Published: 2 October 2018
Last updated: 5 March 2024
The year is 1999 and she is referring, of course, to Yeltsin’s annointed successor, Vladimir Putin, whose appointment ushers in “the ‘firm hand’ that the Russian nation is so fond of. Yeltsin’s unexpected resignation also marks the start of Mansky’s revealing documentary Putin’s Witnesses, chronicling the new president’s first year in office.
The film is set to open the Antenna Documentary Film Festival in Sydney next week and Vitaly Mansky, the director, will be visiting for the event. The documentary is compiled from Mansky’s archive material produced during his time as the former head of documentaries for state-controlled television channel, Russia 1, and the director’s personal family footage.
Mansky, a Ukrainian-born Jewish director now living in self-imposed exile in Latvia, has a rich body of work as a documentary artist that highlight the value of off-cuts and the importance of what lies beyond the frame. He has another film screening at the festival, Under The Sun, a documentary commissioned by the North Korean Government.
Following the life of a North Korean family, it shows the country’s propaganda machine at work through secretly recorded material, displaying the way each scene is painstakingly staged by the government.
Similarly, in Putin’s Witnesses it’s Mansky’s handheld camera and not the footage from his crew that provide the viewer with unprecedented access to the inner workings of the Kremlin.
Mansky looked for what he referred to as a Kristallnacht – a point of no return for Russia, where you could pinpoint the beginnings of the end for democracy. He believes that he identified the moment in Putin’s decision to revive the Soviet Union’s national anthem.
Well before Mansky climbed up the upper echelons of Russia’s film industry, he was obsessed with movies. At primary school he made an amateur detective series with his classmates, using a friend’s father’s Kiev 16 S camera.
Mansky was born in Lvov, Ukraine, a city known for its Western-style architecture. He often found himself stalking Soviet film-shoots that used the buildings in the historic city centre as a makeshift backdrop for Europe, when Russia was firmly behind the Iron Curtain.
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Unlike the architecture, the Jewish population of Lvov all but perished in World War II and anti-Semitism was still very much present in the region. While Mansky didn’t feel directly persecuted, one incident has been “tattooed” to his memory: He was with his friend, inside a ground-floor apartment, behind security bars. A group of local children walked past, spat at the duo and shouted an anti-Semitic slur.
When asked about whether Russia today is anti-Semitic he compares being Jewish in Russia as radiation sickness. “You don’t feel the direct impact of it immediately but you end up dying before your time,” Mansky said in a telephone interview.
In Putin’s Witnesses he says he looked for what he referred to as a Kristallnacht – a point of no return for Russia, where you could pinpoint the beginnings of the end for democracy. He believes that he identified the moment in Putin’s reversion to Soviet symbolism – particularly the decision to revive the Soviet Union’s national anthem, a move that even Yeltsin described as “reddish.”
What seems incredulous in this day and age is viewing Mansky actually debating the decision with Putin. “Why should we necessarily associate this music with the worst aspects of life during the Soviet period?” Putin asks the director.
Watching these conversations unfold give Putin’s Witnesses the same unnerving feel as looking at a photograph of New York with the Twin Towers in the background. The viewer hears Mansky’s wife, digesting news of the new Acting President and saying: “We’ll remember Yeltsin’s time as an epoch of happiness. We’ll think we had lived in Utopia.”
Although it would take a thick gauze of nostalgia to cast Yeltsin’s leadership in that light, the curtailment of press freedom and human rights alongside military expansion into Ukraine make her predictions for Putin’s Russia seem prophetic. Mansky said that he made the film to examine his responsibility – professionally and personally – for the fate of Russia.
“We always blame everyone other than ourselves, when addressing our personal faults and the fundamental problems of the government. Was it us that started the war with Ukraine? Was it us who was doping athletes in the Olympics? Was it us who shot down a Boeing flying over Ukraine?”
“It was us! It was us through our silent – and sometimes not silent – agreement,” Mansky said.
Some of Mansky’s complicity lied in his established role for Russian-State television, which gave him access to many high-profile politicians. During the turn of the century Mansky was commissioned to shoot a PR film for Putin, as well as biographical movies of Mikhail Gorbachev and Yeltsin, during the country’s transition.
Because of this privilege we see footage of the 2000 election results unravelling in Yeltsin’s household, as his family are nervously anticipating the result. These intimate recordings comprise some of the movie’s most illuminating material. Yeltsin discusses how he carefully selected his successor. “I picked [him] out from 20 candidates within four months.”
When the election results are declared, Yeltsin celebrates. “This is my win,” he says
Mansky compares being Jewish in Russia as radiation sickness. “You don’t feel the direct impact of it immediately but you end up dying before your time.”
Moments later, Mansky captures the former Russian President being snubbed by his protégé as he calls Putin to congratulate him. The President’s team promise to return the call but never do and in those few minutes of footage a pivotal power shift takes place.
As for Putin himself, the film shows an ever-so slightly softer version of the leader than the one audiences are accustomed to today. He is malleable to direction and in one scene he’s filmed being ordered around, politely, during a shoot. “Fling the jacket over your shoulder,” says a photographer. “Shut your eyes and relax for a minute and look at me kindly. As kindly as you can,” says another.
“He was like a man courting a lady that was the Russian public. His intentions – everyone of which he has fulfilled – were still there but he was trying to get a feel for what he could get away with,” Mansky explained.
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It is the scene of Putin’s campaign team following the win, which is particularly telling. Dmitry Medvedev, who kept Putin’s seat warm between presidencies, is weaving in and out of the frame – lapdog-like even back then. The former Russian Press Minister Mikhail Lesin, who died suspiciously in 2015, is also present. And through Mansky’s narration it’s explained that others in the room have fled Russia, joined opposition parties, died or have been demoted.
Mansky pays close attention to the voice of Boris Nemtsov, who was shot close to the Kremlin in 2015, as he’s being interviewed on television in the background.
On the phone the director said he wasn’t worried about experiencing a similar fate. “I only think about it when I’m asked.”
However, in an interview with The Times of London Mansky’s answer was more specific. “I am in good moral and physical health. I have no suicidal thoughts. So if something happens to me it will not be an accidental death.”
Putin’s Witnesses screens on October 9 at the Antenna Film Festival in Glebe. For screening times and tickets, go to http://antennafestival.org/
VITALY MANSKY MASTERCLASS AT MCA
Main photo: Putin (at the time, acting President of the Russian Federation, with Vera Gurevich, an ex-teacher of his, in 2000 (still from the film)
