-
The Venice critics agreed on how to welcome the film two days before
they got to see it!
- An
English critic - Alexander Walker - comes up with a brilliant thought:
he claims that the goal of "Dust" is to block Turkey's admission
to the EU!
- The
German Der Tagespiegel declared the film anti-Albanian and Neo-Fascist,
saying: "Instead of the Albanian Muslims we have here the Ottomans
as the ‚untermenschen' and the Macedonians are as innocent as lambs,
which are slaughtered during the film numerously. And the black boy
whom the old woman explains the Balkans to, is nobody else than the
West, who has to be waken up by the sounds of the fanfare and fight
against the everlasting Osmanic Islam."
- Western
critics tried to fit a Macedonian film into their own inaccurate picture
of the events "down there."
....For
the first time ever, a country under attack by imported and local gangs
declaring themselves a "Liberation Army" while carrying out
ethnic cleansing, murder and outright plunder has been declared racist
because it tries to defend the law and order. The US and EU political
elites embraced the position of the terrorists in Macedonia, pronouncing
them fighters for human rights; consequently, the image of Macedonia in
foreign media reports was seen from that perspective. The US and the EU,
in fact, used this story in front of their own constituencies to help
them hide their responsibility for the spillover of the Kosovo crisis
over the border into Macedonia.
....Macedonia,
its political establishment in particular, failed to produce an articulated
response to this political and media behavior of the EU and the US. Whatever
our politicians told us, they were not heard by the world. The battle
for the truth about Macedonia was, and still is, fought outside institutions.
It is fought on web sites, such as www.realitymacedonia.org.mk or www.ok.mk,
it is fought by countless personal protests and letters to foreign journalists
regarding their reports, letters to European and world politicians and
institutions...
....Ultimately,
the only one who called to task the West and asked for accountable behavior
in this dangerous situation was Milcho Manchevski. This he did in his
article "Just a Moral Obligation" and in numerous interviews
he gave before and during the Venice Film Festival for the foreign media.
His case is enlightening.
....At
the end of August, a week before "Dust" opened the Venice Film
Festival, Manchevski published an opinion piece in the eminent Sueddeutsche
Zeitung entitled "Just a Moral Obligation". The London Guardian
and the Skopje Dnevnik printed the same text; it was also widely distributed
on the Internet. (Manchevski did not offer his article to The Guardian.
The London-based paper downloaded it from the Internet, changed the title,
cut off the end and made several modifications to the body itself. The
Slovene film critic Miha Brun published a comparison between the original
and the text "fixed" by the editors of The Guardian.)
....
Several
lines of Manchevski's commentary sum up his view: "Macedonia is collateral
damage to NATO's involvement in the Balkans. Body bags are not sexy, so
NATO chose to let the militants keep their western weapons. NATO's Kosovo
escapade did much more than arm and train the militants who now execute
a classical blowback. It escalated the conflict in the Balkans to a higher
level. The psychological effect of the entire world putting itself on
the side of the Great Cause (as seen by the Albanian extremists) has given
a boost to their armed secessionist struggle. Ethnic cleansing and occupying
territories is an advanced step in redrawing borders. The US has a moral
obligation to stop the Albanian extremists from turning Macedonia into
another Afghanistan (the article was written in July, two months before
September,11) or Cambodia, two sad examples of blowback and collateral
damage from American involvement", - Manchevski writes in "Just
a Moral Obligation".
....The
Moscow Pravda also published this commentary, as did the Belgian De Standaard.
The latter paired it up with a "response" from an Albanian reader.
De Standaard thus shifted the emphasis of the article from an argument
for re-establishing peace to an inter-ethnic debate. In other words, Manchevski's
article echoed around the world as a "defense" of the Macedonian
position during a war, much louder even than the voice of the Macedonian
government itself (Macedonian government officials' statements and press-conferences
rarely - if ever - received this much attention by the global press).
...."Dust"
or "Saving Private Ryan"
....
To
what extent his expose affected western culture analysts and political
analysts became clear in the initial western media reactions to Manchevski's
film "Dust." They did not argue directly with his commentary,
but instead projected their prejudices concerning Macedonia onto the film.
In case we forget - "Dust" was the first Macedonian-made product
unveiled to the world on an equal footing during the war. It was our film
that opened the Venice Film Festival.
....
Hardly
any regular moviegoer expected the charged reception of the film. Here,
however, we are not discussing whether the film deserves good or bad reviews.
The reviews of "Dust" were not, in fact, aesthetic evaluations
of the film. They were, rather, reactions to a high-profile and ambitious
product coming from Macedonia and - what is even more disturbing - reactions
(negative) to a well-researched and proud view on one's own history. In
other words, western critics reacted instinctively and negatively because
someone dared show the Macedonian history - and by extension, present
- differently from their own perception of Macedonia. Furthermore, Manchevski
did so with an extraordinarily self-assured artiste hand (and with no
excuses whatsoever).
....
The
German critic Fritz Gottler implies in the high-circulation Sueddeutsche
Zeitung (the same paper that published Manchevski's commentary) that many
of the international critics in Venice discussed how to welcome Manchevski's
new film two whole days before it was screened. The critics decide how
to welcome the film before they actually get to see it!
....
Now
that the film has been applauded in Toronto, Macedonia, Tokyo, Taipei,
Thessaloniki, it becomes evident that the critics had an agenda of their
own.
....
David
Stratton, the critic for Hollywood Variety implies that "Dust"
is replete with violence, so that it's hardly believable that the western
audience will accept it. Right here is the real reason for the negative
reactions emerges (reactions rebuffed by Alessandro Baricco and by many
regular viewers evaluating "Dust" on film web sites). It was
the western cinema that invented film violence to satisfy the needs of
western viewers. The Indians, or Russians, or Poles, or Japanese, or Macedonians
did not invent film violence, and it is never put up on the screen for
their sake. When an experienced critic attributes excessive violence to
"Dust," it cannot be a coincidence. In fact, there are 7 or
8 minutes of violence in "Dust," as opposed to the 45 minutes
of brutality in "Saving Private Ryan," brutality that in Spielberg's
(excellent) film goes as far as hands and legs exploding all around; not
to mention films like "Pulp Fiction," "Schindler's List"
or "Seven," Shakespeare's bloody plays, or even the Bible for
that matter. David Stratton feels free to employ double standards - one
set for the Hollywood/western films, and another set for the films from
other countries, i.e. "eastern films."
....
The
arrogance of the western pseudo-critics goes so far that they do not even
try to conceal their racism and political agenda. The TV audience had
the opportunity to see Alexander Walker from the London Evening Standard
accusing Manchevski that he had made a racist film, showing the Turks
"as herd of a corrupt people who gibber like apes in red fezes, and
are more violent and far less responsible than Macedonians". Walker
then asked Manchevski: "I wander what you think the effect will be
upon contemporary Turkey which is at the present moment trying to enter
the European Union. Do you have a political agenda by this film?"
(Manchevski only said: "Thank you for your statement.") Those
who have seen the film (a few thousand at festivals on three continents,
and more than 70,000 in Macedonia, the only country where the film has
opened in the theaters) can assess for themselves whether Walker's claim
that the film is racist is substantiated, or whether it is but a brazen
forgery and callous attack. The viewers can see for themselves if "Dust"
is a racist piece of art, or rather a film featuring both good guys and
bad guys, blood-thirsty and innocents on all sides (of the ethnic divide).
The film, actually, does not deal with ethnic issues at all; it deals
with sacrifice and selfishness, regardless of ethnic colors. Anyway, even
if it were a racist film (??!), it is unconceivable that a film may, even
if it seeks to, stop a country from being admitted to the European Union.
....
The
British got carried away the most in the political showdown with the Macedonian
co-production. Apart from Walker, Peter Bradshaw refers to "Dust"
in The Guardian as "a special pleading for Macedonian nationalism."
In Macedonia nobody took up arms on seeing "Dust." On the contrary,
many had already taken up arms paid for with The Guardian journalists'
tax money. Those who'd taken up arms had been trained by The Guardian
journalists' fellow citizens. These reporters display knee-jerk negative
reaction to a film trying to portray the relativity of recounting history
when it's written by the mightier, a film stating loud and clear the historical
fact that Macedonians have suffered at the hands of ravaging Albanian
gangs.
....
Macedonian
philosopher Katarina Kolozova had a similar experience with her renowned
colleagues. A philosophical article she wrote was unexpectedly blasted
by an eminent Paris professor who referred to it as "nationalistic."
After one looks at the topic of the article, things become clearer. Kolozova
argues for equality of the intellectual discourse and ideas coming from
the small countries and those in the West. Kolozova is among those theoreticians
(such as the Bulgarian Marija Todorova and the Slovene Slavoj Zizek) who
contend that small countries are entitled to independence in assessing
their own image, and who oppose the patronizing attitude of the West.
Many highly acclaimed western minds are not ready to come to terms with
this attitude of the "natives."
....Innocent
Lambs and Blood-Thirsty Murderers
....Why
did western journalists fail to see an apolitical film (which tells tales
of adventures, cowboys, speaks of history, love, suffering and of the
power of storytelling)? Why did they interpret this film as a contemporary
political parable on the situation in Macedonia? Several Italian and German
critics contend that all westerners in the film are shown as bad, as if
the good Angela and Elijah are not Americans, and the blood-thirsty Major
and the Teacher are not from the Balkans (one a Turk, the other a Macedonian).
Maybe this is but a reflex which has to do with the old skeleton in one's
closet.
....Things
finally become crystal clear when put in context. The German "critic"
Jan Schulze-Ojala in Der Tagesspiegel says that "Dust" is an
illustration of Manchevski's newspaper article "Just a Moral Obligation,"
as if the director could write a screenplay, shoot and edit a film in
two weeks, a process that usually takes two years at least (in the case
of "Dust" it took as many as seven years; as a matter of fact
the film was conceived - AND FILMED before the war in Macedonia even started).
The same critic further claims that the film is anti-Albanian because
"Instead of the Albanian Muslims we have here the Ottomans as the
‚untermenschen' and the Macedonians are as innocent as lambs, who are
slaughtered during the film numerously. And the black boy whom the old
woman explains the Balkans to, is nobody else than the West, who has to
be waken up by the sounds of the fanfare and fight against the everlasting
Osmanic Islam. The killerface aesthetic with which the Turks are portrayed
does have - and that is the scandal - something (neo) fascistic about
it". Talk of projecting!
....Claiming
that Manchevski with "Dust" ilustrates the war in Macedonia,
the critic of the London Times, James Christopher, says :"Manchevski
hits important nerves but his politics, like twin stories, are all over
the place. True, Dust is not a piece of 'realist' cinema, but having placed
his film in the teeth of a deadly serious conflict can he really shrug
off the responsibility?" He, however, does not mention that the conflict
the film speaks about is over 100 years old, and that this new war in
Macedonia, which is different from the one a century ago, happened AFTER
the film was made.
....The
Croatian Jutarnji List, one month before Venice, published vitriolic criticism
written by the prominent Bosnian writer Miljenko Jergovic (who had fled
Sarajevo when it was under siege), accusing Manchevski of "Macedonian
nationalism, failure to understand the historical situation of the Albanians..."
Jergovic did not note that he himself had not been to Macedonia.
....As
if to continue the political fuss engulfing the film, the most frequent
questions in the numerous interviews Manchevski gave in Venice (at least
120 for several countries) had to do with the political crisis in Macedonia.
The film was seen through the prism of politics. Even at the gala entrance
preceding the opening of the festival, an occasion generally used for
glamorous show-biz fluff, Manchevski was asked about the fate of NATO
troops in Macedonia (whereupon he answered that those who distributed
arms to the militants are now collecting them back). The day after the
opening night of "Dust" in Venice, the Associated Press agency
released the (erroneous) information that Manchevski was retiring from
directing.
....Finally,
has Macedonia learned its lesson from this battering? Has it learned that
the mighty play dirty, and that they punch below the belt, and that when
your fate is being tailored by the bigger and the mightier it is very
important for the world to hear your side of the truth, no matter what
the consequences?
....The
case of "The 'Dust' Files" is telling because the western media
gave its bias away - and because the rest of us failed to use the opportunity
to speak in a public place about our problems and about our truth. This
distortion then becomes only a small piece in the mosaic of a political
struggle.
....By
Marina Kostova
....Translated
by Aleksandra Ilievska
(Published
in Vest Daily newspaper, December 22-23, 2001
http://www.vest.com.mk/default.asp?id=19601&rubrika=Revija&idg=2&idb=440
posted on http://www.realitymacedonia.org.mk/web/news_page.asp?nid=1322)
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