RODINA LOST

Go watch.

Screening Record
2024 March 24 Bundesplatz-Kino Berlin

Childhood memories and patriotism. Grandparent’s love and ideological constructs. Running errands and war propaganda. With the help of Soviet cartoons, I try to get closer to what remains of my Russian identity between the ambiguity of family, home, and the reality of war in 2023 Saint Petersburg.
Please note: The film includes war-related audio and moments of political anxiety. The intention is not to convey a political message, but rather to share my personal story. It was edited from June to October 2023.

Snippets from the Project Notes

MEANING OF THE TITLE
The Russian word ‘rodina’ can be understood as an umbrella term that addresses all of the below to varying degrees: a ‘place’

where you were born
where you grew up
you have linked to a wide range of memories and emotions
that is colored by nostalgia and patriotic feelings

It can roughly be translated to the English ‘homeland’. ‘Motherland’ might be an even closer match as it implies a connection rooted in shared ancestry, history, and culture. The German equivalent ‘heimat’ has its own emphasis: it detaches the respective feelings from a specific physical place and instead, addresses a more universal notion of belonging. Personally, I think that ‘rodina’ carries an additional layer of patriotic sentiment.
Thus: ‘Homeland’ lost. ‘Motherland’ lost. ‘Heimat’ lost. “Rodina lost.”

LANGUAGE LAYERS
In the film, Russian, German, and English are each transmitting different kinds of information. Their relationship can be compared to the image of a funnel. While content is processed through all layers, some data gets lost in translation. Russian appears as diegetic sound or in the form of Russian songs. It is an information flow of childhood memories, political reality, and my immediate relationship with my grandparents. It mostly remains unedited and raw as a primary source. In contrast, I use German to conceptualize my overall feelings as an overarching monologue that somehow exists independently from my experience, and English to generate the final most processed output. For example, the last song “People Are Strange” by The Doors concludes the former emotional journey, and all the subtitles are in English, bringing everything together into a condensed product.

The way these three languages relate to their content reflects my real-life experience: Russian being a language of family and of the past, German accompanying me on a daily basis, and English serving as an academic, clean-cut, and filtered medium. Such a formal concept means that a viewer who does not speak all three languages will inevitably struggle to grasp everything audiovisually mediated. This, on one hand, mirrors the informational and emotional overload of my experience and on the other hand, implies that certain understanding only comes with specific cultural/individual knowledge.

SELECTED WORKS
A key component is a hand-picked selection of Soviet animation movies and TV shows. A viewer familiar with their original narratives can find emergent meanings in their fusion with monologue, audio, and other visual sources. In order to provide some insight into how their contexts play into the film, here are two examples of featured pieces:

“Boniface’s Holiday” from 1965 is a short film about the highly talented circus lion Boniface who manages to get permission from his circus director to go on a holiday and decides to visit his grandmother in Africa. The arrival/beginning and departure/ending sequences are essential elements.

“Leopold the Cat” is a TV character who has a whole animation series (1975-1987) centered around him and two mischievous mice. In each episode, the plot repeats itself: the mice try to somehow harm or bother the cat while Leopold simply tries to pursue his everyday life tasks. At the end of each episode, there is some kind of chaotic climax and he finally gets to declare his catchphrase: “Friends, let us live in harmony!” or “Guys, let’s try to get along”.

montage short film
17 min 39 sec
2023
de, ru, eng

SASHA MEYER

SASHA
MEYER