Filmmakers explore the connection between Chinese women’s bandaged feet and secret calligraphy

The 23rd International Documentary Film Festival “Flahertiana”, named after the founder of non-fiction cinema, American film director Robert Flaherty, ended in Perm. The film “Nanook of the North,” filmed in 1922 using the method of long-term observation, brought him worldwide fame. Flaherty spent more than a year among the Eskimos to show their daily life. At Flahertiana, Nanook statuettes are awarded for the best films.

The festival program featured films from different countries, which is now surprising. Filmmakers from all over the world not only presented their work, but also communicated with the audience – not in person, but online. Of the foreign guests, only jury members from Belgrade and Zagreb were present.

The main award of the international competition “Golden Nanuk” was given to the Finnish-Russian film “Whom I Love…” by VGIK graduate and native of Finland Anna Berger, who had to fly to Perm twice – in order to present her work, and then to collect the award. The film tells the story of guest workers from Lithuania and Ukraine, a Russian and a Ukrainian, who restore a summer house in Finland that belonged to the director’s father. His ancestors left Russia in 1918. He himself speaks Russian well and feels a kinship with the culture of his historical homeland. The film was filmed at the beginning of 2020, and now it looks completely different. There is so much life and energy in it, for which honor and praise go to the aspiring director.

Secret Letters (China-Germany-Norway-USA), which won the Silver Nanook and the Audience Award, was filmed in China by two female directors, Violet Du Feng and Zhao Qing. Interestingly, the film’s producer, Mette Cheng Munthe-Kaas, who lives in Norway, has not been to her homeland for 15 years, but she was the one who spoke to the audience after the screening. Two heroines – modern Chinese women – are called upon to save evidence of how, for thousands of years, their compatriots were forced into marriage and forbidden to read and write. In the wake of resistance, fragile but brave women developed the secret calligraphic language of Nu Shu, writing their poetic messages to the world and each other on fans and handkerchiefs with bamboo feathers. They had no other opportunity to express themselves. The words were heard in the film: “If she sings quietly, then people don’t hear.” You need to declare yourself loudly.

Mette Cheng Munthe-Kaas got a lot of her inspiration for making the film from her mother. This is a picture about sisterhood, the equivalence of female and male space. And although the roots of Nu Shu go back to the past, they filmed a story about modern China. There has not been a premiere there yet, only test screenings. Mette said that China is becoming more and more patriarchal, and the situation there in this sense is worse than it was twenty years ago. The film shows how girls from a young age had their feet tightly bandaged, put on tight shoes, and their fingers broken. The feet became deformed and ugly, and the women were helpless and could not leave the house on their own. And all this was associated with aristocracy. Already in our time, you had to pay a fine if there was more than one child in a family. According to Mette Cheng Munthe-Kaas, this policy has led to an imbalance, and now the country has many older people, few young people, and more men than women. Mette herself is happy to live in Norway, where there is good healthcare and child care. She is a very interesting person and tries to correlate professional activities with female self-realization, but finding a balance, according to her, is difficult, it is a search for life.

Another “Silver Nanook” went to the Russian and most Flahertian in spirit film “Tanya. Summer. Winter” by Alexander Avilov. His heroine spent her entire life in the forest after her grandmother took her from the boarding school where she studied. Tatyana is a hunter, and this calling came before the ability to write and read. She lives on the land where her Khanty ancestors lived for centuries. We see her everyday life, which only she and no one else can provide. Tatyana knows how to fish, shoot, sew bags from birch bark and clothes from skins. It won’t get lost in the forest. She has a wooden refrigerator on legs, reminiscent of a fairytale hut. Now these are shown to tourists coming to Khanty-Mansiysk. But for Tatyana, this is not a miracle, but everyday life. The camera records her every minute, and one can only admire the limitless possibilities of a person who can dissolve in nature.

The film with the cumbersome title “Carmen, or the Story of Unhappy Love by Hanspeter from Oberkassel, which brought my children happiness in a foreign country” was shot by Russian woman Yulia Vishnevetskaya in co-production with Germany and Georgia. Carmen is the owner of a circus on wheels, which is always on the go. She is an eternal wanderer. She doesn’t have a permanent phone number. Having reached adulthood, Carmen cannot read or write. Circus is life. Like a forest for Tatyana.

Yulia Vishnevetskaya is a journalist, author of many television reports. She made her directorial debut with the magnificent film “Katya and Vasya Go to School,” which received the Laurel Branch Award for the best film of 2020. In Perm, the film was presented by her son and future journalist Odysseus, who admitted that he was not very interested in cinema. He starred in “Carmen…” as a child, and it started ten years ago, when Julia and her three children came to work in Germany. The children there went to a circus school run by Hanspeter Kurzhals. Julia interviewed him, and his story about the circus performer Carmen, whom he had not seen for thirty years, could not help but make an impression. This is how the idea for the film came about. Julia decided to find Carmen. If Hanspeter had found out about this, he would probably have been against it. Documentary filmmakers often act contrary, sometimes cold-bloodedly crossing the line of what is permitted.

In the finale, Julia utters a voiceover about how she said goodbye to her characters, and they seemed like heroes of dreams. They were just people, but now they have become part of dreams. Odysseus commented: “It’s boring there. In Germany, everything is like peeking into someone else’s dream. If a generation disappears, then there will be no circus. Mom returned us to our homeland, and it was difficult for us to integrate into our new life. I still remember German, but my younger brother and sister don’t.” Looks like a dream too. Yes and no The most powerful event in the lives of the film’s characters was the coronavirus. They are still not allowed to perform at venues. You can only hold children’s birthday parties. All this brings Hanspeter to tears, because life has stood still. Without the circus, it lost its value.

The competition included the unawarded “The Only Doctor,” directed by Matthew Hashiguchi, an associate professor at the Department of Multimedia Filmmaking at Georgia Southern University. He became interested in the fate of Dr. Karen Kinsell, who for 15 years has been the only doctor in the provincial Clay County on the border of Georgia and Alabama, where the mostly poor black population lives. The doctor works for a modest remuneration, but she cannot leave these people who have no one else to count on. Karen hopes to move to a new clinic that is about to open. And it will indeed be opened, but there will be no place for Karen there, and she will continue to treat her charges in conditions that are poorly suited for this. How they will survive the coronavirus is a separate and sad story. Some, including a 103-year-old grandmother and a still young man with a bunch of illnesses, will not pass the test. For the rest, life is so meager and absolutely devoid of joy that one can only be surprised that all this is possible in an energetic and wealthy America.

The best in the national competition was the film “Live in Lyubimovo”, shot by Alexey Romanov in the Perm region about the musician Klaus Burger, who moved from Germany to a Ural village. You can walk barefoot there at any time of the year, be happy among your loved ones and like-minded people, but still remain an overseas curiosity, something like a black sheep. Once again you are convinced that documentary films provide endless opportunities for traveling into someone else’s life, a feeling of a world without borders, even if they exist.