Episode 107: Full Transcript

Being a discussion with the filmmaker Sergei Loznitsa about the possibility of truth in cinema, the use of lies and abuse of language in politics, and the nature of totalitarianism

Mike Freedman Welcome to 1984 Today, your one stop shop for all things dystopian. I'm your host, Mike Freedman. In this episode, our guest is the film director, Sergei Loznitsa. Sergei is a Ukrainian director of documentaries and feature films, and he was born in Belarus when it was part of the Soviet Union. He's won too many awards to list here, and I don't want to make him blush by trying to. However, one does merit special emphasis. In 2018, he won the Un Certain Regard award for Best Director at Cannes for his film Donbass, a dark satire of what was then separatist fighting in eastern Ukraine, now, of course, a focal point in the ongoing war in Ukraine. It's an incredible film, powerful, funny, moving and truthful. And I strongly recommend that you find it and watch it wherever you are. A few of his other documentaries worth mentioning, as we might touch on them later, are The Natural History of Destruction, about the allied bombing of Nazi Germany, The Trial about the infamous Industrial Party show trial in Stalin's Soviet Union in 1930, and State Funeral, an in-depth look at the funeral that Stalin was given when he died in 1953. I feel particularly lucky because the stars have aligned and I actually get to sit with him in person while we talk. Sergei, thank you so much for giving us your time. Sergei Loznitsa Thank you. Hello.

Mike Freedman Now, one of the first things I wanted to touch on is, when the Russian invasion of Ukraine happened in February 2022, you had a bit of a back and forth in, shall we say, the broader professional film circles with the European Film Academy and then subsequently the Ukrainian Film Academy. Are you happy to tell us a little bit about that, or would you like me to summarize for the audience? Sergei Loznitsa What happened with the European Film Academy? Yeah, but this story is in the past already. I just published my statement, I think it was in Screen Daily, about the statement which they published on their web page, European Film Academy, about the Russian war against Ukraine. They were very accurate, delicate, and they even did not name it a war. They didn't use this kind of word, and it was very strange to read when Kiev already was bombed, to read that they expressed their worrying about the growing tension in the east of Ukraine, this kind of... Mike Freedman Soft language. Sergei Loznitsa Soft language. And for me, it was, you know, when you observe this war which started in the centre of this capital of my country, and to read the statement, it was impossible because this is a film society. It's for fighters. Directors, cinematographers, they must be fighters in the avant garde of this movement and such a statement, so soft. And so as a reaction to my statement they changed completely, deleted what they published before and published more radical stuff, saying that from that moment we cancel all the Russian films, we are not observing any Russian films. Mike Freedman Which is fascinating because like you said, it's a complete U-turn. They start off by soft balling the invasion. And then you pointed out that a war is a war and you can't belong to a society like that, that ignores this and uses those type of euphemisms. They turn around and say, okay, we are sanctioning Russia, we are not going to show any Russian films. And then, of course, you stood up for Russian filmmakers. Sergei Loznitsa You know, they have, I think, a very good nose and they understand the crowd, political life, and we're all politicians probably, but it was very strange. Okay, it happened like it happened. Mike Freedman But the kicker, the sting in the tail as I recall, is that then because they turned around and said, we won't be showing Russian films, you then said that was inappropriate as well because they were punishing Russian individuals, many of whom were against the war, collectively for something the Russian government was doing, which resulted in you getting excluded in quotation marks from the Ukrainian Film Academy, right? Sergei Loznitsa It's another story which happened immediately after. And I was surprised when I just read it in the newspaper because the members of this so-called Ukraine Film Academy, they did not ask me for any comment and they made a decision. No discussion. No discussion with me. No question. No asking. Just they made this decision after, I don't know, some six, five hours on Facebook. This is you know, we are all victims of this, the social net. Yeah. And this is serious. This is serious because crowds, a lot of uneducated people manipulate with a government, with authorities. And, it is another dangerous issue which we are faced with now. So but what they used is like a case when they accuse me that my films participate, my old films from 2010 and 2012, which are distributed by a French distributor, and it doesn't have any information, of course, because they distribute when somebody asks, would like to show a film. So my films participated together with Russian films in a film festival in Nantes, in France, a university film festival, which made the festival because they are studying Slavic languages and to study Russia and Russian culture of course. And they made the festival for students, nobody knows about this festival. It's a lie that I agreed to participate, I am happy to participate and said that. Mike Freedman You were like “standing shoulder to shoulder” with Russian films as if you crossed the picket line or something. Sergei Loznitsa Can you imagine? About this festival I read in the newspaper together with information that I was expelled. Mike Freedman Astonishing. Sergei Loznitsa But you know, this academy, it's private, it's a private person who pays money for that and made this academy, a so-called oligarch, and so this is the academy, which does not represent all Ukraine film society. And I know a lot of people who are not the members. They organized it in 2017 and they invited me, “This well-known film director is in the world.” They invited and asking me support them. Of course, I said, Oh, okay, of course. And of course, behind that, a few people who are waiting for the moment, how to, you know, make something against me. One of these people is a Ukraine co-producer of my film Donbass. And we have a lot of fighting during production. I fight for film and he fights for something else, but I won everywhere this fighting because for me the quality of the film is a must, the most important, of course. Mike Freedman So there was underlying political tension. Sergei Loznitsa Yes, yes, yes. It's life, you know, but it's a very funny story. And of course, it connects to my statement, which I made in France, to the French press, about this discussion about participating Russian films in Cannes or some other film festivals or not. And of course I said that it's stupid to make a total boycott and we have to just, we have to be selective and thinking whom we would like at our festivals. We would like to be innocent, of course, they decide not to participate with official representative of Russian film society, but some directors, even directors who just escaped Russia in the years before, why not? And the directors who made the films against this regime and criticize this regime, why not? It's strange because this kind of thing happened during First World War, during Second World War. And here in Great Britain and France, they said that never again. We never perform Wagner. In Germany they think that we never will make the play of Shakespeare. It's an understandable reaction. Mike Freedman But it's a very small minded reaction. Sergei Loznitsa Yes. We have to think about our culture, civilization and in asking ourselves what is the connection between some bastard and the dangerous, aggressive people and criminals and culture and people who represent the culture? What is the connection? Mike Freedman It's a very simplistic idea that governments and the people, and governments and the culture of the country that they govern, are somehow the same or even fundamentally connected, right? Sergei Loznitsa Yes. Why is this? I said that it's very dangerous when the crowds have a voice. It's a democracy and if democracy, in the crowd, their voice on social networks, can collect this voices and organize the movement and etc. Mike Freedman Well, it's odd, right? I was taught that demos kratia is the voice of the people, right? The democracy is the voice of the people. But that doesn't mean mob rule. It doesn't mean the pitchforks and torches coming for you. Just because people don't like something you said, it's not the kind of, you know, exclusionary fixation of the small village. It's meant to be, to use a word that you were accused of, it's a cosmopolitan idea. And this was a word that fascinated me when I was looking into the history, for those who don't know, that the the way the Ukrainian Film Academy phrased their description of you was to call you cosmopolitan, which you pointed out in your rebuttal has a very strong connotation that goes back to the Soviet Union and it relates to something that people were accused of when they were enemies of the revolution, when they were apostates, that a cosmopolitan is like a world citizen. They're somehow looking outward, they're not nationalistic. They don't focus enough on their own country. Sergei Loznitsa Cosmopolitan, it is a kind of a euphemism instead of saying Jew, they're saying cosmopolitan. Mike Freedman Yes, the quote unquote world Jewry, right? Sergei Loznitsa Yes, yes, yes. It's strange how language defend himself. Mike Freedman Well, it's a very important thing. The subtlety, like you said, it's the soft language of the European Film Academy that drew your attention, the refusal to call something by its name, and they are doing it for their own reasons to hide something. The Ukrainians are using language that to the people who know means something other people might not pick up on. And it signals something that you notice and you didn't want them to get away with it. So you called it out. Language, as we learned from Orwell as well, it's so fundamental to how we understand the world and to how we govern ourselves and live together, that when it gets abused and when it's erased or contorted, it's a very dangerous thing. Sergei Loznitsa Yes, of course. Because it strongly influences people. Mike Freedman You said, if I can quote you, “What is happening before our eyes is horrible, but I'm asking you to not fall into craziness. We must not judge people based on their passports. We can judge them on their acts. A passport is tied to the place we happen to be born, whereas an act is what a human being does willingly.” Sergei Loznitsa Absolutely. Who said that? Mike Freedman You did. Sergei Loznitsa Great for me. I can sign it. Mike Freedman It's beautifully put. And I feel like that's really at the heart in a way, having seen some of your films as well, obviously I wasn't able to watch all of them, but it feels like it's something that sits within or behind your films as well. This question of the difference between individual people and these bigger ideas, ideologies, governments, nations. There's a kind of challenge in your work, for those who don't know, many of your documentaries use exclusively archive material, so constructed from historical footage with sound design, maybe some music, but always telling the story of a particular event or a particular time using the material from that time itself. And so often what emerges is, what I felt, an uncomfortable compassion, like in The Natural History of Destruction, which is your film about the Allied bombing of Germany. The opening is, of course, just people living their lives, street scenes, families, children. There just happened to be some swastika flags in the background. Sergei Loznitsa Yes, that's a symbol. Mike Freedman Yeah. People who live in Nazi Germany. But it kind of brings a strong question. People who live in Nazi Germany are not automatically Nazis, or maybe you don't feel that way. Sergei Loznitsa Only Robinson Crusoe is happy. The guy who spent a lot of those years alone on an island.

Mike Freedman The only one who's pure. Sergei Loznitsa Yes. But we pay this rent for living in society and sometimes even in war condition. We have to share the common destiny. If you want or don't want, you will be. Mike Freedman Yeah. You get dragged along. Sergei Loznitsa Yeah, but what to do, for example, for the people, what people have to do when they realize that they are in occupied territory. They have to collaborate, they have to fight, they have to die immediately. Make a suicide. What? What they have to do because it's circumstances against which they don't have any capacity to fight. Mike Freedman They can't control what's happening. Sergei Loznitsa Yeah, they can't, and can't control what happened. But they have to make a decision. And it happened during each war. And even now, for example. Yes. And to how the other part of nation look to them, how they accept that they are living in the house and they have their own circumstances. For example, sick old mother, father, you cannot transport them. You have to stay and, you know, taking care about them, but you stay in the territory which is occupied by the enemy. Serious question. I made a film, by the way, about this. It's a feature film based on the novel by the Belorussian writer Vassily Bykov, In The Fog. It's about this kind of difficult question when society is thinking that some guy, because of circumstance, is a traitor, but he's not. But he can't do anything with this opinion. He can't protect himself. Mike Freedman Because even to speak out is suicide sometimes, right? Sergei Loznitsa Yeah. He finished his life himself because he didn't have any, he made a suicide, but he doesn't have any possibility, and he cannot live with that and cannot protect himself, his name, and his dignity. It's a pity that we are coming back now to all these questions which already I think we were passing through 80 years ago and something happened in our mind. We just maybe reflect, we all, like three generation to generation after my parents, they remember a Second World War, because they were '39 or '40, but they still remember some episodes. And now this territory, two countries now, I mean Russia, Turkey, Ukraine, and people again in the same territory they're passing through all these circumstances and all this verdammte Fragen, diabolic questions, in German. Mike Freedman Yeah, the damned questions. Sergei Loznitsa Yes, yes yes. Unfortunate thing. Mike Freedman This connects quite directly really with a case I'm sure you're familiar with, of Vladimir Kara-Murza, who is a journalist, historian, writer, filmmaker, activist, very active in Russia as part of the opposition to Putin, very vocal, traveled widely to speak out. And he, around the same time that you were finding yourself in your own way dealing with these questions with the Film Academies, in March 2022, he spoke to the Arizona House of Representatives in the United States, and it's believed that that speech that he gave formed the basis of charges that were brought against him by the Russian government. I felt that it would be important, especially for our audience, to hear his voice before we talk about his situation. So this is a short excerpt from what he said in Arizona in 2022. Vladimir Kara-Murza (pre-recorded) It is an honor to be here in the Arizona state legislature. Very grateful to be here as well, because I wasn't sure as I was getting out of Moscow last week if I would even be able to come in, because most of the airspace around Russia is now closed. As you know, as a response from Western democracies to the war of aggression, and this is a legal term from the Nuremberg Statutes, which I'm using deliberately, the war of aggression that Vladimir Putin's regime has unleashed against the nation of Ukraine. Since the war against Ukraine has been started, thousands of Russians have been going on to the streets literally every single day to protest against what is happening, to protest against this crime that is being done supposedly in our name. And according to the latest count by human rights groups, more than 15,000 arrests were made across Russia since February the 24th, the day of the aggression, against those people who have tried to demonstrate against the war. I say tried because all public demonstrations in Russia are forbidden to such an extent that, for example, several days ago, at the end of last week, in fact, a Russian Orthodox priest was arrested after he left his church after speaking out against the war and his sermon after Sunday service in his church in the coastal region, he reminded people of the Sixth Commandment, Thou shalt not kill. For this, he was arrested and taken to a police station and charged and fined for an administrative offense of quote unquote, discrediting the armed services of the Russian Federation, end of quote. So if you recite a biblical commandment, you are discrediting the armed forces. This is the Orwellian reality that Vladimir Putin's regime has created in our country. Mike Freedman Besides the fact that that's a very powerful thing to hear, what immediately jumps out at me are a few things. First, he also focuses on this question of language, about calling a war a war. He also refers to Orwell, who's become this touchstone, this reference point, particularly for people who lived through the Soviet Union or other totalitarian regimes. And most touchingly, to me, the example he gives of the Orthodox priest, those were the charges that he was charged with that resulted in him, in April 2023, receiving a 25 year sentence, apparently the longest sentence given to a political prisoner since the Soviet Union. In his closing speech to the court, he said, “I also know that the day will come when the darkness over our country will evaporate, when black will be cold, black and white will be called white, when it will be officially recognized that two times two is still four, when a war will be called a war.” And so, again, even when he was on the line looking at the judge, these questions of something has to be true, something has to be a fact, and to say it and to call it what it is must be a fundamental human right or everything is lost, I find that so powerful. And of course he connects with Orwell. Again, for those who might not know your film, The Trial is a very powerful reconstruction of an infamous or possibly the most infamous show trial held in Moscow in 1930 under Stalin, when a group of engineers were accused of trying to sabotage the Soviet Union's Five-Year Plan, and we have again, 90 years later, a show trial in Russia. Sergei Loznitsa Unfortunately, yes. But I would like to express deeply my respect and support to his position, and support that Vladimir Kara-Murza is now a hero. It's not so many people who can saying openly what he said in the court and not so many politicians. This is one of the most important politicians, and the opposition, let's say, in Russia does not exist. The opposition is from democratic side and I hope that this 25 years is just a dream of that power and the authorities to keep this country, and this kind of state will destroy itself early. I don't know how many years, but I think that they destroyed from inside not because of people in some movement, but because they cannot manage anything. It is kind of anarchy inside. And, you know, if we just look briefly at the story of Soviet Union from the revolution, let's say from this biggest catastrophe, 1917, when a group of gangsters, the gangsters using this ideology, fooled a lot of educated people. You know, in Russia in that moment, only 15% could read and write, 15% of the population. You can imagine how easily they can be manipulated. So and after that start they created this corporation, it's a corporative state, was a corporation of people using this old ideology, it wasn't a communism or some day socialism. It was a totalitarian regime and from that moment until 1991, this country, which was frozen by Stalin, slowly destroyed... Mike Freedman It ate itself from the inside. Sergei Loznitsa Yeah. And I think that this made the film, for example, State Funeral, when you can openly observe what was this Soviet Union, what this kind of state which was built by one person, and it's also you can already predict what happens in the future with this country. I think this country was destroyed. But this first explosion in this dump, the first explosion was the Stalin death. And after step by step, different, not such talented leaders of Soviet Union, they lose possibility to manage any process in this country, economic process, political etc. And after what we observe that the Secret Service, the KGB, came to power, but what they, what kind of knowledge they have, how to, you know... Mike Freedman Manipulate. Sergei Loznitsa Manipulate, how to make a diversion. And we now have a result of all of that, absolutely predictable, the result now that it will be a war, because this is only what they can do and more degradation and degradation of that society, amoralization, they demoralize society completely. It's most dangerous what happened. You know, Varlam Shalamov, he also wrote about that, and he said that this gulag will be explode and all country will be kind of gulag from this, how to say, from the position of how people represent. It is a criminal world which came to normal life and transformed this life and also transform language. And it's more and more, people, even, you know, the president and the authorities, they use the brutal and criminal words are going in political statement and on political stage, which absolutely impossible, but it is possible as a part of normal language, language criminalized. And of course, you know, the way people act. More and more at the end we have a situation when total disaster will be everywhere. If you send a signal from the top to the level three or five to make something, I'm not sure that this signal, without distortion, will even come to the level five, and people will do what they want. It's total destruction of management of that country and this very dangerous because in this country they built a lot of atomic station and nuclear weapons, a lot of the factories which produce some chemistry, dangerous chemistry also, and different other factories which can be like Chernobyl in the future. Because it's total chaos, total chaos everywhere, you know, and this is the end of that empire. Like in Soviet Union, when they are looking for sugar in the country. You know, the Communist Party, the Politburo, they're looking for where is sugar in the country. They knew that the sugar exists, but they don't know where. Mike Freedman And I mean, this is something that I agree is a very worrying development, not only in Russia, the loss of trust, the catastrophic loss of trust in institutions, in systems, in processes, in not only the capability and the good intentions of people who are in government, but even doubts about their own self-interest. You can always rely on someone's greed or ego, right? When you get to the point where you feel like you don't know what the hell is going on at all, where people will just do anything at any point, where you don't trust what you see in the paper or what you see on the news, or what you read in a magazine, where you think about what you say to other people and you don't know if they're really saying what you think they're saying or the words, are they being literal, this kind of fog that descends, this loss of any believability? Sergei Loznitsa Yeah, unfortunately we are not ants. Mike Freedman We don't just get a signal and carry on. Sergei Loznitsa Yeah, it's a more complicated system and we need to find some way how to organize, not the way how it is organized in China for example or in the eastern countries where it's also a solution for such a big amount of people. I think we have in all societies, it doesn't matter whether it's totalitarianism like in Russia, democracy like in some the Western countries, the risk is the same and the process is the same. More and more we need to educate for self-decision, people who can make their own decisions and responsible people in any position, you know, very important positions, because we live in a very industrial society with complex processes around us. Mike Freedman In your documentaries, in particular early in The Trial and State Funeral, and also in Donbass, which is a feature film, something that was a question I kept having, it nagged me, it poked at me while I was watching those films: What is real, what is true? Watching State Funeral, for example, you see a shot of some men in Azerbaijan walking over a bridge in a funeral procession for Stalin. But it's just a bridge in the middle of nowhere. Where are they coming from? Where are they going? Is it them? Is it spontaneous? Is it staged? Are they sad? They look maybe sad, maybe they're pretending. And this goes on for the whole funeral process. People are crying, but they're in a crowd. Are they crying because they're sad? Are they crying because other people are looking and they need to be crying? They take off their hats in respect or they take them off because everyone else takes them off? In Donbass, I don't want to spoil the film, but the opening scene of that film is extraordinary because it immediately establishes this total lack of clarity of what is real and what is not, what is fake, what is true. Something that's come up in other conversations I've had is this question of hyper reality, of not really knowing whether something is real or a product of a machine or propaganda or fake or a simulation. And that to me seems to also be a question that Orwell was very focused on, that we had to have something, some bedrock for a society. We have to have some basis where things are true. And what Vladimir Kara-Murza says in his speeches, and what you have said in your writing, and what I feel in your films, is a very deeply felt need for something to be true, for us to know this is this, and then we can have a conversation. And when that's lost or when people interfere and make us doubt or question the very idea that anything can be certain, it's like we have no legs, everything is lost and it's frightening. Sergei Loznitsa Hmm. Many questions. It's a question about the individual and about society, group of people. So. Hmm. State Funeral. I can say that some people, of course, honestly crying and yes, feel regret. Some people of course they imitate that they crying and pretend that they really deeply regret. Some people self-organize. They'll go organize themselves and they just create this column of the people, and with the slogans. Mike Freedman Carrying placards. Sergei Loznitsa Placards and yes, even in Moscow. And that's in that days, a few million people came just to participate, to watch God in this zone where he was presented to the public. It's very interesting that they present him. And he was, in the moment when they just bring coffin to a mausoleum to put together with Lenin, he was in kind of a coffin, it was a solution because they cannot use the open coffin because if some rain or wrong weather, you know... Mike Freedman Yeah, it was funny, he's in a coffin but it's got this kind of 1950s glass bubble over his face and you can see his head. Sergei Loznitsa Yes, but they have to show that it's really Stalin. Mike Freedman They have to prove it to the public. Sergei Loznitsa Yes, they have to prove that it's really Stalin, and not a doll in the coffin. And it was a solution also. It is a word, a visual word. I mean a text. It's a visual text. Mike Freedman Yes, it's a statement. Sergei Loznitsa Statement, yes, this coffin is a statement. And it tells us about many things. So it means that it's not enough if somebody is saying Stalin died. We have to prove like in many centuries before, to show the head of the enemy. Mike Freedman It actually it reminded me. Yes. There's an old story about a man who used to run one of the big Hollywood studios, Louis B Mayer. I believe it's an apocryphal story that when he died, a very big crowd turned up for his funeral, but he was known to be unpopular. And someone asked, why are all these people here? And the answer was, they're here to make sure he's dead. Sergei Loznitsa Yes. Mike Freedman And there was an element of that with Stalin's funeral also. Sergei Loznitsa Probably. Probably. But I'm not sure that in Soviet Union it was a lot of people like that and thinking like that, I'm not sure. And it's difficult because nobody made sociological research in that time, it's difficult to say how many people crying because they would like to cry, but it is also a moment of this hysteria of crowds. Mike Freedman The hysteria of crowds. Yes.

Sergei Loznitsa Yes. It's a hysteria. Hysterical. It's a madness, a kind of madness. And it's not a madness which appeared only in that day, no, it was already. And now this regime exists, it was possible to have this regime because many people was a small Stalin inside themself. They share his opinion and his acts, and many of them understand what happened and that some percentage of population in gulag and millions were killed. It wasn't like, of course, the newspaper Pravda did not publish that, but exist this another idea, the rumor, the neighbours. And you know, I think many people understand which country they were living in and many of them I think were real Stalinists. What tell me about that also, Stalin, after Khrushchev's speech in 1956, three years after, the speech about cult of personality... Mike Freedman When he was disavowed, when they said this was actually a crazy period, we're not going to do that again. He's not a nice guy. Sergei Loznitsa Yes, but Stalin taking care about that, not we are. Stalin was a smart guy. He signed some lists of people who must be killed and sent to all members of Politburo and Molotov, Khrushchev also sign this paper, all papers they signed. Mike Freedman The death penalty. Sergei Loznitsa Yes, death penalty. They agree. Agree. Agree. Agree. Mike Freedman So they couldn't just wash their hands and say, oh, it was this one crazy guy. Sergei Loznitsa Oh, of course, of course. And you know, also Stalin in 1953. Yes, they put him in a coffin in the mausoleum, and he lived as a mummy in the mausoleum until 1961, and they remove him from mausoleum during the night, they built a fence around the mausoleum, like they just rebuilt something and removed him and burying him in the place where his bones... Mike Freedman Against the Kremlin wall, right? Sergei Loznitsa Yeah, yeah, yeah. Close to the mausoleum. Can you imagine? Mike Freedman So he got eight years in the mausoleum and then they very quietly just moved him and stuck him in a corner. Sergei Loznitsa Yes, but why? My question, of course, is the speech, Khrushchev's speech was in 1953. Why he eight years lived in mausoleum? And answer, which I can find, it's just a lot of people were Stalinists and authorities were afraid, made this kind of symbolic act. Yeah it tells us about society but it's understandable. And all the roots of recent Russia are there, in this time. Mike Freedman And it's like a hangover also, right? You can't shake it off. And this is what I meant when I was, I don't even know if it was a question, really, but it was just for me, something that really shakes me in your films, and when I look at what's going on in the world today, this sense of quicksand, almost one can't even talk about certain things because we kind of slip, we go down, we don't have something solid to stand on. These things that were left as clues, as warnings in Orwell's books or the people who came after, this idea that two and two make four, that we need to be able to call a war a war. Why? It's not because we want to point our finger at a particular person. It's not because we love mathematics. It's because some things are true. Some things must be true and some things not so much. And we have to be able to put our finger on them or else we can't live together. Sergei Loznitsa Yeah, but of course, each society have to define the ground in which this society built. The criteria, the moral criteria, and criteria of our life. What we can do, what we cannot do, and start from zero. Like, each computer have, now is more complicated, but at basis is assembly, the language assembly, or one and zero. Mike Freedman Binary code One and zero. Sergei Loznitsa Yes, this one and zero must be. Mike Freedman So they are cultural, but they do need to be established. It can be individual countries or societies that do it. But we need, like you say, we need a kind of social binary code. We need something underneath everything else. Sergei Loznitsa When society is mad, people who live inside this society, they cannot define themselves with another language, but they use language which belongs to this madness. And the other language, they cannot use because they don't know anything about that. And this is the difficulty, you know, and only crisis, crisis or war or something like that... Mike Freedman A rupture. Sergei Loznitsa Yeah. Can help shake society so a new society can be started, born, can be born from this desert, let's say. I remember one sentence of a Russian philosopher, I don't know if he is Georgian, but the Soviet Union, a Soviet philosopher, Merab Mamardashvili. When they discussed in the beginning of nineties, they discussed that Soviet Union will collapse and the Communist Party has passed and the new road will lead us to a democratic, liberal society, he said that no, I'm not sure that it is like that and I disagree with that, that we just put our... Mike Freedman Our hand up. Sergei Loznitsa Our hand out and receive everything from, like a gift. And he said that the things, the objects, or substances which did not live, cannot die. We have to deal with dead things. And what you can do with the water, metaphorical water, just growing something alive, and this is very difficult to do. Mike Freedman You can't grow a living thing from a dead thing. Sergei Loznitsa Yeah. And we have like ghosts around us and this is why, like, I made a film, Donbass, because I was surprised, based on amateur video, it's a feature film, we recreated situations and I rewrite the situations, but first I met this situation and episodes in amateur video, and I was surprised that people imitate something. They are not existing. They imitate, and the real existence does not exist for them. Mike Freedman I mean, this is the challenge of film itself, right, as well. Sergei Loznitsa Well, it is maybe one of the biggest traps which each individual, each person, have in his life. Because we always have some example and we would like to be like this example. And also they are growing with Soviet cinema. Like if we remember this, you know, confrontation during Maidan, what people use? Molotov cocktail and stones against police, and police beat them. Like in Soviet films about revolution. And finally they made a catapult. Mike Freedman Like a trebuchet. Yeah, like a siege weapon. Sergei Loznitsa Like, a cannon. A proto-cannon. Yeah, it's a weapon. And it's funny at same time and address us to the Middle Ages, let's say, well, even deeper, in the Roman Empire. And when I watch it and think, okay, what people want? They want to make the revolution and change power, but why they use these kind of methods? It's a peaceful, of course, peaceful protest, but with a stone it's not so peaceful, with the Molotov cocktail. So if they are serious, they have to use this technology, which Trotsky proposed, when they took power in 1917, you know, his brain produced action which was based on a net. He just sent the group of armed people, the soldiers and seamen, sent to bank, post, electro station, telephone station, bridges, and, you know, these contemporary or temporary authorities, government. Mike Freedman The nodes of government. Yeah, like a coup, you seize the places where power is. Sergei Loznitsa They blocked, without telephone, without electricity, and they cannot do anything. Mike Freedman Because they couldn't communicate with each other. Sergei Loznitsa Yeah, they, but they were staying in this building, in Winter Palace, but they can't do anything. And this is a smart idea, because Lenin proposed to collect the workers and push them, soldiers, workers, and express protest, aAnd after that, you know, create some fighting. Trotsky said, No, let's give me a chance. And he blocked them. It was already in 1917. Why people in Maidan did not use this strategy? And it's very interesting because I think, not only because of that, but I think that this education with cinema, Soviet cinema, when you as a child watch it and you just have this stamp of action, how to act in different situations because you have a hero there and, you know, and somehow it worked. It's interesting. Mike Freedman And so even our own ideas of how to do things, even if they're very big things like to take part in a revolution, are imprinted or influenced by... Sergei Loznitsa Previous. Mike Freedman The media we've consumed, and so we end up imitating, right? We play act being a revolutionary. Sergei Loznitsa Yeah but we always live with an eye on our back... Mike Freedman The back of our head. Sergei Loznitsa Our head. Yes. Just looking to the past, always, with this kind of experience. Only people who have open minds can find what happened with us right now and what we have to do in these circumstances. Two important things, but to understand what happened is much more important because you already have a plan. If you understand that, what you want and where you are, where you are is the most difficult question. Connect to personality and connect the society. Both. Mike Freedman On that point, all I'd say is that it resonates with me because it emphasizes the importance of history. And in your films, also because you focus on archive material, a lot of the time we're looking at things that were filmed in 1930, in 1953, in the 1940s, and we know from making films that when you film something, you're already making a choice, you're already leaving something out to focus on something else. And so it creates this question for me that we are relying on these sources that themselves were kind of edited to begin with. And so someone at the time is choosing what about that time they want to preserve and then we go back and say, okay, we're now telling the story of this time, but we're telling the story of this time with what they left us. And so there's this kind of diminishing return. We don't really know where we've been, really, in a sense. Sergei Loznitsa It's too abstract, I mean, the question. You know, many conditions when you make a film. Of course, absolute truth exists in archive. Let's say the truth about events which happened in that moment in front of the camera and in archive, like the different sequences of footage saying the truth. When you start editing, you already create meaning, of course, and it is a kind of condition of our work. We must. Without that, we cannot. Cinema is an art which exists in time and we already have some definition like things which I showed before are things which happened before and the next sequences which I show after. First of all, we think that because of the previous sequences, the next happened. And if you change position, you change meaning. Mike Freedman We edit in our minds. Yes, you show us something in sequence and we... Sergei Loznitsa Or you have to, saying that like somehow give this feeling of time and saying that it happened before. Like Gaspar Noe made a film where everything... Mike Freedman Irreversible. Sergei Loznitsa Irreversible. Yes. And this is interesting game with our perception. He worked with our perception because it's in reversible, but in film, it is in one direction. Mike Freedman Still chronological. Sergei Loznitsa Still chronological. It's a paradox, things which you can do. But for example, the episodes of our life which have equal importance and happened in one moment, like revolution which Trotsky made, you cannot show in film, maybe like four screen, five screen, right? Mike Freedman Because it's not simultaneous. Sergei Loznitsa Simultaneous, like Fincher could make a film about that, simultaneous, yes, but it will be in other media. Or like Rubchinskiy, also create our vision with different cameras which exist in different places and after that we have a concept of space. So but it's a little bit different. Yeah, we have to tell story continuously and of course it's an obligation and it is defined, it's a limitation. And this kind of limitation, many of them exist in cinema, dramaturgy, for example. The most important things must be close to the end. But how, how, for example, the hurricane or explosion happened at the beginning and after that, how to grow tension? Mike Freedman And in a way, it's a fallacy for us. Right? Because we are trained, like you said, we're trained by cinema. So the climax always comes at the end. So we live our lives thinking that the big thing is going to happen in the future. It's a kind of attitude I see in myself. Sergei Loznitsa Or the climax in the beginning and after that? So it is also a limitation and also it's a wrong thing to say that my films represent, that they're historical films, they're not historical films. I use this footage for, like first of all, like with Stalin's funeral, I would like to recreate this atmosphere and to give spectators the opportunity to observe carefully, long takes, observe crowd, people, faces, try to feel the mood of that time. And of course, I organized these episodes in a special way, and I have at the end my opinion about that. I express my opinion in the text at the end when I mentioned how many people were killed because of Stalin and his police policy. Mike Freedman After we watch, people love him for several hours. Sergei Loznitsa Yes. And also I add this episode with a lullaby at the end also. So it's kind of my postscript or coda. All these events are my, you know, voluntarism. Mike Freedman Your word, your statement. Your imposition on the material.

Sergei Loznitsa It's my position and my statement to that. Yes, it's very poor people if you're just looking to them from the sky. Very poor. And yeah, it's a pity that they live this kind of life when it may be possible to, I don't know, maybe impossible. I don't know. This is very complicated and difficult to name that it's historical films, but based on historical archive. Yes. And only one truth which we can say, that the things happened in front of this camera. And some of them, because I made the investigation when I work on the film, we just find when this footage or where it was developed, because I have this statement from the lab for each reel. Mike Freedman Ah okay, like the lab report, from the development of the film. Sergei Loznitsa Yes, the lab report, and some of this footage was shot the week after. It means that they collect people and say, okay, guys, we need these kind of shots. Mike Freedman Like the Orwell thing, organizing the spontaneous demonstration. Sergei Loznitsa Yeah, yeah, yeah. Not a lot, but this kind of footage also exist. Yeah. Mike Freedman Fascinating. And I know you need to go so very quickly, I understand you're working on a new project right now which is being shot live, not archive. Is that correct? Sergei Loznitsa Yes, yes, it's correct. We shoot now in Ukraine since August 2022 and every month, a few times, we shoot different episodes from life, from different places, of human life in Ukraine, and what interested me was how this tragedy, this war, transformed society and influenced society, what happened with the people under this tragic event and tragic, you know, war. This project I made with Arte France, and I have this possibility to continue to shoot, and they will release episodes and it will be a film at the end. Mike Freedman But it's documentary material. Sergei Loznitsa It's a documentary material, yes. Mike Freedman So it's episodic on Arte and then you'll put it together into a feature structure. Sergei Loznitsa Feature structure, yes, yes, yes. But we'll see what happens with this war and what happens with all of us in the future. Because we're now passing through a serious transformation, not only in east of Europe, but in general in the world. Yeah, it's just the beginning of a serious process. It's another topic. Mike Freedman Yes, it's a door that I'd love to go through with you, but I know that our time is limited. So I just want to say thank you so much for being so generous with your time to speak with me today. Sergei Loznitsa Thank you. Mike Freedman Well, that's it for this episode of 1984 Today. I'm very grateful to our guest, Sergei Loznitsa, and, of course, to you for listening. As always please check the show notes for ways you can support the podcast. All blessings are gratefully received. I hope you come back and join us again. Meanwhile, keep the fire burning. We'll be back with more fuel next time. Goodbye.