the words of Matthew, one of the Disciples of Christ and an Apostle (also known as Levi).

What is clear from the Gospel’s biting and often scathing critique of the religious leaders, those caught between competing visions of the Kingdom of Jesus and the Kingdom of Rome, is that the author, whom is clearly writing his Gospel in light of the Jewish tradition and Israelite story (see my previous reflections) has had some sort of a transformative experience regarding how he sees his own Jewish heritage. What we find are the words of someone who has been set on the margins of this tradition, and someone who is desperate to present a Gospel that echo the words of Jesus in his own life, words that say that he belongs, that he is a child of God. This is the force of the Genealogy, his decisions to set Jesus’ story in line with what appears as a new “Pentateuch, and it is the entire force of the Kingdom vision he is trying to point.

In Chapter 9, we find the “call” of Matthew to come follow Jesus. If this is in fact the author, what we have are more of the particulars of his context. He is said to be a tax collector (9:9), a Jewish man who was collaborating with the Romans. Someone who was towing the middle line, which might be why the author of Matthew is so attentive to painting a picture of Jewish leaders and a Jewish tradition caught between these two pictures of the Kingdom.

As the story goes, we find Jesus reclining at a table with other “tax collectors and sinners” (9:11), and inviting Matthew to “follow him”. This invites a distinctive for the Pharisees between a teacher of the Law and a teacher like Jesus. They ask his disciples, why is your teacher eating with these kinds of people. Which arrives with a bit of irony, because in the call of Simon, Andrew, James and John we find the context of humble fishermen whom were likely to have said “why me” as well. Overhearing the question, Jesus says in response, “those who are well have no need of a physician, but those who are sick” do. And then he goes on to make the distinction, “I desire mercy, and not sacrifice”, contrasting the word of the Law with Jesus’ ministry. “I came not to call the righteous, but sinners.”

What is interesting to consider about these words is that the call of Jesus is consistently followed by them teaching in “their synagogues and proclaiming the Gospel of the kingdom.” In the sending of the 12 Disciples in Chapter 10, we find the workers sent to the house of Israel (10:6), declaring the kingdom (10:7). The message of Matthew’s Gospel, the one that declares a Gospel for the oppressed, the outsiders and the sinners, begins with the house of Israel in order to reestablish the temple as God’s dwelling place. In Matthew’s Gospel, Jesus is being raised up as the new temple, the one in whom all of us reside, the new Kingdom, and thus declaring this new temple being built is part of this new Pentateuch that Matthew is drawing out, one in which the death and resurrection declare Jesus as the new temple in the center of this new Kingdom. This, Matthew insists, is what God is up to and has been up to all along, making a Kingdom for the least, the oppressed, a Kingdom that brings with it a true message of liberation for all the nations and all the people of the world as it states in the Abrahamic covenant.

Up The Mountain
Unlike in Luke where Jesus is positioned on a level (equal) place, where Matthew has Jesus is ascending up a mountain in order to now declare the vision of this Kingdom in what we know as the Beatitudes (5:2-12). This elevated place is a continued repositioning of power from the rulers to the lowly, which arrives with a clear picture of who the Kingdom of God is raising up in power- the poor in spirit, those who mourn, the meek, the hungry and thirsty, merciful, pure in heart, the peacemakers, the persecuted, and the reviled.

This elevated position then becomes the image that is passed on to the workers Jesus is calling (his disciples). They are called to be a light to the world set on a hill so God can do a good works 5:14)). You, Jesus declares, are the “salt of the earth (5:13), and these “good works” (the works of Jesus, which is the power given to the disciples when they are called in chapter 10) are to be seen so that God can be seen in our good works (5:16).

And yet there is a distinction between the works of Jesus and the works of the Law. “Do not think that I came to abolish the Law of the Prophets” Jesus says. I have come to fulfill them (5:17).” This leads him to once again express a bit of irony in terms of these competing visions of the Kingdom that Matthew is trying to establish. Just as he tells them to let their works be displayed on the hill, we then get a series of challenges in chapter 6 that caution against “practicing their righteousness before other people in order to be seen by them (6:1).” This includes a call to given in secret (6:1-4), pray in secret (6:5-15), and fasting in secret, all of which correspond to gaining the heavenly riches as opposed to the external praises of people.

So what is this distinction about? At the beginning of the section we gewt this sentence that says, “unless your righteousness exceeds that of the scribes and pharisees, you will never enter the Kingdom of Heaven (5:20)”, for whoever relaxes even the least of these commandments (and teaches others to do the same) will be called least in the Kingdom of Heaven, and whoever dose them will be called great (5:19). Which all feels slightly convoluted and contradictory given how Matthew has been setting up his Gospel as a Gospel not for the righteous, but for the least. This is followed up with examples of anger (5:21-26), to emphasize this point (you will never get out of the prison until you have paid the last penny, fulfilled the Law perfectly), and then he does the same thing with Lust, Divorce, Oaths, Retaliation, and all matters of the Law.

But then he ends with love (5:43-48), which he has established as the “greatest” commandment. And not just love, but the hardest form of love (the call to love their enemies). In this, Jesus says, “you must be perfect, as your heavenly father is perfect.” Notice the shift here from exceeding even the perfection of the Pharisees under manner of the Law to the call to be perfect “as” your heavenly father is perfect. The difference is this phrase “in love”. The difference between mercy and sacrifice, is that Jesus, God’s chosen servant has come to declare God’s love to the world on that mountain in the work of the Cross. This is not to elevate the Law, but it is, as Paul often says, so that the Law can point to Jesus as the measure of our perfection, the one we are then called to follow and imitate in the work He called us to do, which is to enter into the suffering of others, eat with the tax collectors, reside with sinners, forgive our enemies. We cannot underscore just how radical this would have been for someone like the author of Matthew.

Down the Mountain
And so, as we now find Jesus coming down the mountain (8:1), we see him entering into this work, healing the sick and the broken, liberating the oppressed, with all of this work arriving as a visible sign of the light for the world in declaring the forgiveness of sins, the loving of the enemy. The forgiveness of sins is to that they can know the Son of Man has authority (9:6), the same authority that is then given to his workers.

This is the faith that Jesus continues to uphold in the work of these healings, faith that is found and upheld in the faith of the Centurion (8:8), the healing stories throughout chapter 9 (9:20; 9:29), the faith of those bringing in the paralytic (which coincides with the declaration “your sins are forgiven” 9:1-17)

Jesus upholds the faith of the Centurion saying “with no one in Israelhave I found such faith (8:10).” Contrast this with the disciples of little faith Jesus finds in the boat and in the storm (8:26). And I think it is here where we get Matthew’s point. Jesus continues saying, “Many will come from east and west and recline at the table witih Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob in the Kingdom of Heaven, while the sons of the Kingdom will be thrown into the outer darkness…. so go, let it be done for you as you have believed, and the servant was healed at that very moment (8:11-13).” This is in line with the parables (such as the wedding feast) which we find later on. Matthew once again positions Jesus as establishing His Kingdom in Jerusalem “for the world”. This is why he heals a leper and sends him to the religious leaders to offer proof according to the law (8:4). Whereas the religious leaders stand above their disciples, Jesus now declares in 10:24-25 a different picture. “A disciple is not above his teacher, nor a servant not above his master.” This is their reality. But in Christ, it is enough to be like the teacher and like the master.

What is curious here is that Jesus then adds this. “If they have called the master of the house Beelzebul, how much more will they malign those of his household (10:25).” This of course brings us back to the accusation that in Jesus’ healings and forgiveness of sins, the religious leaders called Jesus the devil. Notice how Jesus spins this into his establishing of authority over the house, and consider the setting (the house of Israel). This blends in Jesus’ words with Him as the new temple for the world. The house of Israel (the temple) becomes a picture of the whole order being God’s temple, which for someone like Matthew would have been recognized in the imagery of Genesis (the whole cosmos is God’s throne room, God’s temple) and the language of the prophets (God sits above the waters of the sky on his throne looking down on us and with the earth as his footstool). The Jewish narrative had to do with God’s presence no longer dwelling in the temple. What Jesus is establishing is not only God’s presence in the temple, but he is reestablishing God’s presence with them in the whole of the world, the world that the religious leaders were rejecting in the hope of their salvation. It is for this reason that it can be said then to “have no fear (of those calling them Satan)”, for it is enough to be “like” Jesus who himself was called Satan. For “nothing is covered that will not be revealed, and nothing hidden that will not be made known.” And what is it to be like Jesus? This brings us back to this up the mountain, down the mountain movement. Jesus is raising up the weak as the powerful (on the mountain) by eating with sinners and tax collectors, healing the sick and the oppressed and the marginalized (coming down the mountain). This is why he ends his walk through the measure of the Law with love. Love is what we find at the Cross, the Way in which they are following Jesus and called to be like Jesus. What Jesus demonstrates on the Cross, the weak being made powerful, the suffering being made strength, is theirs to give to the world. So don’t be like the Jewish religious or the gentiles who want their works to be seen as the measure of their salvation, be like Jesus, whose work is in the business of pointing people to His liberating work on the Cross (6:7). This is the light for the world. Pray so that others may be lifted up. Give so that others may be lifted up. Forgive so that Jesus may forgive. This is the measure of love as the fulfillment of the Law. This is the same hope that Jesus offers John the Baptist as he is languishing in prison. It is enough to be like me (suffering, being called an enemy), because in this the sick are healed, the blind see, the oppressed are freed, the marginalized find acceptance. This becomes the measure of John’s faith, this becomes the measure of the disciples faith, and it must become ours.