Institute for War & Peace Reporting (IWPR)
Sept 23 2004
Last Days of the Georgian Dukhobors

Squeezed out by their neighbours in southern Georgia, the religious
sect is returning to the land of its forefathers.
By Mark Grigorian in Gorelovka, Georgia (Photographs by Ruben
Mangasarian) (CRS No. 254, 23-Sep-04)
A large loaf of white bread, which our hostess had just pulled out of
the old Russian stove, was lying on the table surrounded by cheese,
tomatoes and sour cream. Suddenly a bottle of `samogon’, strong
Russian homemade alcoholic brew, appeared from nowhere as if by
magic.
`Oh no, don’t pour me any,’ 75-year-old Aunt Niura protested in
embarrassment but took the glass and immediately pronounced a toast.
`To your health! If your health is strong, then everything else will
follow. But if not…’
She was interrupted by her neighbour Nastya, `I just wish that God
keeps at least a handful of people here. Because if everyone leaves,
what will become of all of this?’
`Let’s drink to our dear little corner, to our mountains…’
That little corner is the village of Gorelovka in the mountains of
southern Georgia, home to some of the last members of the Dukhobor
sect to remain in the country. Sadly, they may not last long. Almost
all have close relatives in Russia and almost all are planning to
emigrate.
Only fifteen years ago Dukhobors inhabited eight villages, but today
the community, which once boasted some 7,000 people, shrank to less
than 700.
Dukhobors (the Russian word means `spirit wrestlers’) are ethnic
Russians, representatives of a rare Christian Orthodox sect expelled
to the Caucasus in the mid-nineteenth century.
They do not recognise the church or priests, but believe that each
man’s soul is a temple. Dukhobors do not worship the cross or icons
and they reject the church sacraments. They believe that Jesus Christ
transmigrated into God’s chosen people – the Dukhobors. The life of
every Dukhobor should serve as an example for others because love and
joy, peacefulness and patience, faith, humility and abstinence, reign
in each believer.
In the late 19th century, having become acquainted with the ideas of
the great writer and pacifist Leo Tolstoy, the Dukhobors refused to
serve in the Russian Tsar’s army. And in 1895 they famously collected
together all their weaponry and set fire to it.
`The Dukhobors put all the weapons into one big pile and lit it up,’
said Tatyana Chuchmayeva, leader of the Dukhobor community in
Georgia. `When the government called in the Cossacks, they stood
around the fire holding each other’s hands and sang psalms and
peaceful songs. All the time the Cossacks were flogging them with
whips.’
Many of those who burned the weapons were punished and around 500
families were exiled to Siberia. However, Tolstoy managed, with the
help of English Quakers, to organise the resettlement of Dukhobors to
Canada where they were spared military service.
Many others stayed in Georgia and survived all the tribulations of
the 20th century.
However, life under independent Georgia has proved the biggest test.
Two censuses conducted in 1989 and 2002 show that of 340,000 Russians
that lived in Georgia in 1989 less than ten per cent – about 32,500
people – remained there thirteen years later. Other ethnic minorities
also left.
Fyodor Goncharov, chairman of the Gorelovka village council, said
that the first wave of emigration occurred in 1989-1991 when the
extreme nationalist Zviad Gamsakhurdia was leader of Georgia. About
half of the Dukhobor population left the region.
In the late 1980s, the Merab Kostava Foundation was set up in Tbilisi
with the stated aim of making Georgians the dominant ethnic group.
They focussed strong attention on the southern province of
Samtskhe-Javakheti, where over 90 per cent were ethnic-Armenians and
the rest, with few exceptions, were Russian Dukhobors.
The Merab Kostava Foundation bought about 200 of the Dukhobors’
houses and gave these to Georgians. Clothes and funds were provided
to the new arrivals.
However, the experiment failed. `They could not endure our living
conditions and ran away from here after one year,’ said Konstantin
Vardanian, a journalist from the local town of Ninotsminda. `During
the first winter they heated their houses with coal and firewood that
the foundation had left for them. Then, after they ran out of coal,
they lived in one room of the house and pulled up floors in the other
rooms and burnt them in stoves. When spring came they all left.’
Local Armenians were alarmed by the Merab Kostava project and one
result was that the Armenian Javakh Committee, founded to fight for
Armenian rights in Javakheti, also began to buy houses from Dukhobors
– just to keep them out of Georgian hands. `It was some sort of
competition, really,’ Vardanian said, with Armenians and Georgians
vying for the same houses in Dukhobor villages.
At first, Armenians enjoyed being neighbours to the Dukhobors.
`Akhalkalaki people always preferred to buy butter, cheese, curd
cheese and other dairy products from Dukhobors,’ remembers Karine
Khodikian, a well-known Armenian writer originally from the local
town of Akhalkalaki. `It was a sign of respect for them, their
cleanliness and tidiness.’
But after the collapse of the Soviet Union, Armenians got envious of
the Dukhobors and their apparently orderly, calm lives. `Armenians
saw that the Dukhobor community in Gorelovka was self-sustaining,
they said that Canadians Dukhobors helped it,’ Vardanian said.
Armenians from mountain villages, where living conditions were much
worse than in Gorelovka, began to move into the houses purchased by
the Javakhk Committee and to buy land. They were joined by immigrants
from Armenia who used to live in the city of Gumri and its
neighbouring villages – a region almost entirely demolished by the
1988 earthquake. Relations between the Dukhobors and these newcomers
was far worse than with their old neighbours.
Enterprising Armenians opened small shops and started producing sour
cream, butter and cheese, traditional Dukhobor products. They
purchase milk from the Dukhobors, but the latter are very unhappy
with the buying prices.
`Armenians buy milk in our village,’ said Goncharov. `Then they make
cheese out of it, take it to Tbilisi and sell it. They pay us only 30
tetri for a litre (about 15 cents), while we have to pay 70 or 80
tetri just for one litre of fuel.’
Dukhobor villager Sveta Gonachrova said that her neighbours were
frightened by the incoming Armenians, `You step outside and get
punched in the face.’
Vardanian believes that antipathy between the Dukhobors and Armenians
is not the only reason Dukhobors are leaving, but `it contributed’.
This new wave of emigration has found help from the Russian
authorities.
In December 1998, Russia’s then-prime minister Yevgeny Primakov
signed a decree on assistance to the Georgian Dukhobors and the
Russian parliament, the State Duma passed a special resolution on the
group. The International Organisation for Migration helped with the
resettlement, while Georgia’s emergencies ministry provided buses.
In January 1999, community leader Lyuba Goncharova led a large number
of her community on a journey whose final point of destination was
the Bryansk region of Russia. Many of those left behind are now
seeking help from the Russian embassy in Tbilisi to go and join them.
The remaining Dukhobors say they are worried by Georgia’s new
president, Mikheil Saakashvili, whom they see as a Georgian
nationalist. There are also rumours in the community – denied by
Georgian officials – that all non-Georgian schools will be closed.
`Saakashvili’s rise to power scares everyone,’ said Chuchmayeva.
`Everyone is panic-stricken. People see what is happening in (South)
Ossetia and feel scared,’ she added in a reference to Saakashvili’s
attempts to restore central authority to that breakaway region.
`Now they are talking about making all schools switch to the Georgian
language… And that scares people. They are terrified that main
subjects in schools will be taught in Georgian from 2006 and our
children will not be able to study.’
Georgia’s minister for refugees and migration, Eter Astemirova, told
IWPR that `the main reason they are leaving, as far as I know, is due
to problems with the local Armenian population. There is no basis to
their worries about the Georgian language or schools’.
Astemirova said the Georgian state was entirely neutral in the
affair. Dukhobors are not helped `to leave or to stay’, she said. `If
there is a problem, we will try to address it. … So far, I don’t
know, because we have no information about Dukhobors.’
The cultural attaché of the Russian embassy in Tbilisi, Vasily
Korchmar, said another reason for the Dukhobors’ desire to leave is
the difficult economic situation in Georgia and its tense
relationship with Russia.
Gonachrova agreed that tradition counted for nothing as this
community made up its mind. For young people in particular life is
better in Russia than in Gorelovka, `We are sorry to leave, but what
can one do? There are [proper] conditions for young people in Russia.
Discos and all sorts of amusement. We have nothing.’
Mark Grigorian is a producer with the Central Asian and Caucasus
Service of the BBC World Service in London.
From: Emil Lazarian | Ararat NewsPress

Institute for War & Peace Reporting (IWPR)
Sept 23 2004
Confusion Surrounds Beslan Band
Unanswered questions about the identity of the group who seized the
school in Beslan.
By Timur Aliev, Aslanbek Dadayev and Ruslan Zhadayev in Chechnya and
Ingushetia (CRS No. 254, 23-Sep-04)
Tagir Khachaburov lives alone in a poor whitewashed two-room house
with an overgrown front yard and ramshackle wooden gates in the
Ingush village of Galashki.
His quiet existence was shattered earlier this month by the
accusation that his 32-year-old son had been identified as probably
the most hated man in Russia. Ruslan Khachaburov, nicknamed Polkovnik
(or `Colonel’ in English) had been named as the leader of the
extremist group that seized the school in Beslan on September 1.
Tagir’s bloodshot, tear-filled eyes testify to what he has gone
through in the last three weeks. He explained to IWPR that he had not
seen his son for five years. He said Ruslan had not lived with him
since his marriage broke up when Ruslan was two and the child went to
live with his mother, an ethnic Chechen, first in the Stavropol
region of southern region, then in the Chechen village of Orekhovo.
`When he grew up Ruslan lived in the town of Oryol in Russia,’ Tagir
said. `He ran away from there after he killed two Armenians in
self-defence. After that he was on the run. He last came to see me in
1999 for a few hours. I haven’t seen him since then. When I heard
what happened in Beslan I could not believe that Ruslan could have
been there.’
`He wasn’t a terrorist,’ Tagir went on. `I still can’t believe he was
there. My son isn’t a terrorist. Our politics now is like 1937. They
can pin anything they like on a person to blacken his name.’
Khachaburov said that the Russian security services had taken all the
photographs of his two sons – his other son Bashir was a rebel
fighter and died several years ago – for their investigation into
Beslan. He said he had been constantly raided by the security
services ever since the June attack on the town of Nazran Ingushetia
by Chechen rebels, which resulted in more than 90 deaths and in which
his son’s name first came up.
Khachaburov’s neighbours suffered much more grievously. One of them,
named Beslan Arapkhanov, the father of seven children, lived on the
same street. According to research by the human rights organisation
Memorial, on the morning of July 21 a group of masked men burst into
his house and shot him dead. Then one of the gunmen pulled a
photograph from his jacket and was heard to say that `it’s not him’,
and the group left.
It seems that the group had intended to kill Ruslan Khachaburov and
had picked the wrong target.
Despite this tragedy, Musa Arapkhanov, a cousin of the dead man, told
IWPR that he had doubts that Ruslan Khachaburov had been guilty of
the charges against him and that he was an Islamic extremist or
Wahhabi.
`When he was here last year, he faithfully went to the mosque and did
the zikr [traditional Chechen prayer ritual], which the Wahhabis
don’t do,’ said Arapkhanov.
The North Ossetian authorities have issued a list of 13 names of the
group of around 30 hostage-takers who seized Beslan’s School No. 1 on
September 1. But even the identity of some of those named is not
entirely certain and some relatives are questioning the official
version of events.
Notorious Chechen warrior Shamil Basayev claimed responsibility for
the attack last week on the Islamist website Kavkaz Center, which has
since had its activity suspended.
Calling the attack `Nord-West’ in a reference to the Nord-Ost musical
which was playing at a packed Dubrovka theatre in Moscow, when it was
seized by militants in October 2002, Basayev wrote, `Thirty-three
mujahadin took part in Nord-West. Two of them were women. We prepared
four [women] but I sent two of them to Moscow on August 24. They then
boarded the two airplanes that blew up. In the group there were 12
Chechen men, two Chechen women, nine Ingush, three Russians, two
Arabs, two Ossetians, one Tartar, one Kabardinian and one Guran. The
Gurans are a people who live near Lake Baikal who are practically
Russified.’
Even before Basayev’s letter, the Russian security services had
identified several of the hostage-takers as being associated with
him.
The name of `Polkovnik’ came up from the televised account of the
only surviving hostage-taker Nur-Pasha Kulayev, alleged to have
worked for Basayev. Kulayev said, `We were collected in a wood by a
man who went by the name of Polkovnik and he said we had to seize a
school in Beslan. They told us the order came from Maskhadov and
Basayev. When we asked Polkovnik why we had to do that he replied:
because we had to unleash war across the whole of the Caucasus.’
Nur-Pasha Kulayev’s elder brother Khan-Pasha, who apparently died in
the school, was also said to have been a bodyguard of Basayev.
The parents of the two brothers live in the village of Novy Engeloi
in southeastern Chechnya. They told IWPR that the first they knew
about their sons’ apparent involvement in the Beslan tragedy was when
they saw their younger son on television news saying that he had
taken part in the school seizure and heard that their eldest had been
killed in the siege.
The parents said that Khan-Pasha had been wounded in shooting in the
village in 2001 and went to hospital. There he was suspected of being
a fighter and they did not see him for another three months. When he
came back he had his arm amputated because of gangrene and he was
psychologically disturbed.
The official version of how Kulayev was detained is somewhat
different. In August 2001, the Interfax news agency reported that he
had been seized in the village of Kurchaloi as one of three men in a
group loyal to the Saudi-born fighter Khattab.
The last time the parents saw their two sons was at the end of August
when both men were living in the Ingush village of Malgobek and their
wives had gone to visit relatives in Chechnya.
However, in a statement that, if true, casts doubt on the official
version of events, neighbours in Malgobek firmly told IWPR that the
younger of the two, Nur-Pasha, had been at home in Malgobek on
September 1, when the school siege started. The neighbours did not
want to be quoted by name.
To confuse things further Basayev said in his statement that he had
recruited both brothers to `stand on guard’.
`Everything that the man who swore by Allah that he wanted to live
[in other words Nur-Pasha Kulayev on Russian television] is not
important,’ Basayev said. `I brought the Kulayev brothers and two of
their fellow-villagers into the group at the last minute to make up
numbers at half past four on August 31 and sent them into the
operation at eight o’clock. I personally knew only Khan-Pasha
Kulayev, whose right arm was missing.’
Similar confusion surrounds the involvement of Iznaur Kodzoyev, an
Ingush believed to have been in the group. His fellow-villagers in
the Ingush settlement of Kantyshevo said he was an extreme political
and religious radical. The Ingush interior ministry has linked him to
the June attack on Ingushetia. However, Iznaur’s cousin Aslan
Kodzoyev said he saw him in Kantyshevo on September 2, the second day
of the school siege.
Finally the identity has still not been fully confirmed of the Ingush
man known as `Magas’. At first, he was believed to be a man named
Magomed Yevloyev, but now the official Russian version is that he was
in fact a former 30-year-old Ingush policeman named Ali Taziev.
According to the Ingush prosecutor’s office in 1998, Taziev was
guarding Olga Uspenskaya, the wife of Valery Fateyev, an adviser to
the Ingush president. Uspenskaya, Taziev and one other bodyguard were
snatched by gunmen and held hostage. Uspenskaya herself was freed in
2000, but not the two guards. The body of one of them was later found
and buried and Taziev was generally believed also to have died a
heroic death.
Now the authorities say they believe Taziev is in fact the very same
`Magas’, who allegedly led the raid on Nazran in June and then took
part in the school seizure in Beslan.
In the village of Nasyr-Kort near Nazran, Taziev’s mother Lida has
been sick for two weeks. `Three years ago we were already afraid he
was dead,’ she told IWPR weeping. `We held a wake for him. He can’t
be this Magas. If he was alive he would have come home.’
The work of establishing the true identities of all the
hostage-takers in Beslan has evidently only just begun.
Timur Aliev is IWPR’s Chechnya coordinator. Aslanbek Dadayev works
for Radio Liberty in Chechnya. Ruslan Zhadayev is deputy editor of
the Chechenskoe Obshchestvo newspaper.

St. Louis Today
Sept 23 2004
A HOBBY FOR HIS HONOR
By Norman Parish

Pounding the gavel is his job; making it is honored hobby
Andy Matoesian is a circuit judge and an accomplished wood carver who
is considered by at least one author to be one of the country’s best.
When Circuit Judge Andy Matoesian needs a gavel for his job, he
doesn’t have to order a new one. He simply makes it.
For more than two decades, Matoesian has made gavels for himself and
fellow Madison County judges, as well as thousands of other items
from wood, in his Edwardsville garage. He says he has made about
1,500 gavels and about 15,000 pens since the late 1960s.
Matoesian also occasionally makes furniture, bottle stoppers and
large crosses for his church – Holy Virgin Mary Armenian Church in
Swansea. His handiwork has been used by people from Illinois to
California, including a gavel in a 1993 movie, “Precious Victims.”
And James A. Jacobson, who has written about a dozen books on
woodworking, considers Matoesian as one of the best wood craftsmen in
the country.
“It is just a great hobby,” said Matoesian, 67. “I love it. I get up
at 4:30 a.m. and start working.”
Matoesian, a Granite City native, said he first learned about
woodworking as a student at Granite City High School during the
1950s. The son of a barber, Matoesian later concentrated his efforts
on barbering after graduating from Peoria Barber College in 1956.
He used his barbering skills while attending college – at Southern
Illinois University, Illinois State University and the Washington
University law school, from which he graduated in 1964. He worked for
a law firm headed by lawyer Rex Carr before being appointed a
magistrate (now associate) judge in 1965. In 1978, Matoesian was
appointed a county circuit judge. He handles civil cases.
Matoesian returned to his love of woodworking a couple of years after
he became a judge in 1965. He said he wanted a hobby in which he
could remain close to a daughter, Georgea, who suffered from
neurological problems. She died in 2002 of complications of
pneumonia.
Matoesian’s wife, Julie, works as assistant state’s attorney in child
support enforcement. Another daughter, Jane, is a lawyer in St.
Louis.
Matoesian said he now uses the woodworking to help relieve stress. He
also wants to improve.
“It is a constructive use of leisure time,” he said.
Matoesian regularly works in his garage or a large workshop room he
has assembled in his house. He admits he has more than $20,000 worth
of equipment. He usually uses walnut or cherry wood for his
creations.
Sometimes his hobby can be a little risky – such as the time he cut
his right index finger. It required about 20 stitches to close.
“You can never completely master woodworking,” Matoesian said.
But Jacobson, the woodworking author, believes Matoesian is an
expert. In fact, Jacobson said he has featured Matoesian in eight of
his books.
“It is a hobby to (Matoesian),- but he has developed it into a fine
art,” said Jacobson, a retired Southern Illinois University
Edwardsville criminal justice professor who now lives in Grand
Marais, Minn. “In my opinion, he is one of the best.”
Chief Circuit Judge Edward C. Ferguson agrees.
“I think (his gavels) are great,” said Ferguson, who adds that
Matoesian makes a two-foot-long, five-pound gavel for chief judges
when they leave their posts. “They are wonderfully crafted. It is a
wonderful skill. I wish I had it.”

ArmenPress
Sept 23 2004
DEFENSE MINISTRY DENIES PRESS REPORTS ABOUT AZERI SHOOTING ON
ARMENIAN BUS
YEREVAN, SEPTEMBER 23, ARMENPRESS: A defense ministry spokesman
denied today reports of several local dailies that a passenger bus
came under fire when traveling between Kirants and Voskepar villages
in Tavush province bordering with Azerbaijan. The dailies claimed one
passenger, a middle-aged woman, was wounded on her back.
The spokesman, Seyran Shahsuvarian, said the alleged shooting was
not confirmed either by the commander of an Armenian military unit,
guarding the border with Azerbaijan.

ArmenPress
Sept 23 2004
GRECO MONITORING COMMISSION TO VISIT ARMENIA NEXT YEAR
YEREVAN, SEPTEMBER 23, ARMENPRESS: Bagrat Yesayan, a presidential
advisor on anti-corruption issues, said September 22 that a Council
of Europe Group of States against Corruption (GRECO) monitoring
commission is coming to Armenia next January of February to assess
the country’s progress in anti-corruption struggle.
Yesayan said Armenia has been monitored by the commission since
its enrollment and has prepared answers to 128 questions, including
corruption risk assessment in different government bodies. He said
GRECO will discuss next year the monitoring commission’s report on
Armenia. Armenia joined GRECO last January becoming its 37-th member.
Speaking at a special discussion on Armenia’s progress in
anti-graft process Bagratyan said the government-designed plan of
actions to crackdown on corruption has already produced some positive
results. He singled out a law on organization and conduction of
financial inspections that has established in a clear way the list of
government organizations which have the right to do so. He said 23
inspections conducted by the finance ministry in the first six months
of this year revealed 174 million dram worth abuses part of which was
restored.
According to Bagratian, though the relevant Armenian legislation
was brought in conformity with European standards its application
still faces some problems.

ArmenPress
Sept 23 2004
AGRIBUSINESS TEACHING CENTER ATTRACTS FOREIGN STUDENTS
YEREVAN, SEPTEMBER 23, ARMENPRESS: An Agricultural
Academy-affiliated Agribusiness teaching center, run with the
financial and technical assistance of the US Department of
Agriculture Yerevan office has started teaching two more subjects,
namely International Business Law and E-Trade.
The course that lasts three years and is conducted in English has
attracted this year 60 students. Upon graduation they will be awarded
diplomas of Texas University (USA) and the Armenian Agricultural
Academy.
This year 11 students from Agricultural Universities of Tbilisi
and Batumi, Georgia, have been enrolled and next month another 100
students from India will be enrolled.

Assa-Irada, Azerbaijan
Sept 23 2004
Court of Appeals acquits GLO members

On Wednesday the Court of Appeals acquitted six members of the
Garabagh Liberation Organization (GLO), including its chairman Akif
Naghi. The six activists, sentenced to 3-5 years in prison late in
August, were released from arrest in the courtroom.
However, the court found the defendants guilty and issued a two-year
suspended sentence to chairman Naghi and a one-year suspended term to
the other five GLO members. The defendants pled not guilty and said
they intend to struggle for a complete acquittal. The six GLO members
were accused of blocking traffic on the Tbilisi Avenue, breaking into
the hotel and disrupting a NATO conference underway and inflicting
damage to the hotel estimated at 1.7 million manats ($340) while
protesting against the Armenian officers’ planned participation in
NATO exercises in Baku.
The defendants rejected the charges saying that they were simply
trying to protest the Armenian officers’ planned arrival in
Azerbaijan in front of the hotel.
The previous sentence of the GLO members was condemned by Azerbaijani
public, representatives of political parties and parliament members.
President Ilham Aliyev also regarded the sentence as too harsh.*

Assa-Irada, Azerbaijan
Sept 23 2004
S Caucasus PA not to be set up unless Upper Garabagh conflict is
settled, says Vice Speaker

Baku, September 22, AssA-Irada
Vice Speaker of the Milli Majlis (parliament) Ziyafat Asgarov
received Denis Sammit, executive director of the London Information
Network on State Building and Conflicts, on Wednesday.
Asgarov said that he has been informed about the proposal made by the
Network to establish the Parliamentary Assembly of South Caucasus
countries.
Noting that this is impossible unless the Upper Garabagh conflict is
settled, the Vice Speaker directly blamed the leadership of Armenia
for failure to solve the conflict. `How can we set up a Parliamentary
Assembly together with a terrorist state?’, underscored Asgarov,
stating that no relations will be established between Azerbaijan and
Armenia until the conflict is settled. Sammit, in turn, said that
there is a very complicated situation in South Caucasus due to
ongoing conflicts. Stating that he understands well international
organizations’ failure to settle the conflict, Sammit advised the
governments of the two conflicting sides to make joint efforts with
international organizations and NGOs in this respect.*

Assa-Irada, Azerbaijan
Sept 23 2004
Armenian FM criticizes PACE report on Upper Garabagh

Armenian Foreign Minister Vardan Oskanian said he was dissatisfied
with the report presented by the former rapporteur of the Parliament
Assembly of the Council of Europe (PACE) on Upper Garabagh, head of
the British delegation in the PACE, Terry Davis.
`It is unacceptable for Armenia’, Oskanian said.
The Armenian minister said he has no hopes for the new rapporteur,
Englishman David Atkinson, either. Oskanian said he was aware of
Great Britain’s position on the territorial integrity issue but added
that `the Armenian side is already studying the matter’.
Terry Davis was appointed as rapporteur on Upper Garabagh at the PACE
summer session in 2002, and as the Council of Europe Secretary
General in June 2004.
The PACE Political Committee heard the report on Upper Garabagh
presented by Davis in Paris on September 14, 2004. On the same day,
British parliament member David Atkinson was appointed as the new
rapporteur on Upper Garabagh. Atkinson has already expressed his
intention to meet with the conflicting parties. The date for his
arrival in the South Caucasus region has not been reported yet.*

The Times (London)
September 23, 2004, Thursday
A warmly surreal love story set in a post-Soviet village pleases
Wendy Ide
by Wendy Ide
VODKA LEMON. PG, 89 mins ***
SAVE THE GREEN PLANET. 18, 116 mins **
SWITCHBLADE ROMANCE. 18, 85 mins **
RED LIGHTS. 15, 105 mins ***
THE ISTER. N/C, 190 mins *
There is a tendency for films such as the Kurdish Armenian Vodka
Lemon to be dismissed as little more than a glorified ethnographic
show-and-tell, a charming novelty in elk-fur peasant garb. The Story
of the Weeping Camel from Mongolia suffered this fate at the hands of
some British critics earlier this year. The problem is that the
attitude directed towards films from small, poor, less newsworthy
countries can be rather patronising.
In fact, films from countries without a developed film-making
infrastructure can be far more interesting than those with a weighty
cinema history that dictates how and how not to make films.
Vodka Lemon merrily makes its own narrative rules, layering
colourfully surreal vignettes (there’s a definite flavour of Emir
Kusterica’s anarchic Gypsy communities) and bittersweet Armenian
in-jokes with a gentle, rather lovely autumn romance between a
widowed former army officer and the woman he glimpses each day at the
frost-bound cemetery.
The story is set in a Kurdish mountain village that is still
suffering the transition from Soviet occupation to free market. Of
course, a free market works only if you have money to buy things, and
the villagers are forced to barter their remaining sticks of
furniture and hope for an envelope filled with cash from the one
village son who made it to the West. It’s not nearly as bleak as it
sounds – there’s a specific kind of humour that thrives in the face
of extreme privation and Vodka Lemon has it in spades.
Another week, another piece of graphic Korean nastiness. At the heart
of Save the Green Planet (pictured above) is an interesting premise
-a businessman is kidnapped by a dangerous young criminal, but
instead of a ransom, the kidnapper wants an admission that the
businessman is in fact an alien from Andromeda, and that a visit from
an extraterrestrial prince is imminent.
It’s shot with a macabre visual elan and snappily edited, but the
extended torture sequences try the endurance and sit uncomfortably
with the rather juvenile tone of the film. Another problem is that
the writer-director, Jang Jun Hwan, doesn’t seem to know how to end
his film. It drags on for a good 30 minutes longer than it needs to,
bolstered by a montage of humanity’s worst atrocities -somewhat
disingenuous in a film that presents torture as entertainment.
More gore, this time from France, in the strangely titled Switchblade
Romance.
This is an old-school horror flick, in the sense that the gouging and
slashing and bludgeoning with barbed-wire wrapped cudgels is not
mitigated with humour, postmodern self-awareness or pop-cultural
references.
Die-hard horror aficionados will probably consider this a return to a
purist slasher-movie ethos. More sensitive souls will have a hard
time coping with its unremitting grisliness. There’s a strong central
performance, however, from the rising star Cecile De France, last
seen in the lamentable Around the World in Eighty Days. If only she
had wielded her barbed-wire cudgel where it was really needed.
Cedric Kahn’s latest film, Red Lights, is adapted from a novel that
Georges Simenon wrote in the 1950s. It was thematically ahead of its
time -Kahn (see interview, page 6) has moved this exploration of male
status anxiety to the present day and it works well.
An excellent performance from Jean-Pierre Darroussin is the driving
force in what could be described as a psychological drama, a road
movie and a thriller. He plays a rather pathetic little man whose ego
won’t let him accept the fact that he is an unremarkable accountant
while his wife (an icily indifferent Carole Bouquet) is a high-flying
lawyer.
This anger festers during a long, night-time car journey and he
sneaks illicit drinks along the way as small acts of rebellion. After
a confrontation, she decides to proceed alone and the night becomes a
darker and more dangerous place for both of them.
It’s hard to imagine a more specialist-interest film than The Ister,
a three hour documentary that riffs on a series of lectures delivered
by the philosopher Heidegger in 1942. And I’m afraid I lost interest
in this terminally dull film pretty quickly.
For this to succeed, it would need to be both visually striking and
accessible.
The Ister fails on both counts.