Ming reporter Pao Zhou Hongliang
In contrast, “Mariupolis 2” (Mariupolis 2, posthumous work of the Lithuanian director Kovidaravicius), screened at the Eurasian Documentary Week (EADF) in 2022, depicts how Ukrainians lived in Russia during the siege of Mariupol Live under the military sound of bombing, and “Eastern Front” (Eastern Front, directed by Ukrainians Vitaly Mansky and Yevhen Titarenko) screened at HKIFF last year, depicting a battlefield documentary from the point of view of Ukrainian volunteer wounded soldiers, directed by Karpovich “Inhuman Calls on the Battlefield” takes a completely different angle It is open to the public, and a small part of it is made by the documentary production team who apply separately to the security department.
Just like “The War on the Eastern Front” last year, “Unkind Calls” had its world premiere at the Berlin Film Festival in February this year and then came to Hong Kong for its Asian premiere in early April. Karpovich personally visited Hong Kong to answer questions after the screening, and also accepted an interview with this newspaper.
Overcome fear, stay in Ukraine and witness history
Karpovich himself is a film director, screenwriter and photographer. He was born in Kiev, the capital of Ukraine, and now lives in Montreal, Canada. At the time of the Russian invasion, he worked as a local producer for foreign media, supporting foreign journalists who came to Ukraine. In order to personally witness this historic event that changed Ukraine and the world, she overcame her fear and stayed, and found the inspiration to make this document.
She said that when she was working as a film and documentary director, she liked to chat with people and collect stories. However, as a local producer supporting foreign reporters, she often followed them to attack sites or scenes where civilians were killed, and stood up. while waiting for foreign reporters to stream their reports, I observed the scene from time to time and thus conceived the visual part of the documentary.
Let the audience imagine horror scenes
During this time, Karpovich developed the habit of listening to recordings of communications intercepted by Russian soldiers. He found these recordings on the official YouTube channel of the Ukrainian security services and quickly understood how “rich, rare and scary” the material was. himself
Karpovich admitted that the actual production was very difficult, fortunately, she had a French editor to work with. They were both discussing how to combine recordings and images for the audience. This is also related to the way the film was shot The video shoot was completed before she had finished listening to the recording, so the plan was not to present the content of the dialogue of the Russian soldiers directly in the video “The real idea was to emphasize contrast, the absurdity and juxtaposition of the two sets of realities. They annotate and contradict each other, but they happen at the same time.”
He described the five and a half month editing process as moving back and forth between sound and image. The process like playing music was able to flow smoothly and try new things the whole structure, or remove one scene and become fragmented.” However, in the first month of editing, they concentrated on recording and did not touch the images at all, so the rough version of the documentary had only sounds and no images – in other words, it became the narrative and structure of the first documentary. of the sounds.
Peaceful images “pay tribute” to the motherland
This does not mean that she has no ideas about image narrative and “I have known since childhood, Imaginations of the Ukraine I loved and the Ukraine we almost lost.
When asked about his feelings when listening to the intercepted communications, Karpovich lamented that when he first listened to the recordings, the Russians in the communications “sounded human, just like everyone else.” He admitted that it was very painful to understand and accept that people “like us” can do inhuman, barbaric and cruel things “I want to understand what thoughts lead them to commit these horrible crimes.”
What piqued his curiosity the most was that whenever Russian soldiers spoke to women, be they mothers, wives or sisters, they sounded very gentle and frank, and he their conversations are often about trivial everyday matters such as food and clothes, “I think it’s fair to “Show how banal this kind of violence and evil can be” is the concept of “banality of evil” proposed by the Jewish philosopher Hannah Orland after listening to the trial of high-ranking Nazi officials.
Political propaganda ‘dehumanises’
In the various dialogues above, both sides may not necessarily have the same position. Karpovich thinks this is very interesting he will have a political propaganda opinion.”differences”.
He admitted that the film tried to show how political propaganda (propaganda) can dehumanize people The example of Russia shows that the power of political propaganda in this regard is even more powerful than war itself. She lamented from the recording that these Russian soldiers had been “dehumanised” before arriving in Ukraine, and they seemed to have no emotion or sympathy for the country and the people. they overcame them. Although she understands the power of political propaganda and the oppressive totalitarianism of Russia, she still has difficulty understanding why Russians are so extreme. “Although everyone is responsible for their own actions, my question is where does this responsibility come from?”
The documentary introduces many terms used by Russians to insult Ukraine – such as Nazis, fascists, Banderaists (referring to Bandera, the historically controversial Ukrainian nationalist leader due to his collaboration with the Nazi German army) and Hoho Khokhol (originally a Russian name for a Cossack hairstyle in Ukrainian history, which the Russians use as a derogatory term for Ukrainians) may come as a bit of a surprise to Hong Kong audiences. Karpovich, who has listened to all the recordings, admitted that to some extent he had become familiar with it He said that we do not exist, our culture is not real”. She admitted that she just laughed as a psychological defense mechanism, “because really, those were really horrible things, and I really felt hurt and in pain.”
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