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Astra Film Fest 2002, Sibiu (Romania), 21-26 October
For an average European Transylvania evokes images of Vlad Dracula, a prototype of a famous literary vampire, whose castle is located in Sighisoara. However for visual anthropologists, it should be associated with the Astra film Fest that has been held since 1993 as a biannual ethnographic and cultural event in Sibiu, a historic city of the Transylvanian Saxons and a charming place ever since. The Festival is held despite severe financial hardships, but it is growing and establishing itself as a major happening, at least on a regional scale, for documentary filmmakers, anthropologists, and, last but not least, experts on Central Europe and the Balkans. It already attracts students from all over Europe (Romania, Poland, Hungary, Bulgaria, Italy, Germany and France) who attended the last installment in the hundreds, some of them coming from as far away as Poznan in Poland by hitch-hiking through the autumn weather. But what has caused this local initiative of Dumitru Budrala, a director from Astra Film Studios in Sibiu and an ethnographic filmmaker himself, to grow in size and significance to make it recognizable on the map among tens of similar events?
First, the profile of the festival makes it unique. The competition is divided into three categories: international, Central and Eastern European and Romanian. This categorization enables worldwide interest in the event and at the same time gives it a specific local and regional flavor. More about this anon. Second, it is not only a documentary film festival but also a cultural event. For example, last year a photo exhibition on the topic 'Balkan Portraits' took place that presented people from the region stretching from Greece to Romania. During the opening of this exhibition those interested could taste (for free!) samples of the respective local brandy as a form of 'exchange of experiences': sljivovica (Serbian), rachiu (Romanian), sljibovica (Bulgarian), slivovica (Croatian) and tsipouro (Greek). Folk music performances, during which one could learn some folk dances, were the daily bread of the whole week and many took advantage of this opportunity. Discussions with presenting film directors after their showings were common and the public gathered in the huge screening hall, always full, to take an active part in the festival by posing difficult questions. On top of this, special lectures and discussions were organized. An ongoing workshop was held for five days entitled: "Documenting or Advocating: Ethnic Issues and Human Rights in the Balkans" in which several experts, anthropologists and filmmakers from Serbia, Croatia, Moldova, Estonia, Poland and Hungary actively participated, as well as numbers of students. As one may expect, no solutions were given, but many significant and revealing insights were made. All this means that a professional anthropological festival is elegantly combined with a cultural and artistic happening. Third, there is a certain magic to the place and people. Those rationally minded are naturally suspicious about statements like this. However, I insist that Sibiu and the organizers create together an ambience that is difficult to duplicate: mountain surroundings, a medieval old town, hotels built during the Habsburg Dual Monarchy, an open-air museum cultivating folk traditions, the socialist-style 'Casa de Cultura' where the festival takes place. The latter is a kind of ironic monument to the Romanian dictator Ceausescu, but in front of it two real monuments can be found: one wooden, the other stony in the shape of an orthodox cross. Both commemorate the around one hundred victims of the December 1989 uprising against the communist regime that took place in Sibiu, a former stronghold of the regime due to the police school. All this blends well with the Sibiu inhabitants and a group of festival organizers, mostly volunteers, that are devoted to their cause and are extremely hospitable. These features help serve as a magnet to keep people coming back or catch the attention of newcomers. Finally, as already mentioned, the huge participation of students and young locals can be counted in the hundreds. It makes the meeting more a festival of young adepts of visual anthropology than of 'dinosaurs' of the profession and discipline. This, actually, was a surprise for western scholars who had come for the first time to Sibiu.
Above all, however, the success of the festival lies in the first issue raised - its professional character and the films presented. For the sixth installment, close to 400 entries had been submitted and the organizers choose 56 for the competition, although several works were presented as hors concurs. A feast for connaisseurs of anthropological documentaries and a marathon for the jury members. In the International Competition, films were accepted with high anthropological sensitivity, which were innovative in their form and addressed real social problems. Documentaries were concerned with issues from all corners of the world, among others portrayed: a strenuous life in the inaccessible Bolivian Andes, South African mines, remote Chinese villages of the Qiang minority, spirit possession in India, the life of French female workers in a sardine factory, Norwegian fishermen prejudices, Burmese spirit worship or the lives of Nenets reindeer herders. In a very tight contest, the film directed by Eytan Kapon from France, Letter to the Dead won. The film presents the world view of a people living in communities that is constructed out of bits and pieces of information at hand, conditioned by local traditions, Christian missionaries' teachings and millenary fears. It is a successful combination of ethnographic research, the deep understanding of intricate religious problems and cinematographic skills showing a bewildering encounter between tradition and modernity. Second prize was awarded to Duka's Dilemma by Jean Lydall. In this case the extremely difficult task of presenting daily life in a Southern Ethiopian village is depicted in a diligent and sensitive way. Duka's story and life, including a moving scene of a natural childbirth, is described with unprecedented intimacy and empathy.
Only on the surface did the Romanian competition look like a local event. This is however not the case. On the one hand, many filmmakers from abroad have taken up Romanian topics and it seems that they are fascinated with the local culture and intrigued by the country's problems. On the other hand, the questions raised in these films usually carried a universal message. Remnants of the communist past could also still be traced at some points. Nevertheless, the directors seem to be more concerned now with well-preserved folk traditions that are difficult to find today in most other European countries. These traditions are lively and give a feeling of continuity for the nation that managed to keep its identity despite communist attempts at totally redefining it. A whole set of films on Romania dealt with minority issues, particularly the Roma. This is an important cognitive as well as social and ethnic problem. Traditionally, these people belong to the poorest in the region, but at the same time they were presented mostly as musicians and dancers. This might be related to prejudices held against them. Some of the films, even if intended to deny these images, strengthened them in my view. This is what one could gather from the portrayal of a Roma festival, during which people are shown stating weird political statements (a pattern they learned during the Ceausescu regime), drinking alcohol, singing and dancing. When during a discussion after this film a self-appointed Roma Emperor took the stage and tried to convey his message, his cellular phone rang and he, in spite of being in the middle of a discussion with hundreds of spectators, answered it "Hello, this is Julian, Roma Emperor". The public then burst into laughter. An amusing scene indeed, but I wondered how biased this reaction really was. However, prizes in the Romanian competition went to the films that focused neither on folklore nor minority related topics. Instead, Catalin Stefanescu's film The Penitentiary walked away with first prize, a film that explores the world of inmates sentenced to life imprisonment. It depicts quite vividly a closed world of social hierarchy and sub-cultural rules as well as the world views of brutal murderers. Shelter, directed by Gheorgie Sfaiter, portrays the life of a lonely old woman secluded in the mountains, living on her own. In this case, it is not social relations, but a person's loneliness which is the main drama. There is a lot of psychology and ethnography simultaneously, since she bakes bread, milks sheep and builds haycock all by herself.
The Balkans was a special topic of the 2002 edition. The Yugoslav conflict still overshadows Balkan themes considering that 8 out of 11 films selected dealt with the conflict or, to be more precise, with the sad aftermath of it. Widows, a lost generation of orphaned children, mass graves, misplaced international intervention, sorrow and anger for a son lost during war, the slow revival of an isolated Serbian village in Kosovo. All these were moving pictures, but the main prize was awarded to the film directed by Vuk Janic, The Last Yugoslav Football Team. The author metaphorically presented the collapse of the state through the fate of the team that was very successful in the late 1980s and still at the beginning of the 1990s. Friends on the football field of various national origins were divided by politics and war into different fields of identities and allegiances, including new national teams. History likes irony and in the next international qualifications at the end of the 1990s, Croatia and New Yugoslavia (Serbia and Montenegro) faced off against each other. Old friends met again as players of opposing national teams; in the result of two fierce games in Belgrade and Zagreb the Serbs won. Discussions after film presentations were heated and sometimes biased along ethnic sympathies or even internal politics. When the organizers asked if one of the directors could translate for another who does not speak English, he refused because the other had been a representative of Milosevic's regime.
Let me finish with the words of Martin Gruber, a German student from Hamburg who was interviewed by the organizers: "I have the impression that many Western European or American filmmakers and anthropologists don't even know what is really going on here, it's a kind of a blind spot on their map of visual anthropology, which is really wrong because there's such a lively scene". Hopefully, not any more. The next festival is scheduled for October 2004.
Michal Buchowski
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