Some 55 years after the demise of Stalin, and 17 years after the fall of communism, it seems that the Gulag and the KGB are still hot potatoes.
A major satellite TV group called Viasat Broadcasting
was about to buy this film for Pay TV in 33 countries, including all the former communist territories that comprised the Soviet Union, Eastern Bloc, and former Yugoslavia. At the very closing stage of 5 months of negotiation on 18th March 2008 I got this last minute email from Acquisitions.Manager Vicky Watts:
“I’m unfortunately no longer in a position to move forward with the deal offer. We have concerns about the sensitivity of the title in Russia. The current climate and viewership in Russia is that our Compliance department are having to monitor very closely the programmes we would like for the channel. The decision has been made that this is unfortunately not going to sit comfortably with us, in view of the territories we broadcast in.
I am really sorry that this has only come to light at this time, but all titles are subject to the approval of both our Programming and Compliance teams.
Kind regards,
Vicky
This broadcasting group is based in Scandinavia. It seems that even in the liberal Nordic environs of the Arctic Circle, west of my father was imprisoned, business takes precedence over survivors recounting how their human rights were robbed six decades ago.
Interestingly, this squares with cultural policies whereby I understand that state-sponsored film festivals dare not show a film such as this in Russia. My co-producer and editor, Emily Harris, was even told in St Petersburg by a somewhat shamefaced festival programmer that they had been told to steer clear of this kind of material. Only the Stalker Film Festival in Moscow, a human rights event independent of the government, has shown this apparently controversial movie!
We knew about the terror applied to critics of the current regime such as Litvinenko and Politkovskaya. It seems that even the past is taboo. The dead hand of Stalin rests on the Kremlin, and woe betide any Western business entities that ignore that fact.
If anyone can has any helpful comments, I would love to hear!
Suggested Reading
Garri S. Urban: Tovarisch, I Am Not Dead This is the true and striking story by a Jewish doctor of his struggle for survival when caught in 1939 between the evils of Nazi Germany and Stalin's Russia. After facing death from frontier patrols, a firing squad and torture, Urban arrives at a position of considerable power in Soviet society in a medical post. He risks his life again, fighting epidemics. These fascinating memoirs give a very rare glimpse of the Soviet Union in wartime, particularly into the exotic life of the Moiscow elite, where beautiful women, diplomats and spies mingled at parties and sex was used as a method of recruiting agents. Compassionate to the sick, defiant to authority, Garri S Urban courage
Ruth Kluger: Landscape of Memory - a Holocaust Girlhood Remembered Ruth Kluger is one of the child-survivors of the Holocaust. In 1942 at the age of 11, she was deported to the Nazi "family camp" Theresienstadt with her mother. They would move to two other camps before the war ended. This book is the story of Ruth's life. Of a childhood spent in the nazi camps and her refusal to forget the past as an adult in America. Not erasing a single detail, not even the inconvienient ones, she writes frankly about the troubled relationship with her mother even through their years of internment and her determination not to forgive and absolve the past.
Sir Martin Gilbert: The Holocaust A very thorough account of the experience of the Jews of Europe during World War II. This title gives a virtual day-by-day account, in men and women's own words, of the horrifying events of the Holocaust - the Nazi attempt to exterminate the Jewish race.
Anne Applebaum: Gulag The Pulitzer Prize winning narrative of the origins and development of the Soviet concentration camps. Based on archives, interviews and new research the book explains the role that the camps played in the Soviet political and economic system.
Richard Overy: Russia's War The astounding events of 1941-45 in which the Soviet Union, after initial catastrophes, destroyed Hitler's Third Reich and shaped European history for the next fifty years.
Willy Peter Reese: A Stranger to Myself: The Inhumanity of War: Russia, 1941-1944 The haunting memoir of a young German soldier on the Russian front during World War II. Willy Peter Reese was only twenty years old when he found himself marching through Russia with orders to take no prisoners. Three years later he was dead.
Slavomir Rawicz: The Long Walk The story of a young Polish cavalry officer who was arrested by the Russians, tortured and sentenced to 25 years forced labour. His escape and journey across the Gobi desert to Tibet and freedom.
Jean-Francois Steiner: Treblinka This is without a doubt one of the better books about the death camps. You will become intimately acquainted with Treblinka and the Nazis who ran it. Steiner's book is well-written and does justice to the horror.- Rodric Braithwaite: Moscow 1941Sunday Times review - ‘a wide-ranging and excellent account...Braithwaite never shirks the terrible truths
Suggested Films
Schindlers List
The 2004 release telling the true stroy of Schindlers attempts to save Jewish workers from the horrors of the German camps....
The Story Of The Gulag Runaway
In Stalinist Russia, Chabua Amiredjibi endured years of imprisonment, backbreaking punishment, horrific torture, and two death sentences. But his broken life and ill health did not kill his hope of gaining freedom. In all, he managed six escapes from Stalin's Gulag Camps. He stood up, fought and survived.
The 2004 release telling the true stroy of Schindlers attempts to save Jewish workers from the horrors of the German camps....
The Story Of The Gulag Runaway
In Stalinist Russia, Chabua Amiredjibi endured years of imprisonment, backbreaking punishment, horrific torture, and two death sentences. But his broken life and ill health did not kill his hope of gaining freedom. In all, he managed six escapes from Stalin's Gulag Camps. He stood up, fought and survived.