Category Archives: Canada

The Weight of Chains (2010)

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Director: Boris Malagurski

Kosovo Rebels Thanking NATO

The Weight of Chains is a documentary about the breakup of Yugoslavia and the direction that the former Yugoslav Republics went in the aftermath.  Much of the focus of the film is on NATO’s intervention in the violent conflicts that ensued, as well as the West’s role in promoting such conflict.  It is quite a relevant documentary for today as NATO continues to engage in “humanitarian interventions” in the developing world.

The documentary primarily covers the period from the late 80s up to the independence of Kosovo.  It offers a refreshing look at the conflict, not through the eyes of the West stepping in to do a humanitarian good, but instead demonstrates the problems of NATO intervention and that their role was that of “colonization” instead of mere intervention.

While the narrative of the documentary is refreshing and takes an “anti-imperialist” stance to a degree, it isn’t without some problems.  For example, the way that ethnic tensions are portrayed in the film is almost suggesting that they were merely the result of Western manipulation and intervention, although the film does not suggest a sort of grand conspiracy involved in the Alex Jones sense.  Yugoslavia’s ethnic tensions predate the socialist period (as the film does point out) and the institutions and divisions of the country that existed to decrease ethnic tensions under Tito did give an opportunity for them to be exploited during the deep crisis.  This discussion opens up an important part of the overall Marxist stance on national self determination.   These contradictions within Yugoslavia’s socialist period were not taken seriously or explored in the documentary: there is even a portion where tensions between Albanians and Serbs during the socialist period is pointed to, which runs a bit counter to the narrative of Western manipulation of ethnic tension.

The crisis tore Yugoslavia apart

Also, some of the atrocities that surely took place were not explored or essentially brushed off.  While this was perhaps not the intention of the filmmaker, this could be interpreted as ignoring an important part of the conflicts that ensued.  There likely was anticipation of the criticism, however, by the filmmaker who likely decided instead to reject the obligatory focus on those things that were used to justify NATO intervention: as atrocities happened on all sides.

Another point that wasn’t really explored was the market model of Yugoslav socialism.  During the segment explaining how Yugoslavia was independent,  this model was just assumed to be the “better socialism” yet that model’s features were only briefly dealt with.  Perhaps this was outside of the scope of the film, as it was geared more towards the explaining of the breakup, but more exploration of this issue would have been beneficial to the film.

While there were indeed shortcomings of the film, it is important that documentaries like it exist.  They challenge the accepted argument of “humanitarian intervention” that even some Leftists attempt to appeal to, which is quite unfortunate.

For more information visit the official website of the film: http://www.weightofchains.com/

Documentary a Day: The Take (2004)

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Director: Avi Lewis

The Take is a documentary that follows the phenomenon of worker takeovers of factories in Argentina towards the beginning of the 2000s.  The film goes through the historical conditions that lead to crisis in Argentina and how Neo-Liberal market reforms totally devastated the country long before the economic crisis that would eventually come home by the end of the decade.  The response by many workers in Argentina was to “fire the boss” and run factories and resume production as collectives, not organized along capitalist lines.  Not only is the class consciousness of the workers themselves in Argentina demonstrated in a very positive light here, but the communities in which factories like the one featured in the film tend to fully back the workers efforts.

Argentina at the time was in a political uproar, and in the midst of a Presidential election that resulted in a social democratic government that remains today.  The workers movement, as documented in this film, began to respond to the crisis by fighting back and taking matters into their own hands.  They were more than willing to fight back police attempts to retake the factory, and interviews with the factory owner reminded me of a scene in Godard’s Tout Va Bien where the boss tries to justify capitalism and property against a worker uprising (which resulted in the boss being kidnapped in that film).

The documentary does take a “libertarian socialist” stance on the phenomenon, claiming that it is an example of how spontaneous actions by workers are preferable to organizations like Communist parties, which of course Leninist would not agree with.  But all Leftists alike can acknowledge that the film does have a very optimistic tone about workers’ power.

The Trotsky (2010)

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Director: Jacob Tierney

When I started this site, I never thought I’d be writing about a teen comedy in the project to document, analyze, and display films with strong Leftist themes.  But after seeing the film The Trotsky, that had to change.  A teen comedy filled with references to the Spanish Civil War, a Ken Loach retrospective.  Its director described it as “Reds in high school that makes you laugh” (YouTube video)

Boredom or Apathy?

The film has a very bizarre premise: the main character Leon believes that he is the reincarnation of Leon Trotsky.  And to top that off with being a teen film, it was certain to make for a strange film (which isn’t to say a bad film).  The main conflict (or contradictions) in the film revolves around the main character trying to live out his life the way that Trotsky did.  Through this process he finds him self on more than one occasion trying to unionize (first his father’s workplace, then his high school).

The structure of the film is similar to many teen comedy films, and at first I felt that the premise was just a “wacky plot device” instead of an actual attempt to discuss the nature of class struggle.  But as the film developed, the message of social justice and organizing resistance became the driving force and motivation for the characters.  After a while into the film, the illusions of being the reincarnation of Trotsky took a backseat to the main characters drive to organize his fellow students.

One of the major themes in the film is about the struggle between “apathy and boredom” of the youth of Canada (which can certainly be applied to the United States as well).  The principal of the school (an authoritarian or repressive figure for the film) is sure that the students are apathetic to the plight of Leon, and after the first attempt to organize a walk-out of class: the principal seems to be right, as most of the students do not take it seriously even though they walked out.

As Leon wrestles with this throughout the film, he plots on how to best mobilize his high school against their conditions to give them a voice.  This is what the unique aspect of the film should be seen as and is what made me consider the progressive themes in it to not just be a plot device, but instead are the goal of the film.

This progressive message, guided by achieving socialism for the main character, is an interesting thing to appear in a film like this, and while it certainly won’t achieve a “wide release” that many Hollywood teen comedy films do, it’s an excellent contribution to the genre that for reasons that ought to be obvious aren’t of interest to the Left.  But the way in which the contemporary youth, and the perceived apathy, are dealt with in the film is an interesting take that offers a bit of optimism for a generation who is often labeled one that just “doesn’t care.”