New Film: Letter to Anna
By Sean at 20 May, 2008, 9:33 am
The Moscow Times has a review of Letter to Anna, a new documentary by Swiss director Eric Bergkraut on the life, work, and death of Anna Politkovskaya. Bergkraut met Politkovskaya while making his award winning film Coca: The Dove From Chechnya, which chronicled the efforts of Zainap Gashaeva and other Chechen women to document human rights abuses in the North Caucuses. Letter to Anna premiered at the Hot Docs International Film Festival in Toronto last month. The director doubts that it will make it to Russia. The film features a cast of anti-Kremlin characters, including Berezovsky, Kasparov, not to mention Politkovskaya herself. Another reason Bergkraut believes that his film won’t reach Russian audiences is the fact that in one segment Politkovskaya argues that the Chechen War is “genocidal.” The Chechen War is a lot of things, many of them tragic, horrendous, and brutal, but to call it genocidal I think trivializes the real acts of genocide the world has witnessed.
At any rate, who knows if the film will make it to Russia. I can foresee a number of difficulties, many of which have nothing to do with politics. The economics of film plays no small role. Distribution, costs, audience, not to mention finding a place that will screen it make it difficult for all small films, especially documentaries, to reach potential viewers. If it does make it to Russia I’m sure the screenings will occur in one of Moscow’s many smoke filled bohemian cafes. Hell, given how hard it is for small films to find a screen, I’ll be surprised if Letter to Anna makes it to Los Angeles. Maybe I’ll get lucky.
Below is a three minute trailer for the film.
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I think this is about as likely to find a large Russian audience as a film about genocidal American soldiers in Iraq would have to find an American audience.
To preempt Tim, I hereby state that I do not think that American soldiers are genocidal.
Thanks for this. You know, I’ve been repeatedly surprised (I shouldn’t be, but am) by what we, I, the media often attribute to political -ideological- meddling that is actually much more easily explained by basic economics. I had a film professor once instruct the class, before an exam, that when unsure of the correct answer, write “money.” I’ve been thinking about this a lot lately because I’ve just attempted to write up a little (impossible) synopsis of Russian film over the past decade or so. Uhm if you are into film, check it out.
http://www.eurotrib.com/story/2008/5/20/182936/797
BTW, has anyone seen “Aleksandra,” Sokurov’s new film about Chechnya?
It always strikes me that when it comes to films, books, etc and Russia that people immediately jump to politics as the reason why they don’t get wide dissemination. I think that it’s mostly economics. For example, I don’t now how many of you have read Boris Nemtsov’s “experts report” but he originally wanted to print 100,000 copies. They couldn’t find a distributor and Nemtsov cried “Kremlin.” They ended up printing 5000. Now I don’t doubt that there were some distributors who didn’t want to touch it for political reasons. But 100,000 copies? Whether you agree with him or not, there is just no market for Nemtsov’s views. As there is no large market for a film about Politkovskaya, especially if she calls the Chechen War genocidal. Chris is right that a film that calls American soldiers genocidal wouldn’t find an audience in the States (minus a few quacks), and for good reason.
This seems to be the same film that was shown on Swedish television in February, so it can’t be completely new. This is what I wrote about the film in my blog when it was shown here:
Зато в понедельник показали хороший, серьезный, не крикливый швейцарский фильм об убийстве Анны Политковской. Тут тоже мелькает Березовский, но ему не удается испортить картину. Кстати, здесь тоже выскочил этот Ханпаш Теркибаев, но тут главный редактор Новой Газеты назвал его фамилию, и дал какие-то факты, так что уже можно самому сориентироваться.
Has anyone actually confirmed these human rights reports. Allegations against the Serbs being genocidal turned out to be absolutly false negating the fact that the Bosnian regime was hosting international terrorists. Politkovskaya has never commented on the large number of chechen war crimes against Russian civilians including the invasion of 1999 into Dagestan.
She also disregards the fact that a large number of international organised terrorist networks are involved in Chechnya and that there financied through organised crime (including Berezovsky) as citied in Paul Murphys book Wolves of Islam
Does anyone know where I could find a DVD of this film? Any help would be greatly appreciated!! Thanks!