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Girls and gents, I’m deeply honoured to obtain this award. I want to thank Ms Sandrine Trenier and her colleagues at France Tradition for appreciating my work in cinema, and for supporting my views and my place.
Tradition is a matter of life for all of us, and in the present day all of us discover ourselves on the entrance line. On the one hand there are these calling for a ban on Russian cinematography and who need Russian tradition to be abolished altogether. On the opposite are those that are towards a complete boycott of tradition.
Instantly after the Russian aggression in Ukraine, I spoke out towards a complete ban on Russian cinema and towards a boycott of Russian tradition. A few of my compatriots responded by demanding a boycott of my movies as effectively – particularly, movies concerning the present and previous wars – Donbass, Maidan, Babi Yar. Context. It’s placing that just a few years in the past the identical movies – Donbass and Maidan – have been already banned.
This occurred in totalitarian Russia, on the orders of the FSB [the Russian security services, Ed.]. Right now, Ukrainian “activists” are demanding that these movies be cancelled within the democratic European Union. It’s regrettable that on sure points their place coincides with that of the Russian FSB.
Sadly, the Cannes Movie Competition additionally finds itself on the entrance line in the present day.
The demand for a boycott of Russian-speaking tradition, which can also be Ukraine’s accomplishment and fortune, is archaic and harmful in nature. Furthermore, it essentially contradicts European ideas of cultural pluralism and freedom of expression
So far as I do know, solely as soon as within the 75-year historical past of the Cannes competition have its administrators acquired a letter from the pinnacle of a State Movie Fund demanding {that a} movie by a citizen of that state be faraway from the programme. That was what occurred in 1969 with Andrei Tarkovsky’s Andrey Rublev.
This 12 months the identical factor is going on with my movie The Pure Historical past of Destruction, produced by Germany, Lithuania and the Netherlands [the film premiered at Cannes on 23 May, Ed.]. The movie is about an issue that has once more develop into monstrously related within the battle Russia is waging in Ukraine: how peaceable civilians and the area of human life are used as a useful resource for battle. It seems that the leaders of the organisations that help Ukrainian cinema will not be involved with this drawback.
They’re solely involved {that a} citizen of Ukraine dares to voice an opinion opposite to that of the bulk. They’re combating a battle on their very own, particular entrance – not the one deciding the future of Europe, of contemporary civilisation and, maybe, of humanity as such, however one the place state-building is changed by a battle of cultures, the place data of 1’s personal historical past is changed by myth-making, the place freedom of speech and freedom of expression are declared enemy propaganda.
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The occasions of those three months of battle, and the aggression to which not solely particular person cultural establishments – museums, theatres, cinemas and galleries – have been subjected, but additionally the creators themselves – administrators, actors, conductors, artists and musicians – demand reflection and a critical dialogue. We have to perceive: what’s going on? And who’s it for?
Language is likely one of the most necessary and basic classes of tradition. Language types and expresses an individual’s understanding of the world. Demanding the prohibition of tradition is equal to demanding the prohibition of language. The demand is as immoral as it’s insane. How can we forbid a language that’s spoken by 350 million individuals all through the world? I’m talking to you now in my very own language, the one I’ve spoken in my hometown of Kyiv since childhood. It’s the language spoken by many of the refugees from the jap areas of Ukraine. Additionally it is the language utilized by the heroic defenders of Serpent Island to elucidate to the Russian aggressors the place they need to go. Fashionable Ukraine is a multinational and multicultural nation.
The demand for a boycott of Russian-speaking tradition, which can also be Ukraine’s accomplishment and fortune, is archaic and harmful in nature. Furthermore, it essentially contradicts European ideas of cultural pluralism and freedom of expression. As an alternative of placing the Russian language, the mom tongue of 30 p.c of Ukrainians, on the service of Ukraine through the use of it to inform the reality concerning the horrible battle, “cultural activists” exhaust themselves with the pointless, Sisyphean job of destroying what’s indestructible.
One will get the impression that by “tradition” these individuals imply a easy set of particular person works – movies, novels, performs, work, and many others. However this isn’t the case.
Tradition is human exercise in its varied manifestations; it’s the rituals and practices of our lives; it’s the types and methods of human self-knowledge and self-expression; it’s our reminiscence and the practices of its preservation and copy. And ultimately, tradition is cultivation, it’s improvement. I believe all of you – the workers of France Tradition, the patrons and mates of this excellent organisation – know this very effectively.
How can we combat towards all of this?
How can we equate the atrocities dedicated by the present Russian regime (in reality, Russia has had nothing however villainous regimes for the final hundred years) with the works of these Russian authors, usually pariahs and nearly at all times mournful prophets of their wretched fatherland, who’ve develop into a part of world tradition, and thus the heritage of all mankind? How can we reply to the barbarism of the Putin regime and the Russian vandals in Ukraine by demanding the destruction or abolition of what has at all times opposed barbarism? There isn’t a logic or sense on this.
The French thinker René Girard writes: “Solely somebody who prevents us from satisfying a need which he himself has impressed in us is really an object of hatred. The one who hates first hates himself for the key admiration hid by his hatred. In an effort to cover this determined admiration from others, and from himself he now not needs to see in his mediator something however an impediment”.
Thus, the secondary function of the mediator involves the fore and totally overrides the first one among non secular imitation.
What is going on to us? What is going on to tradition?
I consider that it’s by constructive and profound dialogue, fairly than by the ultimatum of varied prohibitions, that we are able to come to an understanding. And if we’re speaking about cinema, I believe the European Movie Academy might be the setting for a pan-European convention of philosophers, anthropologists, movie historians, cultural historians, movie students, administrators and screenwriters to debate this very significant issue.
How can we equate the atrocities dedicated by the present Russian regime with the works of these Russian authors, usually pariahs and nearly at all times mournful prophets of their wretched fatherland, who’ve develop into a part of world tradition, and thus the heritage of all mankind?
Stefan Zweig recollects in his memoirs the environment of the First World Battle: “France and England have been ‘fought’ in Vienna and Berlin, in Ringstrasse and Friedrichstrasse, which was clearly a lot simpler. English and French inscriptions on shopfronts needed to disappear. Even the monastery, ‘For the Angelic Virgins’, needed to change its identify as a result of the outraged residents have been unaware that ‘angelic’ implied angels and never Anglo-Saxons.
“Naive enterprise individuals caught stamps on envelopes saying ‘Lord, punish England’; secular girls swore they would not utter a phrase of French so long as they lived. Shakespeare was withdrawn from German theatre, Mozart and Wagner from French and English music halls, German professors declared Dante German, French professors declared Beethoven Belgian, thoughtlessly requisitioning religious heritage from enemy international locations like grain or ore. Not content material with the truth that day-after-day hundreds of peaceable residents of these international locations have been killing one another on the entrance strains, again of their respective homelands they insulted and defamed their nice lifeless, who had been quietly resting of their graves for a whole bunch of years.”
Does this remind you of something?
Destiny gave me a number of years of friendship with the good Irena Veisaitė, a Lithuanian Jew who escaped the Kaunas ghetto, a professor of theatre research and an knowledgeable in German literature, an affiliate of George Soros and a distinguished Lithuanian public determine. Irena recalled that she and her teenage mates within the ghetto organised an underground German poetry circle. Within the evenings they’d collect secretly and skim Goethe, Heine, and Schiller to 1 one other. “However how may that be? Weren’t there German executioners’ speeches throughout you day-after-day?” – I exclaimed. Irena checked out me in amazement: “Sure, however what did it need to do with Goethe?”
Just a few are given such a present of religious knowledge; just a few can attain such humanity; solely true heroes are able to such the Aristocracy. However every of us males of tradition is obliged to make an effort to withstand barbarism in all its manifestations. I’m usually requested – what ought to an artist do in instances of battle? My reply is straightforward – retain widespread sense and defend tradition.
Thanks.
👉 The transcription on Meduza
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