After winning a Golden Bear at Berlinale 2021 with Bad Luck Banging or Loony Porn, Radu Jude is back with Potemkinistii, a satirical short movie that premiered at the Directors Fortnight of Cannes in 2022. The film was also presented at UnArchive Found Footage Fest, Rome in May 2023 and the much-praised Romanian director was there himself. Universal Cinema had a chat with him after the screening.
A powerful film that in a few minutes can trigger a vivid discussion about representation, art, memory, ideology and cinema itself, Potemkinistii revolves around the relationship between past and present. The film’s title refers to a well-known historical episode: Mutiny of soldiers on the Battleship Potemkin in 1905, already made famous by the eponymous 1925 Soviet film by director Sergei Eisenstein. But Radu’s 18-minute short film focuses on a lesser known set of historical actors: Potemkin sailors who were granted political asylum in Romania. Potemkinistii is a comical two-part discussion between the two 2021 protagonists over the construction of a commemorative work of art.
Bianca Montanaro, UniversalCinema Magazine (UM): Your film was shot before the Russian invasion, what would you have done if you were to shoot the film after it, instead?
Radu Jude (RJ): I think I wouldn’t have shot it. This film is partly a celebration of filmmaker Eisenstein, of his wonderful film Battleship Potemkin, and while I’m not in favor of cancelling Russian classical culture, I’m in favor of cancelling the contemporary culture if it’s not made by people who are openly against the regime. Vladimir Sorokin, great Russian writer living in exile in Berlin, gave an interview one year ago to The Guardian, saying that you wouldn’t expect people reading German literature, Goethe and so on, during the Nazi invasions… so yes, Russian culture will suffer for that. Of course, after this brutal war will end, little by little it will recover its important position. So I base my words on his words, and he’s a Russian guy, so…
(UM): So what do you think about cancel culture in general?
(RJ): It is an important issue. I don’t have an answer to that. I think we can’t find general rules for that, Because if you do, you have to cancel so many works of art. I would say that everyone should have their personal reaction. I’m in favor of not cancelling the works of art but reading them critically.
(UM): And by reading it critically we can also understand much about history. Speaking of history, in a way it is kind of a compromise, a work of editing. That’s a very important responsibility for the artist, as you filter for the people.
(RJ): Yeah, sure. But sometimes I want to forget this responsibility, because the burden is so big that sometimes I’m afraid. First of all, it’s true: history is to edit things out. There’s an infinite number of details for everything, imagine even just trying to make the history of our meeting today, what do you say? “We met at this hour, we sat down, drank coffee and spoke etc…”, but if you try to remember everything you would end up with an infinite number of details even for such a small meeting, and so you have to edit out. I think that’s also the work of philosophers, historians and filmmakers. Which are the details to keep and to which are the ones to leave out? How do you compress a story in order to offer something which is not the official interpretation, because sometimes even the official interpretation is to be challenged, to be tested.
(UM): In this case – as in other films – you have used irony to convey a discussion about present and past. Do you think it can make it more accessible to people?
(RJ): I think it’s the opposite. Because the humor is something quite troubling. And that’s why the comics are so much hated when they laugh about arguments that people consider holy. If you believe in nationalism and patriotism and someone is not only going against that but mocking that, sometimes that creates a reaction of rejection much bigger than if you were serious about that. Because to make fun is like being two times against. People want to be taken seriously! That’s why I strongly believe in the comic.
When people say “Oh, you make a film to change the world”, I say, “Well, not really”. I make films to try and stop people from wanting to change the world immediately – to create this comic shock.
(UM): During the Q and A earlier you said that when a country is able to criticize its own history, this is a sign of strength.
(RJ): When you attack the myths and the foundation of a community that doesn’t feel strong on its feet the reactions may be violent. My films are a test in some ways: in Romania – although some people reacted angrily against my movies – I could make them, nothing happened to me, I could show them there. This shows that Romania nowadays is a stronger democracy than it used to be. But it’s always very fragile because if the political regime changes, then in two months this could disappear, but for the moment freedom of speech exists, it’s always threatened a little bit, but it exists, and I’m a proof of that.
(UM): In your film, architecture seems to always have an important role. In the Potemkinistii, everything revolves around a statue for example.
(RJ): Objects around us, including building, toys and so on, not only have a shape or aesthetical beauty or ugliness but they are somehow pregnant with history with ideologies with older aesthetics. I’m interested in the relationship between the past and the present and so the objects and the mise en scene of the objects become important in much of my films. But this is because of the historical dimension, not of the architecture itself.
How do you represent history? Something that is gone. You can choose the realistic way, but sometimes it’s ridiculous, so you have to find artistic ways, intellectual ways, and aesthetic ways that have a philosophical resonance. For example, in Uppercase Print I’ve found the minimalistic set to show that I’m not pretending to recreate the ‘80s.
(UM): Can you say something about your next project?
(RJ): Next year I’m going to shoot a Dracula movie and I want say that the scenes are made according to AI but I am the AI, so I could do a porn scene with Dracula and when people accuse me of being vulgar or unacceptable, I can say “That it’s not me, it’s the AI!”. It’s fun, I really cannot wait to shoot it, it’s going to be so liberating!
(UM): So what do you think about artificial intelligence writing?
(RJ): Now many people are writing with AI versions of screenwriting and many writers are losing their job. Of course this problem should be addressed, somebody should find a way to maybe guarantee a minimum wage or something like that, but in a way it’s challenging. If AI can make films better than me, there is no need for me to do it! Maybe I should do something that AI can’t do. I’m not afraid of that. It’s not like playing chess, where the rules are fixed so a computer can play better than every human, but I think in art you always have the possibility to change the rules of the game.
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