Below is the email exchange between the two.

John Canciani to Oleksiy Radinsky:

Dear Oleksiy,

I hope this message finds you well. It took a while to come up with a film to send you, since I had a couple in mind, but by going through some ideas, I remembered a film I stumbled across a couple of years ago. It was about a camp that involved Putin. I checked some of my notebooks and then found the title to cross-check in our database.

The film is «Nashi» by the Dutch artist Daya Cahen. I chose this film because it was made in 2008 and shows a Russian summer camp, where young Russians are trained to become great patriots. I remember when you were in our jury last year, we talked in the restaurant about the situation between Ukraine and Russia. Who would have thought that a couple of months later, you would be attacked; but on the other hand, it didn’t come out of nowhere.

It was announced in slow steps, but nobody believed in the cruel consequences and true implementation. The West did not intervene because it wanted to see it as pure propaganda or, at best, as a threatening gesture. This is despite the fact that we have seen Russia acting as an aggressor throughout the region. For me, this film is emblematic of Putin’s ideology, which has always existed. It seems cynical that the whole world could ignore this, although we already know this from Nazi Germany.

I hope you are safe at this moment and the situation in Kiev is calmer. Looking forward to receiving your film to continue this dialogue.

All the best from Winterthur,

John

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Oleksiy Radinsky to John Canciani:

Hi John,

sorry for my delayed response, there’s quite a lot going on here these days.

I have to say I really enjoyed «Nashi» by Daya Cahen. At first, frankly, I wasn’t too happy about the prospect of having to watch another film about Russian fascists at this point, when we’re witnessing their actions in Ukraine on a daily basis. But this film really makes a difference – it shows the emergence of Russian fascism out of the extreme neoliberal measures that Russian society has been subjected to since the 1990s. It also shows very clearly that there is no such thing as a distinct, non-Western «Russian soul», «Russian character», or «Russian fascism», for that matter. In reality, Russia IS the West, despite all of its failed attempts to deny this. The fact that Russia has descended into fascism is just another proof of its Western identity – since fascism itself is a very Western thing.

There’s a very beautiful confirmation of this idea in «Nashi»: the camp of this movement is focused on the training of «nationally oriented managers», as its leaders constantly repeat. But the funny thing is, when they say «manager» in Russian, they are simply using a borrowed English word. There is no other word in the contemporary Russian language that reflects the notion of «manager». So, what you see here is simply a very thorough reproduction of some of the Western social patterns, but since they are merged with nationalist ideology with no checks and balances in place, they lead more or less directly to fascism. I think it’s kind of clear that many of those young people represented in this film are now the participants, or the organizers, of Russia’s invasion of Ukraine.

I remember our conversation during the last festival that you mention. Because of COVID, I was on Winterthur’s jury two times in a row, and I’ve noticed an interesting tendency: in both years’ competitions, the films that stood out as absolutely the worst films of the programme were Russian films. I’m not really a Russophobe, and I very much like some of the contemporary Russian films, but this tendency really surprised me, given that the overall level in the competition was very strong. I’ve also noticed that in both competitions, films from Ukraine, Belarus, and most of the other countries of the region were absent. I thought this had something to do with a Western lack of understanding of what’s going on in Russia and the region, or with Russia’s deliberate gaslighting of the West with regards to its own self-image.

I very much appreciate the fact that «Nashi» was made by a female artist from Western Europe. I think it says much more about Russian fascism than many conventional films, which are usually based on a «character-led» approach and made by professional film directors. I think Daya Cahen was able to understand this brand of Russian fascism so well precisely because she’s a Western European artist, and she sees familiar patterns there. I would like to respond to this film with another film by a Western European artist, «Untitled» by Hito Steyerl, made in Ukraine and engaging quite directly with the consequences of a situation that is depicted in «Nashi» – I mean the all-out invasion of Ukraine in February 2022.

My best,

Oleksiy

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John Canciani to Oleksiy Radinsky:

Dear Oleksiy,

I was very curious about your answer because I had assumed that it was perhaps very unpleasant for you to watch the film at the present moment. I find your thoughts on it very exciting, because I had not yet taken the view you mention into consideration. It also shows that the dialogue between people and cultures is important and above all must happen at eye level.

The film by Hito Steyerl, «Untitled», is short and very concise. It is particularly interesting that she uses this film, which is a continuation of her existing work «The Tunnel», as a comment on the invasion of Russia. Very unconventional but original and very appropriate.

Watching the film a second time, I intuitively kept thinking of «Action, Almost Unable to Think» by Mao Haonan. It’s a Chinese animation about the inner world of a soldier killed in an explosion. The reference is obvious through the main protagonist, the soldier, but there are various statements in the film with parallels to Hito’s work. Furthermore, I felt that there is a connection between the moods of the two films. I was also interested in the fact that a war is of course a collective event, which can throw a whole nation and generation into trauma. On the other hand, each story is individual and personal.

The film meanders through the thoughts of the soldier. Visually hypnotic, like in a dream (or nightmare), held together by fire. Again and again, scraps of thoughts. Sometimes clearer, sometimes cryptic. I think the two films work very well in direct combination and show that in the curation of a programme, it is important how the works face each other. After all, they don’t know anything about each other, it’s only through the curation that a common context emerges. But it also shows what kind of responsibility you have when you create a programme.

Thinking of what you just wrote about western and eastern perception, I like that in «Action, Almost Unable to Think» I can’t understand everything within the film. It may be because I’m Western European, but maybe it’s just how Mao Haonan wants to tell this story, and it’s more about how I want to read it, which of course is influenced by my own experiences and references.

Looking forward to receiving your next film.

All the best,

John

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Oleksiy Radinsky to John Canciani:

Hi John,

Sometimes it’s difficult for me to connect to animation films, so I chose an animation film that I think connects to its audiences in a very interesting way, «Deep Love» by Mykyta Lyskov. On the one hand, it’s a big international hit, and it won dozens of awards at film festivals. But on the other hand, it’s based on very specific references to Ukrainian horror animation of the late 1980s, which saw a boom of this genre. To make things worse, most of the puns and jokes in this film are based on many very local images, events, and even specific graffiti whose understanding requires a really good knowledge of life in Ukraine – or even, more specifically, of Mykyta Lyskov’s native city of Dnipro (the famous DIY ad of a chimney sweep, reproduced in the final titles, is from that city). Anyhow, this film has a Lenin statue transform into a monument of the Ukrainian revolutionary poet Taras Shevchenko, it features a soundtrack by a bombastic Dnipro musician, Kurs Valut, and it has atomic mushrooms grow in Dnipro. How could I not include this film.

My best,

Oleksiy

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John Canciani to Oleksiy Radinsky:

Hi Oleksiy,

Again, an interesting choice, and it makes me think about what I wrote in the last email about perception. When we did a focus on Ukraine in 2020, which unfortunately was only accessible online, this film was on our short list. I had the feeling that there are many symbols that could be codes, but the anarchistic punk approach of the film was actually what I was drawn to most. Still, it shows how a film can talk about very local things and codes, and at the same time, «outsiders» get a feeling of the film or have their own way of reading it. It is perhaps like «The Adventures of Asterix»: kids and grown-ups can read it, but both have a different experience. The kids see the story as it is without context and the grown-ups with the historical and political context on a second level. This leads me to the next film I would like to propose. I was thinking about how to bring some humour into this programme without getting cynical. It’s the film «About the Art of Love, or A Film with 14441 Frames» by Karpo Godina.

I must say I am a huge fan of the Yugoslav Black Wave. There are many interesting films, starting with the Kino Klub films, which were meant to bring out partisan films from amateurs for the Tito regime. Up to the Hitchcockians from Croatia with Krsto Papić and the most famous filmmaker, Dušan Makavejev. My two absolute favourites from that period are Želimir Žilnik and Karpo Godina. Žilnik made some very powerful political films, which would easily fit in our programme, but I chose Godina because he had a good sense of humour in his works. Godina was ordered to make a short film about glorifying the army. They gave him a carte blanche without thinking that the result wouldn’t be what they expected. The film has a part documenting the female textile workers and what they think about the soldiers; he then lets the soldiers run and move in different formations in the beautiful hills of Macedonia. It looks like they are organized, but at the same time, it looks disorganized and shows how soldiers obey and do as they are told, even if it seems ridiculous. A very pointed and yet funny comment about the army and government. Godina himself said he made a film about making love, not war.

All the best,

John

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Oleksiy Radinsky to John Canciani:

Dear John,

In response to a film by Karpo Godina (which I think is totally hilarious), I selected a brand-new work: «Khayt» by experimental filmmaker Sashko Protyah from Mariupol. I think it shares a playful, ironic, and experimental approach to war, even if this is not really explicit in Protyah’s film. Several months after it was completed, Protyah’s hometown of Mariupol was almost erased from the face of the Earth during the invasion of the Russian army. In this science fiction film, Protyah imagines Mariupol in 2068, when a kind of queer artistic utopia has been established, and artists of the time are trying to research and reconstruct the music scene of Mariupol of the early 2000s. Before the invasion, there was a very strong artistic scene in Mariupol, which I think had a lot in common with the partisan film movements of the 20th century and with the Kino Klub communities (which also flourished in Ukraine and which formed me to a big extent). I think this is a very important work and I hope it could be included into more than one programme at the festival 🙂

My best,

Oleksiy

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John Canciani to Oleksiy Radinsky:

Dear Oleksiy,

This is a great ending for this programme, since it is such a meaningful film for you. You are offering a utopia, which means there is a vision of what the future could look like. Even though this film was made before the war, I hope people in Ukraine can imagine a tomorrow that is far away from the situation of this moment.

I was just in Kosovo at Dokufest and had the privilege of meeting the Prime Minister Albin Kurti. He is a very interesting person and what stuck in my head the whole time being in Kosovo (and reading your last email) was his remark, «It’s not easy in Kosovo. Expectations are higher than hope».

I’m looking forward to seeing you in the near future, and please stay safe!

John