On exclusion - the Ukrainian director Sergei Loznitsa talking to Graham Fuller in The Guardian:

‘On 27 February, three days after Russian tanks rolled into his homeland, the Ukrainian director Sergei Loznitsa resigned from the European Film Academy. Loznitsa, an ebulliently professorial figure who moved with his family to Berlin in 2001, was furious that the EFA had issued a statement of solidarity with Ukraine that he saw as too “neutral, toothless and conformist in relation to Russian aggression”.
Then, on 19 March, Loznitsa announced he had been expelled from the Ukrainian Film Academy (UFA) for being a “cosmopolite”. He immediately understood the resonance of its slur. In an open letter published in Screen Daily, he wrote: “In the era of late Stalinism, this word acquired a negative connotation in Soviet propaganda.”’

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‘This controversy erupted two days after I first interviewed Loznitsa about his harrowing archival documentary, Babi Yar: Context, which screened at 2021’s BFI London film festival and opens at Film Forum in New York in April. Asked now if he thought the UFA’s appeal to national identity was wartime rhetoric or embodied a deeper Ukrainian problem – a refusal to embrace pluralism – he replied: “Their attitude has been further aggravated by the war, but the fundamental problems had manifested themselves long before. A few years ago, the Ukrainian Oscar committee [closely linked to the UFA] wanted to change its rules, allowing only films shot in Ukrainian and Tatar languages to be nominated for Oscars.”’

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‘There was another factor: Babi Yar: Context deals with, among other issues, Ukraine’s collaboration in the Nazi massacre of 33,771 Kyiv Jews in the Babi Yar ravine four miles north of the city in 1941. “Unfortunately,” he says, “the ‘honourable academy members’ had a very different perception of Ukrainian history, which they claim they know better than anyone. Thus, by calling me a ‘cosmopolite’ and using my refusal to categorically ban the entire Russian culture completely as a proof of my insufficient patriotism, they descend into the Stalinist paradigm of traitors, enemies, and collective responsibility – the best present they could have possibly given to Putin.” Further attacking the boycott, he cites the example of Russian film-maker Askold Kurov. “A few years ago, he put his liberty and perhaps even his life at risk by making a documentary about the trial of Oleg Sentsov, which took place in Russia.” Sentsov was a film-maker, writer and activist from Crimea. “The film was widely shown in Ukraine and worldwide. It played a crucial role in mobilising the world to campaign for his release. Kurov happens to be Russian. Do we now have to ban him and his work? This would be immoral and indecent. And there are other voices, in other fields of art.”’

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‘Inevitably, the scale of devastation in Ukraine this past month has led to comparisons between Putin and Hitler and Stalin, the Soviet dictator having orchestrated the deaths of between 4 and 10 million Ukrainians during the 1932-33 Holodomor or “terror famine”. But Loznitsa demurs. “Hitler and Stalin were self-made men who forced their way to the top by killing everyone around them, whereas Putin was appointed by a corporation that stands behind him. He’s nothing but a frontman. And if he was to be removed, a similar kind of faceless character would be put in his place. But if we are talking about the essential elements of their regimes, yes, they governed their societies by violence and fear, which are the foundations of all totalitarian regimes.” Does he think, as many fear, that Russia will invade other countries? “First of all,” says Loznitsa, “they have to conquer Ukraine – and the chances are that will be a long and difficult process. I think Russia will disintegrate before it actually manages to digest Ukraine. But if the most pessimistic predictions come true then of course, absolutely, there is no doubt Poland will be next, then Moldova and the Baltic states. After that, it will be Germany, which still doesn’t seem to get the danger of the situation, then France, et cetera.’

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‘Loznitsa’s most recent feature film was 2018’s Donbass, which opens in New York on 8 April. It comprises 13 grotesque vignettes from the 2014-15 war that took place in the south-east of his homeland between the Ukrainian army and Russian-backed separatists. “It’s important to know that the attitudes of Ukrainians are very different from what they were eight years ago,” says Loznitsa. “Back then, there were people who supported, or at least sympathised with the idea of the so-called Russian world. But after the atrocities, after everything the Russians have done to Ukraine, there is nobody now who would approve of this.” One horrifying sequence in Donbass is now being played out for real in Ukraine’s cities: it shows a group of ailing, helpless civilians hiding – without food, medicine, or even a functioning toilet – in a damp underground shelter to escape shelling. “Of course,” the director says, “and there are also scenes in Babi Yar: Context that remind us of the current images of Ukraine we see on TV screens today.”’

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‘All of which brings Loznitsa to a grim conclusion. “The politicians of the countries that have the means to stop this are acting immorally,” he says. “It’s doubly immoral because they base their policies on fear. They claim that if they intervene, it will result in a world war, whereas the world war has already begun.”’

Read the article here.

This is an interesting take. Even though I disagree that the World War has already started, and for a man who is clearly sophisticated it’s a bit banal, to say the least, that America (and he is referring to the US) has the means to stop the aggression.

There he becomes just the reincarnation of let’s say Rumsfeld. Bomb them back into the stone age. I believe the first one who said this was an American general during the Vietnam war. We know how that war ended.

But nationalism, which is a side effect of most wars, remains nasty nationalism, always changing the past, preferring mythology to facts, ready, willing and capable to exclude all kinds of enemies.