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The Altering Landscapes: Mediation of Holocaust Memories through Art

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An event as horrific in its impact and magnitude as the Holocaust, called for proper documentation in the years that followed it. The most valued documentation developed in the form of literary responses that majorly comprised of the first-hand accounts and narratives of the Holocaust survivors. These were published in the weekly newspapers that circulated in the displaced persons’ camps. These not only served as a means to vent out their emotions but also as a way of re-connecting to their kin if they had survived. During the initial years after the catastrophe, the Holocaust historians, as well as survivors, have remained divided in their opinion with regard to the literary response to the Holocaust and consequently the genre of Holocaust literature. Moreover, there also existed the ethical dilemma of whether or not an event such as the Holocaust should be represented in any form or genre.

In the Encyclopedia of Holocaust Literature published in 2002, the editors David Patterson, Alan L. Berger, and Sarita Cargas explore the literature that developed in response to the Holocaust. The fact that the seemingly contradicted term ‘Holocaust literature’ exists is because the “soul is there” (xiii). They state that the Holocaust literature holds a unique and distinguished place as it transcends the event of the death into a return to life, and in the process, the readers become a witness. They conclude,

The literary response to the Holocaust is a human being’s endeavor to restore to life a relationship to humanity that harbors the affirmation of life. It entails a movement of memory—for memory is its defining feature— by which a soul undertakes a movement of return (xiv).

In a more recent work, Literature of The Holocaust (2004) edited by Harold Bloom, the Holocaust historian, Alvin Rosenfeld, in his chapter, ‘The Problematics of Holocaust Literature’, acknowledging the significance of Holocaust literature discusses the ethical problematics of the unresolved query about the tension between ‘claims of silence’ and ‘claims of word’ (41). He approaches this question through the writings of Elie Wiesel and Primo Levi and expresses that although the writers mentioned the brutalities and horrors of the concentration camps, there existed a latent struggle to express the emotions clearly. He thus states that the Holocaust literature transcends beyond the scope of being classified as ‘topical literature’ (21), as it demands a certain amount of sensibility and responsibility on the reader’s part. Rosenfeld further opines that the Holocaust literature is a ‘chronicle of the human spirit’s most turbulent strivings with an immense historical and metaphysical weight’ (22). He also highlights the role of the reader, as it is only through the reader’s imagination and understanding of the text that inexplicable and unwritten horrors are rendered intelligible. The fact that Holocaust literature apart from the Jewish languages (Yiddish and Hebrew) is written in every European language, classifies it as an ‘international literature’ (25). In the words of David Patterson, Alan L. Berger, and Sarita Cargas,

Holocaust literature is a testimony to the absolute dearness of every human being. It teems with a sense of urgency which disturbs our comfort and complacency to put to us the question put to the first human being: Where are you? Thus it transforms death into life by transforming its reader into a witness (Encyclopedia of Holocaust Literature, xiv).

Artistic Representations of the Holocaust

A creative domain through which Holocaust memories can be mediated is visual art. The artists depicting the Holocaust in their paintings explore the maxim of pictures speaking a thousand words. One of the earliest artworks is by Morris Kestelman entitled Lama Sabachthani (Oh God, why have you forsaken me?) which depicts a group of Jewish people mourning over a pile of unburied corpses. The artist Edgar Ainsworth visited the Bergen Belsen concentration camp after liberation and recorded the scene in his drawing, Belsen: April 1945 in which he sketched various aspects of the camp. The best-known Holocaust artwork is Charlotte Salomon’s play Life? Or Theater? composed of seven hundred sixty-nine paintings. The artworks form a major part of exhibitions in the Holocaust museums particularly the Yad Vashem, Jerusalem. The Holocaust is also depicted in the artworks produced by artists born after 1945. The most well known example is of post Holocaust artwork is by Anselm Kiefer. His painting Margarethe (1981) is inspired by Paul Celan’s “Todesfuge” and Goethe’s Faust and depicts the golden hair of Margarete in the form yellow straws. Another painting Sternenfall (Falling Stars) created in 1998 depicts a sky with celestial bodies that are numbered, alluding to the tattooed numbers, both of which are alphanumeric. The Auschwitz Album published in 1981 and Auschwitz: A History in Photographs published in 1993 remain the best-known photographic record books of the largest death camp of Auschwitz.

More recent works include artworks by Morris Kagan, a second-generation survivor who shares his father’s artwork on social media. His father, Henry Kagan was a woodcarver, a skill that helped him survive the concentration camps as he used to carve sculptors on the order of camp commanders. Caroline Slifkin, an artist as well as a Holocaust educator specialises in teaching about the Holocaust through Holocaust art. She has created a Holocaust Arts Project called “Fragments of Family” in 2016. The project is included in the curriculum of various schools in order to develop critical thinking and visual literacy. In her sessions, Caroline invites the students to discuss historical artwork and to create their own works in response. Students view the art as a form of documentation, witness, spiritual resistance, and as evidence from the victim’s perspective. Through the use of visual images, students are able to develop visual literacy to add to their skills of critical thinking in order to understand, recognize and evaluate arts as a means of expression. The students are thus able to investigate human behaviour, and come to appreciate that silence and indifference to suffering of others however unintentional can lead to events that allow for legalized discrimination, prejudice, hatred, and ultimately mass murder. Caroline believes that learning about the Holocaust can evoke powerful emotions and using the creative arts can help students to express their thoughts, ideas, and responses in an appropriate and creative way.

Image Courtesy: Caroline Slifkin

 

Image Courtesy: Caroline Slifkin

Daniela Mansur, the creative art director at Tributart and the author of Art Therapy Journal: Holocaust Without Words through a chronological artwork narrates a wordless story of the Holocaust.

Image Courtesy: Daniela Mansur
Image Courtesy: Daniela Mansur

Daniela offers a blended approach as she commemorates she not only pays tribute to the Holocaust victims and survivors through her art but also believes in telling the story of the Holocaust through her art in order to teach the future generations.

Conclusion

The artistic works of the Holocaust portray the intricate human reactions to exploitation, and to the annihilation of one’s life and culture. The artistic works created by survivors or victims as well as third-party witnesses depict a kaleidoscope of themes that are self-reflective and thus deepen our understanding of the Holocaust. The two forms that have dominated the literary corpus of the Holocaust literature are the memoirs and diaries written by survivors that are believed to be the most authentic accounts of the Holocaust experience. Apart from these, over the years other forms such as poetry, theatre, music, dance and storytelling have emerged. The memoirs and diaries together provided first hand accounts of the horrors of the catastrophe, thereby informing the readers what living during the Holocaust was. There is also a proliferation of Holocaust fiction, which propels the readers to imaginatively enter the realms of experiences of the narrator. The artistic works not only serve as a means of commemorating the Holocaust but are also a powerful medium for educators to teach about the Holocaust.

Death by Douze Points

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by Zenia Duell

Conchita causes controversy during Eurovision 2014 (Image credit: Getty Images)

For the first time since its conception in 1956, Eurovision has been cancelled. 2020 will not be bringing any awkward accented presenters, chicken dances, or cutting commentary from Graham Norton. Perhaps now is the best time to reflect on everything that Eurovision has graced our screens with in the last 64 years. In one respect, Eurovision is a wonderful expression of European solidarity, using the power of creativity as a unifying force for reconciliation. This musical hug extends far beyond the borders of the EU - of the 41 countries participating in Eurovision, only twenty-four are in the EU.[1]

Eurovision was originally a telecommunications initiative, rather than a political one. It was the brainchild of the European Broadcasting Union (EBU), which represents countries located within the European Broadcasting Area (EBA) – an area extending from Greenwich to the northern part of Saudi Arabia, spanning the entire Mediterranean basin. Membership to the EBU makes countries eligible for participation in Eurovision, thus Israel, Turkey and even Morocco have competed. Perhaps, then, another way to look at Eurovision is to view it as a statement of ‘Western values’ such as pluralism, diversity, and progressive union. This is certainly reflected in Eurovision’s slogans of the last few years: ‘celebrate diversity’, ‘building bridges’, ‘we are one’. This would explain the participation of countries like Israel and Turkey: Israel has been described as a ‘Western stronghold’[2] in the Middle East due to its firm alliance with the US, while Turkey has only recently stopped knocking at the EU’s door. In 2015, Australia was invited to participate – despite most definitely being outside the EBA, it was deemed to share those common ‘Western’ values, since its colonised history gave it more in common with the United Kingdom than with its geographical neighbours.

But as Eurovision continues to expand its horizons, it seems to be experiencing a bad case of mission creep and the musical celebration has started to become hijacked by political agendas. This is reflected in the financial clout of the so-called ‘Big Five’ (France, Germany, Italy, Spain and the United Kingdom) who, because of the amount of money they contribute to the competition, are guaranteed a place in the contest’s final regardless of the quality of their entries. Perhaps not coincidentally, these countries are also the five largest EU budget contributors of the past decade. Once again, art reflects politics: the alleged ‘diversity’ and ‘unity’ so heavily promoted in Eurovision’s slogans appear to be just a veneer, lacquering over the reality of European financial inequality. Turkey objected to the ‘Big Five’ rule so strongly that they withdrew from the competition completely, and set up their own rival song contest: Turkvisyon. Although it only ran for three years, this alternative contest coincided with Turkey’s decision to shelve its effort to join the EU. Both these actions were a clear manifestation of Turkey’s new foreign policy, as Turkey turns its head from the West to fix its gaze on the East.[3]

The ongoing tension between Europe and Russia has also found a platform on Eurovision. When the cross-dressing Austrian singer Conchita Wurst won Eurovision in 2014 with her seismic ballad ‘Rise Like a Phoenix’, Russian officials proposed an alternative ‘straight’ Eurovision (though this never came to fruition). In 2016, Russia expressed further outrage when Ukraine won with their entry ‘1944’, which commemorated the deportation of the Crimean Tartars during the titular year, and doubled as a thinly veiled critique of Russia’s annexation of Crimea.

And then there’s the fraught political voting. This incredible infographic illustrates how each of the Eurovision voting ‘blocs’, roughly organised geographically into Northern, Eastern, Southern and Iberian, exchange votes. Only four countries have ‘broken rank’ and have, on average, awarded the most votes to another country outside their voting bloc. One study notes that these blocs may have formed due to similar cultural traits that result in homogenous music tastes[4] – although another study points out that loyal bloc voting also correlates to countries with less impartial political institutions.[5] Countries with impartial governments tend to vote more meritocratically. The infographic also demonstrates that eight countries share ‘special relationships’ – consistently awarding each other the most points in Eurovision. Notably, Cyprus regularly awards their douze points to Greece, and Greece responds in kind. Enosis, the desired political union of Greece and Cyprus so famously (and destructively) advocated by Bishop Makarios III may still be a political pipe dream, but it is a Eurovision reality.

In 2008, MP Sir David Amess tabled a motion in the Houses of Parliament for Britain to leave Eurovision on the basis that it was ‘more about politics than about talent’. However, I for one would much prefer political wars to be waged by sequinned singers than with fraught rhetoric, political fragmentation and economic disengagement. The latent political subtext of Eurovision can be seen as a healthy pressure valve, a cathartic performance which relieves global political tensions and should therefore be embraced. As the Chinese artist Ai Weiwei once said, ‘everything is art; everything is politics’. This, to me, is why Eurovision is everything.

[1] Eurovision. “Countries”. Accessed 17th March 2020. https://eurovision.tv/countries

UK Government. “EU-EEA”. Accessed 17th March 2020. https://www.gov.uk/eu-eea

[2] Russell, “Memorandum From the Secretary of State’s Special Assistant (Russell) to the Secretary of State”, in Glennon, John P. (ed). Foreign Relations of the United States: Diplomatic Papers. (1955 – 1957, Vol XVI), pp. 136-138.

[3] Ersen, Emre and Seckin Kostem. “Introduction: Understanding the dynamics of Turkey’s pivot to Eurasia”, in Turkey’s Pivot to Eurasia: Geopolitics and Foreign Policy in a Changing World Order, ed. Emre Ersen and Seckin Kostem, (Routledge 2019), pp. 2-4.

[4] Stockemer, Daniel, Andre Blais, Filip Kostelka and Chris Chhim. “Voting in the Eurovision Song Contest”, Politics, (2018), Vol. 38 (4), p. 432.

[5] Charron, Nicholas. “Impartiality, friendship-networks and voting behaviour: Evidence from voting patterns in the Eurovision Song Contest”, Social Networks 35 (2013), p. 495.

Zenia is a documentary producer and part-time MA student in Strategic Communications. Outside of the office or the library, Zenia enjoys reading about ancient history, doing burpees and trying out new recipes.

Canvassing Conflict: Italian Futurism & Artistic Attitudes Toward War Avant Guerre

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By Sofia Lesmes

20 November 2018

Futurist painters Luigi Russolo, Carlo Carrà, Filippo Tommaso Marinetti, Umberto Boccioni and Gino Severini saw war as a chance for societal progress. This view is reflected in their artwork prior to the First World War.

In 1909, Filippo Marinetti published a scathing manifesto on the front page of France’s Le Figaro. The manifesto stated the vision of the newly created Futurist movement, which declared that the artists would ‘glorify war.’[1] This attitude towards conflict was only one of the Futurists’ numerous beliefs, many of which were politically radical and aggressively nationalistic. The Futurists admired how the rapid development of technology was changing the daily lives of people across Europe. Therefore, the members, which included Marinetti, Umberto Boccioni, Giacomo Balla, Carlo Carrà, and Gino Severini, would use artistic mediums to frame conflict through new technology and its grandeur. Although war was already an established institution in European societies, the ‘modern experience’ meant encompassing the trends of industrialisation and mechanisation into the cultural understanding of state violence. The movement welcomed developments in military capabilities that had come about in the nineteenth century such as lighter fighter planes, advanced chemical weapons, and the Maxim gun. The artsits hailed these developments as a catalyst for national excellence on the battlefield and, therefore, on the international stage. The Futurist aesthetic, then, served as an outlet for this perception of war . Therefore, it is useful to analyse this artistic movement to understand certain cultural attitudes towards war during the avant guerre period.

Europe and the ‘long nineteenth century’

Europe had not seen a pan-continental conflict since 1815. During this time, there was a changing perception that large-scale wars were a thing of the past and that shorter, more efficient wars were the new norm.[2] This, combined with the developments of the Second Industrial Revolution, fostered an almost welcoming attitude towards the institution of war after ‘the long nineteenth century.’[3] When war was declared in 1914, its reception was to a large extent positive. As Rafael Scheck writes, ‘although many people in Germany had felt apprehensive about war during the July crisis, once war had come, almost everybody accepted it and nobody looked back.’ In Britain, ‘the people’s enthusiasm culminated outside Buckingham Palace when it became known that war had been declared … The news was received with tremendous cheering.’

Futurism & The Idea of War

Futurism wanted to explore the ability to synthesize objects in a state of motion and of rest. Artists sought to express this synthesis through paintings, among other mediums, and combined art with advanced technology.[4] In Boccioni’s Materia (1912), although a woman figure (alluding to the Madonna) is the central focus of the painting, everything about her is imbibed with elements of steel and machinery. This represents the goal of the Futurists, which was to bring Italian society into the future, or more importantly, out of the past. Subsequently, one of Futurism’s central tenets was the importance of technology and movement in society. Futurists believed that the ‘modern experience’ would emulate the machine; it would be swift, orderly, and methodical. By rejecting history and tradition (an attitude called anti-passatista), Futurists praised the rapid development of infrastructure, cities, and weapons. They looked to the movement and energy of new technology to drive people into an amplified vision of the future. As the Manifesto of the Futurist Painters in 1911 declared, ‘living art draws its life from the surrounding environment.’ Therefore, if the surrounding environment was a European diplomatic stalemate, then technology combined with a ‘brisk and merry’ war was good for European society.[5]

Futurism & the Aesthetic of War

Futurist works sought to embody the modern experience as advancement, and war as a tool used to propel human progress. The artists believed that war was cultural progress, and they embraced the new weapons and technology that facilitated it. In The City Rises (1911), Boccioni represents a city-setting as full of motion and frantic. It largely resembles a battle painting, with chaotic motions and distraught scenarios. The figures in the painting, while supposedly building parts of a city, are swept across the canvas in a collective motion of struggle. Boccioni’s depiction of a war-like state emphasizes how the ‘modern’ society would advance through conflict and turmoil. Showing movement meant showing progress, and this progress would eventually lead to an ideal state of society underpinned by the machine.

Gino Severini’s 1915 painting Armoured Train in Action is a prime example of how war influenced Futurists’ art.

The Futurist aesthetic reached a climax before World War I.[6] Their works, which were heavily influenced by Cubism and Post-Impressionism, demonstrated a passion for the technology of warfare. Weapons and soldiers were depicted as parts of an efficiently running machine, while conflict was painted as fluid movement and energy. For example, works such as Funeral of the Anarchist Galli (1911) and Armoured Train in Action (1915) show the Futurists’ admiration for the sleek aesthetic of war, violence, and youth. The artists attempt to depict the commotion of conflict in a harmonious composition, and objects are the central lines of focus instead of people. According to the Italian-born academic Arundel del Re, ‘Marinetti, forgetting the real nature of war, had raised it to a romantic ideal.’[7] This depiction of conflict not only glorified the possibilities created by new technology, it also reaffirmed the idea that violence and conflict were good for society. The Futurists’ aesthetic reflected the idea that the new type of war was as quick and agile as its weaponry. However, this ideal lost popularity after the first World War, and the Futurist movement was not an exception.

Futurism & the end of the ‘Great War’

At the beginning of the twentieth century, cultural perceptions of war had yet to adapt to the new realities of warfare. As John Mueller writes, ‘before 1914, the institution of war still carried with it much of the glamour and the sense of inevitability it had acquired over the millennia’.[8] But what would happen after 1914, when the weapons systems were actually used on the battlefield? The first World War severely changed Western cultural perceptions of war. The introduction of new weapons including fighter planes, the Maxim gun, and chemical weapons onto the battlefield resulted in mass casualties during the war. This certainly had a cultural impact on art and, therefore, societal behaviour towards state-sponsored violence. By 1925, the majority of the leading artists had rejected the movement.While figures such as Boccioni died on the front, others shifted to different art styles. Carrà, for example, dedicated the rest of his career to painting neo-Renaissance figures in Paris. This indicates a complete turn towards what he had so vehemently opposed the decade before. The cultural shift shows how Futurists’ perceptions changed when they were faced with the reality of war. Leading figures of the movement had witnessed the potency of new machinery and advanced weapons and began to move away from their previous beliefs. Even if modern society was driven by the machine, it was also subject to it.

Although the Futurists were ambivalent and radical in their political beliefs, their artistic objectives were much more cohesive. Futurism wanted to depict the collective urban experience as they saw it: characterised by speed and agility. Conflict played into this through its ‘cathartic effect’ on society, where violence and machines were considered signs of development. The Futurists’ admiration of conflict was an example of cultural attitudes towards war in the early twentieth century, when new technology idealised the future of warfare. It exemplifies one societal reception to modern weaponry that welcomed war in its new form: a quicker and sleeker one. To study art in this context is to examine an admiration for the established institution of war and its changing characteristics.

Sofia Lesmes is a final year BA student reading History & International Relations. She is also a BA representative for Strife. She has worked as an intern at her local U.S. House District office, in addition to having extensive experience in the private sector. She is a Colombian and U.S. dual citizen. Her academic interests include analysing the U.S. and UK’s ‘special relationship’ from a historical perspective, coercive diplomacy, and ethnic conflict in the former Yugoslavia. You can follow her on twitter @slesmes98.

[1] Filippo Tommaso Marinetti, ‘Le Futurisme’, Le Figaro, February 20, 1909

[2] John Mueller, “Changing Attitudes towards War: The Impact of the First World War.” British Journal of Political Science 21, no. 1 (1991): 15.

[3] Eric Hobsbawm, 1962

[4] Hal Foster et al, Art Since 1900: Modernism, Antimodernism, Postmodernism. (London: Thames & Hudson, 2004), 90.

[5] Richard Ned Lebow, Between Peace and War (Baltimore Md: Johns Hopkins university

Press, 1981) p. 251 quoted in Mueller, “Changing Attitudes towards War”, 15

[6] Foster et al., Art Since 1900, 95

[7] Arundel del Re, Poetry and Drama II, 1913, 403 quoted in Marjorie Perloff, The Futurist Movement: Avant Garde, Avant Guerre, and the Language of Rupture. (London, University of Chicago Press, 1986), 36.

[8] Mueller,“Changing Attitudes towards War”, 11

Image 1 source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Futurism#/media/File:Russolo,_Carr%C3%A0,_Marinetti,_Boccioni_and_Severini_in_front_of_Le_Figaro,_Paris,_9_February_1912.jpg

Image 2 source: https://www.wikiart.org/en/gino-severini/armored-train-in-action-1915

Art Review: “Red Star Over Russia: A Revolution in Visual Culture 1905-55” (Tate Modern, 8 November – 18 February)

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By Natalia de Orellana

 

 

Images are repositories of meaning. They are messengers of political ideals, social hopes and human values. Past images come to be read as documents embedded with historical significance, inexorably attesting to the rift between ideology and reality. When graphic designer David King (1943-2016) began to work on the book Red Star Over Russia, he was in fact enterprising a history of the Soviet Union that fused reality and ideology together. He assembled Russian and Soviet material worldwide, reuniting propaganda material, satirical representations and photographic documentation. Seen together, this material offers a complex, turbulent, persistently ambiguous vision of the Soviet Union.

Tate Modern’s Red Star Over Russia: A Revolution in Visual Culture 1905-55 draws on works from King’s archive to explore the tempestuous years between the October Revolution and Stalin’s death through small-scale objects and ephemera.

Photographs of Agitprop trains[1] from shortly after the Revolution mark the starting point of the journey. Multilingual posters cover the walls, furiously yelling at the viewer the slogans that once called the inhabitants of the vastest of territories to action: “Woman! Take Part in the Election of the Soviets”, ”Send Your Son to the Red Army, the Best and Foremost”. Slogans fused with images of the masses, spliced with the overarching red tones that dominate the majority unveil the politically oriented aesthetics of the Soviet avant-garde.

This was a militant aesthetic enterprise. Over the fifty-year period, visual production kept pace with socio-political changes, adopting a myriad of visual strategies allowing information to be mass-reproduced, easily dispatched, and ideally transmitting a message that would remain engrained in people’s minds. Among the most well know examples El Lissitzky’s Beat the Whites with the Red Wedge (1920) unveils Suprematist principles where the directness of geometrical forms and slogan are united into an organic unity, resulting in a work of art made for the masses at the service of the Soviets. By contrast Stepan Karpov’s Friendship of the People (Soviet Republic) (1923-4) offers a more academic approach depicting the hopes to unite the different ethnic, religious, and linguistic groups under the same Soviet flag.

Leaflets, magazines, books -to name but a few- projected Russia’s achievements. Varvara Stepanova and Aleksandr Rodchenko’s LEF, no.2 (1923) illustrate the use of productivist rigour advertising a new era of industrialisation that rejected bourgeois aesthetics. Lissitzky went a step further by composing a photobook, Industry of Socialism (1935), illustrating the progresses of Stalin’s industry program.

Some images matter for their absence. If the exhibition exposes the use of image as vitrine of the hopes of the rising Nation, it also makes an active effort to unveil the appalling truths of the political paranoia governing over Stalin’s regime and nowhere is this more evident than in the room dedicated to “deleting” fallen political figures. The room dedicated to the Soviet Pavilion at the 1937 International Exhibition (Paris) showcases images of the gold-medal pavilion celebrating the achievements brought by the Revolution. This was a bright and optimistic vision, one diametrically opposed to the brutality of the Great Purge, which is spatially translated in the exhibition by the placement of a series of mugshots of presupposed counter-revolutionaries (targets of the Stalin’s purges that culminated in 1937 Moscow trials) in the adjacent room.

This is a show that rejects polite conclusions on the complexity and humanly devastating facets of the subject, offering instead the possibility of looking at a constructed reality as much as at individual narratives. A must-see exhibition for its historical and aesthetic value.

 

PLATES:

 

El Lissitzky

Beat the Whites with the Red Wedge

1920

Lithograph

 

 

 

Stepan Karpov

Friendship of the Peoples

1923-24

Oil on Canvas

 

Curator and art historian, Tally de Orellana holds a dual Master’s degree in Arts Administration & Modern Art History from the School of the Art Institute of Chicago (2016) and an MA in Art History from The University of Edinburgh (2012). She was the 2016-2017 Hilla Rebay International Curatorial Fellow at the Solomon R. Guggenheim Foundation, working in New York, Bilbao, and Venice. Her research interests target the role of institutions and curatorial practices in the systems of formation of cultural hierarchies and artistic identity. You can follow her @Tallydeorellana

Notes:

[1] Propaganda multi-functional trains equipped with exhibition carriages, classrooms and even cinemas.

 

Image Credits

Banner: http://www.mysticforms.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/11/Banner_1000x750_Tate2.jpg

Image 1: http://www.theartstory.org/images20/works/lissitzky_el_2.jpg

Image 2: http://www.wikigallery.org/paintings/198001-198500/198498/painting1.jpg

Strife Feature - Imagining War in Film: The Algerian War in The Umbrellas of Cherbourg and Winds of the Aures

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By Uygar Baspehlivan

In Sergei Eisenstein’s Battleship Potemkin (1925) or Michael Cimino’s Deer Hunter (1976) after the Vietnam War, the medium of cinema performed as an agent for shaping how war, conflict, and trauma were visualised and resonated in collective memory for years to come.

Cinema - with its potential for access, emotional resonance, and for creating visually-charged meaning - has been significant in the construction and dissemination of cultural ideas and identities and for the molding of specific, nationalized narratives of historical events in the last century.

During the presidencies of Charles de Gaulle in France (whose strict censorship policies meant the state had a monopoly in the representations of Algeria in France [1]) and Houari Boumédiène in Algeria (who, with the National Liberation Front –FLN- owned and funded almost the entire Algerian movie industry in the 60s [2]), popular cinema functioned simultaneously as a medium of distraction from the post-independence realities both countries were facing, and as a form of nationalist propaganda. In France, this control of the movie industry served to promote a denialist narrative of the struggles and sufferings of the Algerians as well as the dangers faced by the French soldiers in the Algerian War. Similarly, in Algeria, movies of the so-called cinema moudjahid were instrumentalised as means to producing a new post-colonial mythology of the new Algerian nation. In the absence of a strong academic infrastructure or established national history, movies produced by the FLN that told the story of courageous Algerian guerrilla who emancipated the nation from colonial forces became the primary agents for constructing a national history and collective identity. In addition to being a part of FLN’s Islamic Socialist propaganda, these movies also acted as a distraction from problems of corruption, economic crisis and women’s rights that the newly-founded Algerian state was struggling with after its independence.

This article observes how the Algerian war and the colonial experience were perceived and constructed around a binary depicting the visual imaginaries of the colonised and the coloniser.

Umbrellas of Cherbourg

“Umbrellas of Cherbourg”, directed by Jacques Demy in 1967, is a cheerful and romantic musical that portrays the struggles of two young French lovers as Guy – the male protagonist- is drafted to fight in the Algerian war. The movie depicts the love triangle Genevieve (the female protagonist) finds herself in, undecided between waiting for her lover fighting in Algeria or choosing a rich and handsome Roland Cassard who can provide her and her mother with economic stability. As one of the first French movies that attempted to deal with the Algerian War after its independence, the fact that Algeria itself is not even shown in the movie but rather depicted as a distant and exotic place that became an inconvenience and a simple plot point in the love lives of two French lovers is arguably a testament to the reduced status of the war in the French national imagination. War, in post-war French memory, was relevant only to the extent of its effects on the lives of the French, completely disregarding the amount of mutual destruction inflicted during the war.

The Algerian philosopher Mostefa Lacheraf called cinema moudjahid “a pseudo-patriotic exploitation of war heroism…which diverted the people from the new realities”.[3]
The movie’s use of bright colours, fancy costumes and depiction of the domestic space as a place of comfort from the problems outside lent a false optimism and luxury that was contrasted with the unknown space of Algeria, where the main protagonist has to go to “serve his country.” Considering how post-war France was struggling with the influx of Algerian immigrants and refugees entering the country, the creation and representation of a safe, hygienic domestic space established an exclusionist logic where the streets of France are full of Algerian immigrants who are treated as the “outsider”.

Continuing the colonial tradition of representing Algeria without depicting Algerians, observed in earlier famous colonial films such as L’Atlantide (1921) or Le Grand Jeu (1935), the movie treats Algeria as an exotic yet dangerous landscape. The only shot of Algeria present in the movie is when Genevieve looks at a postcard sent by Guy where he is standing next to a Moorish archway.

The only shot of Algeria present in the movie is when Genevieve looks at a postcard sent by Guy where he is standing next to a Moorish archway.

In this representation, Algeria is merely a touristic landscape that is protected by the French soldier. Algerians or signs of Algerian life are non-existent. As Guy Austin interprets it aptly; “Algeria and its population are out of sight, through the empty arch, while the photo itself is framed by Genevieve’s letter written naturally enough in French. The war is framed by a French romance, and exists only insofar as it tells about French lovers; Algerians remain invisible - always off-screen.”[4]

The reduced status of the war becomes clearer when Genevieve reads a letter from Guy where he talks about how a patrol was ambushed by Algerians. However, immediately after this anecdote, he emphasises that there actually “is not much danger in Algeria”. The war isn’t important; it is a minor inconvenience that poses little threat to the protagonist’s life. As the audience, we know that he will survive. Not only the suffering of Algerians, but also the danger the French soldiers found themselves in during the war is disregarded and put aside in the movie.

Winds of the Aures

Winds of the Aures (1966), an Algerian movie directed by acclaimed director Mohamed Lakhdar Hamina which won the Palme d’Or prize at the Cannes Film Festival, on the other hand, paints a completely opposite picture of the Algerian war that catered towards an Algerian imagination. A war-time drama about the journey of a mother trying to find her son who was kidnapped by French colonial forces, the 90-minute showcase of Algerian suffering acts as a propaganda tool for FLN’s specific form of Islamic Socialist nationalism. As per FLN’s official policy of bringing about “the restoration of the sovereign, democratic and social Algerian state within the framework of Islamic principles[5]”, the movie’s depiction of how religion and collective Algerian activity worked jointly to bring an end to the century-old colonial rule is an endeavour in constructing a direct link between Islam and Collectivism. As the movie starts with the the adhan (the Islamic call to prayer) suppressed by sounds of conflict, symbolising how colonial domination subjugated the Algerian Islamic identity, it aspires to show how Islam and Algeria’s Islamic identity endured despite the efforts of the colonisers. Representing the Algerian villager as pious and devout, Hamina performs a normative identity making that connects the struggle to religion.

The first thirty minutes of the movie keep up with this collectivist narrative and is dedicated to the daily routines of Algerian peasants working in the village and bringing help to FLN fighters. While French cinema largely attempted to empty Algeria of Algerians, this film defied colonial narratives, showcases the daily lives of Algerian villagers working the soil, producing and consuming. It transformed the exotic landscape of French imagination into a territory filled with indigenous people. This representation of collective activity, playing into the FLN’s socialist Islamic identity, functions in creating a mythology of common collective struggle against colonialism.

Rather than a realistic representation of wartime rural Algeria, the movie’s narrative attempts to reproduce, in the words of Mani Sharpe, “a monolithic Algeria as a tabula rasa cleansed of cultural, social, economic, religious and gendered tensions that in reality characterised the post-colonial nation-state.

Unfortunately, Winds of the Aures can’t escape from the nationalist logic of inclusion and exclusion as it fails to reflect the historical reality of the Algerian war that was rife with internal strife and elite intervention. Disregarding diversity, individuality, and locality in favour of a homogeneous representation of collective peasantry; Hamina uses cinema as an attempt to draw a unified national history. The movie, as it represents a collective struggle of emancipation against the French, therefore, appears to conform to Ella Shohat’s definition of third-world films as using “the expulsion of the colonial intruder” in a cinematic praxis of “national becoming” This depiction of collective wartime heroism - similar to France - diverts attention away from the economic, political and social realities of post-independence Algeria. The glorification of the movie’s female protagonist, as she goes through hell to save his son, for instance, distracts from the fact that many women lost their privileged wartime status after independence and were forced to return to their Islamic domestic lives.

The emotional resonance of an audio-visual representation becomes a medium through which national and cultural ideas and stories are cultivated and disseminated.

The historical context in which the movie came out is also important, in that cinema is particularly receptive and representative of the cultural environment of its period. A year before the movie was distributed, in 1965, Colonel Boumédiène seized power following a coup d’état. His project entailed a rewriting of Algerian history to provide the country with a unitary national identity. Since there had not really been an Algerian national identity until the 1950s, the peoples living in Algeria found in Islam a central mark of their identity, as it was the element that united them all despite the local differences. Thus, he was able to affirm that Algerians were Muslims and Arabs, a claim that disregarded the wide variety of non-Arab tribes that had lived in Algeria for centuries. This dismissal of the country’s diversity is reflected in the movie itself, which constitutes an attempt to create a unitary, post-colonial national identity, rooted in Islam, in line with Boumédiène’s plan.

The analysis of these two movies reveals that the memory of trauma and conflict can be shaped by nationalist narratives. This constitution and disciplining of memory is primarily exercised by state-controlled or state-censored cinema serving specific narratives regarding the nature, subjects, and motives of the Algerian war. In the end, we observe how both representations of the conflict divert attention from the realities of post-war nation-building. This helps recognise the (re)productive power of visual media in framing and constituting meaning and identity. The struggle for narrative eminence between Algerian and French filmmakers is a testament to the fact that artistic expression is yet another site for political struggles over power and identity.

Uygar Baspehlivan is a graduate of War Studies at King’s College London. He is about to commence his postgraduate studies in Theory and History of International Relations at the London School of Economics. His research interests include nationalism, critical theory, and film theory.

Notes:

[1] Guy Austin, “Trauma, Cinema and the Algerian War” New Readings 10 (2011), p.18-19

[2] Guy Austin, “Representing the Algerian War in Algerian Cinema: Le Vent Des Aures”, French Studies 61:2

[3] Cited in Guy Hennebelle, “Cinema Djidid”, in Algerian Cinema, p.28

[4] Guy Austin, “Representing the Algerian War in Algerian Cinema: Le Vent Des Aures”, French Studies 61:2

[5] Daho Djerbal, “The National Liberation Front (FLN) and Islam Concerning the Relationship between the political and religious in Contemporary Algeria” The Journal of Sophia Asian Studies No.25 (2007) p.1.

[6] Mani Sharpe, Gender and Space in Post-Colonial French and Algerian Cinema

[7] Mani Sharpe, Gender and Space in Post-Colonial French and Algerian Cinema