(THIS ARTICLE IS MACHINE TRANSLATED by Google from Norwegian)
Grozny Blues
Directed by: Nicola Bellucci, photo: Simon Guy Fässler
In the Chechnya capital Grozny, shining skyscrapers have taken the place of shattered brick buildings. On the walls where there used to be bomb craters and bullet holes, proud propaganda posters now hang on the country's leadership figures. Dancing fountains try to cover the city's wounds. The cityscape of the capital, as it appears in the documentary Grozny Blues, is purged of traces of the war against Russia, and testifies only to economic growth and prosperity. In line with the material refurbishment of the country, it seems to deliberately produce historical oblivion.
Bloody history. Chechnya has a long and bloody history, with repeated attempts to disengage from Russia. The conflict between the two countries, dating back to the 1800 century, led to two gruesome wars in the 1990 century, which destroyed large parts of the North Caucasian Republic. Today, Chechnya appears to be stable and peaceful. But this is a republic characterized by profound ideological and territorial tensions, a traumatic and taboo past, fragmented families, separatist groups and a regime that constantly violates the human rights of its inhabitants. This is at least the picture we get Grozny Blues.
According to scientist Karena Avedissian, an expert on post-Soviet politics in the Caucasus, the country's leader Ramzan Kadyrov promotes a Prorussian ideology. With financial support from Moscow, and using "notorious security forces", he has rebuilt the country after the devastation of the war and actively fought against separatists and anti-Russian initiatives. As the film shows, Kadyrov also enforces strict Islamic laws and rules of law, which in particular violate women's rights and make them the basis for the man. Not only that. As Avedissian describes it: "Kadyrov's total domination requires absolute obedience and silence regarding anything that can criticize either the Chechen or Russian regime."
I Grozny Blues this silence is at the center. Belluci's documentary shows in an effective and partly meditative and melancholy way how today's urban architecture in Grozny clears away the ruins that reveal the abuses of the past. The ornate facades look at us like cold eyes with a glare in their eyes. In empty slogans like "Grozny belives in you!" and "Grozny loves you," which adorns the public space, is the silence that speaks. The film portrays the destructive of architectural prosperity, the tragic nature of these skyscrapers and the screens that hide the story in its flashy brilliance. Urban refurbishment appears at all to be part of a creeping structural violence. It's as if the regime is sending a message through the clean-washed cityscape: "Don't think about the past, look at the road and drive straight ahead."
Resistance to history oblivion. But the movie is not just about this silence. Grozny Blues is also a portrait of four Chechen women trying to break it – four women who disobey and dig behind the facade.
These women work as human rights activists during the repressive regime – a regime that not only disguises a past filled with war and war crimes, but which entrenches itself against criticism by countering freedom of speech. The women travel around Grozny and talk to families who have experienced drillings and killings of family members. One can say that the Russians deported people until 2003 and that it is now the Chechen militia that does. The women listen and write down these experiences that will not be heard and themed by the regime, and which will therefore not be made public. In solidarity with the women, the film digs into the country's taboo trauma.
Moreover, since the first war against Russia in 1994, these activists have been busy documenting the Chechen reality with camcorders. Throughout the film, there is an alternation between contemporary images of women driving around in modern Grozny and their past video footage, which reveals a brutal reality: ruins, corpses, and tanks breaking through broken streets.
The film's foremost gripe is precisely the cross-cutting between observational images of today's Grozny, a quiet present, and these footage from the women themselves, a chaotic past. Through this grip, the tranquility of the present becomes only apparent and superficial, attacked by the chaos of the past. The cross-cutting – which not only becomes a structural choice for the film as such, but one main motive in its problematization of Chechnya's self-image and historical narrative – confronts the storylessness that is being built up through the regime's renovation project. Grozny Blues is a portrait of the four women, but perhaps as important as it is a portrait of history oblivion and forgery through material restoration.
Invisible enemy. Some distance from the movie, the women sit in an office and reflect on this enemy who is trying to make himself intangible, invisible. "Once upon a time, the situation was very different: We knew who the enemies were. The enemies were the ones who came at us with weapons, ”says one of them. In the 90s, they threw themselves in front of tanks and swore at soldiers. How are they going to fight today, against an enemy that has changed character, who is oppressive in a more hidden way? How should they criticize a structural violence whose power hides behind polished facades and empty propaganda posters?
Grozny Blues asks – and gives one answer to – questions like this (questions that extend beyond the Chechen situation and relate to the relationship between film and society in general): How to make visible an invisible enemy? How to depict an abuse of power that does not manifest itself in a soldier figure? This is where the potential of the time-crossing cutting comes into play: By juxtaposing images from different times, movies can counteract the trouble-free, one-dimensional and story-less now images produced by a controlling regime.
Cross cutting i Grozny Blues both exhibits and attacks today's urban façade as an oblivion's free zone. By restlessly, melancholy and dissatisfied with cutting between the present and the past, the film reintroduces the ruins of the city's facade – as a complaint and as an attack. The showcased fragility of existing in today's Chechnya, or the violence and unstableness of modern buildings, gets a poetic image in the film's opening and ending: A skyscraper in the night, only lit by the flames that are about to extinguish it.
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