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What price freedom?
Published: 20 August, 2011, 15:27
Anna Politkovskaya (RIA Novosti / Vladimir Fedorenko)
TAGS: Movies, Russia, Politkovskaya, USA
A drama about the fearless Russian journalist Anna Politkovskaya who was gunned down in her apartment block in downtown Moscow in October 2006 has had its world premiere in New York to a full house.
The 90-minute feature film entitled A Bitter Taste of Freedom had a fantastic response from the audience and will be submitted for consideration for the 84th Academy Awards by the International Documentary Association.
The creator of the film is one of the most renown documentary-makers to come out of Russia, Los Angeles-based Marina Goldovskaya, whose credits include 28 award-winning productions.
The film director has known Anna Politkovskaya's family for three decades, and her film paints an in-depth portrait of a woman who had a heart of gold and felt people's pain more keenly than her own.
“There are people with thick skin and thin skin. Anna Politkovskaya had no skin at all. She left for the war in Chechnya and never came back,” Goldovskaya told RIA news after the film's premiere.
A human rights activist famous for her courageous exposure of abuses during the Chechen conflict, the 48-year-old was brutally murdered on her doorstep as she was returning home from work. The crime remains unsolved.
Goldovskaya learned of Politkovskaya's death from news bulletins, after which she received a phone call from Anna's children who wondered if her close friend would make a film about their mother…
Goldovskaya would first spend her time watching films already made about Politkovskaya by other directors. She asked herself what she could say about her friend - “loved by some and hated by others” – that others couldn't. In A Bitter Taste of Freedom, her heroic friend reveals how hard it is “being Anna Politkovskaya”.
“I portrayed her the way I knew her – as a tender, vulnerable woman,” Goldovskaya was quoted as saying.
“Who did I make my film for?” Goldovskaya asked herself. “First and foremost, for Russians. They can understand the soul of this woman better than anyone else. I wanted to touch the souls of people in a time of cynical pragmatism,” the director explained.
Several documentary films about Politkovskaya have been already been made, including the 2007 documentary, Anna Politkovskaya – The Last Interview – which was released in France. In 2008, another documentary, Anna – Seven Years on the Frontline, was created by a Russian director Maria Novikova, based in the Netherlands.
20.08.2011, 13:08
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Whether one loves or hates Politkovskaya, it will be for history to judge her contribution to understanding what happened in Chechnya, the Nord-Ost and Beslan incidents and the FSB bomb-setters. Possible not to ignore how Politkovskaya's words could be prophetic of a dismal, dictatorial Russian future - or another Russia that confronts terror in its recent past. Many countries have used "truth and reconciliation" commissions as a way to try to confront the past without blame. Not all of these T&Rs have been equally effective, but it might help avoid the worst scenarios.
It's funny how people conflate the interests of corrupt bureaucrats, siolviki, military and police officers, Chechen warlords and organized crime (the people Politkovskaya was "a traitor to") with the national interest. So Larry, despite the fact that Politkovskaya had a US passport and could have easily retired to a land of East-Coast book deals, book signings, book tours, university speeches, television appearances, you know, that comfortable liberal world of safe ivory tower finger wagging, she continued to advocate for a group of people who had been mostly dismissed by an apathetic or opening racist population (the Chechens), the survivors of terrorist attacks, the victims of rape and murder at the hands of the police in the provinces, and the young soldiers who were at times sold off for slave labor by their officers, because you know, she was such an opportunist, and who wouldn't take the opportunity to get a bit of attention working tirelessly for the poor and downtrodden in the remote parts. After she was poisoned on her way to mediate in Beslan, she could have left, she could have stopped, but in your charming little world, it wasn't enough,; she probably wanted to be martyred to get a bit more attention I'm guessing. Whatever you think of her conclusions about the Russian state, Politkovskaya is what most people fear the most, a person who has convictions, a person who lives by his or her convictions, and a person who dies for them. Just like Sarah and Larry I'm guessing.
Bezdomny... Is that what I'm getting here? ..A safe ivory tower finger wagging from your comfortable liberal world? Judging from the whiff of self-righteousness I'm getting from your direction, I'd say you were reflexively defending one of your privileged own.....a woman born to Soviet diplomats, who graduated from Moscow University to later marry a well-known TV host..and then work for Izvestia....All her preeminent journalistic instincts seem kick in 'coincidentally' after the fall of the Soviet Union and like most limousine liberals proceeded to reinvent the long suffering miseries of the old Soviet Union for her Vanity Fair reading crowd in NYC......I reserve my respect for the integrity of those journalists who spoke up when it wasn't easy.....not the East coast book signing crowd she was most certainly playing to...In any case, regardless of how you might perceive my response, Bez, ...imagine the ego Politskaya must have had to assume she could have 'mediated' the Beslan atrocity...a sad episode of put upon Chechens finally murdering children in cold blood....I'm sure you're familiar with that kind of ego, Bezdomny.