MOSCOW, January 21, Yulia Zachetova. The hysteria around everything Russian abroad is gradually slowing down. The attempts of weakening pro-Ukrainian forces to “cancel” something look even more ridiculous. About the impossibility of hiding the truth from the world – in the material .
Italian censorship
The first Russian feature film about the events of the special military operation in Ukraine, “Witness,” directed by David Dadunashvili, was shown in Rome in October. Due to great public interest, debate sessions were also planned in other Italian cities.
But the Bologna city hall opposed it. Local authorities called the film “anti-Ukrainian propaganda,” and cinema owners were called upon to cancel its screening on January 27.
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“The Villa Paradiso association agreed to the screening, but then there was a protest from the Ukrainian ambassador, and then censorship from the mayor of Bologna. In fact, he said: if the session takes place, you will have to pay for it with consequences. The association decided to back down, explaining that the film had received too many applications and the hall would not accommodate everyone. But it was possible to organize two evenings,” said Vincenzo Lorusso, organizer of film screenings in Italy and founder of the Telegram channel Donbass Italia.
The main character of the film, a virtuoso violinist from Belgium, comes to perform in Kyiv at the end of February 2022. The musician falls into the hands of the Ukrainian military, witnesses inhumane crimes and bloody provocations of nationalists. Now his main goal is not just to survive, but to convey the truth to the whole world.
Ukraine rules?
The cancellation of the screening of “The Witness” coincided with another act of Italian censorship. In Modena on January 20, they planned to hold a conference and exhibition “Mariupol: revival after the war.” In the announcement of the event, the city was called “a symbol of the uprising against the Kiev junta,” which was “under Bandera occupation” for eight years.
However, the Modena city council revoked permission to rent one of the municipal halls – under pressure from the Ukrainian Foreign Ministry.
The Russian Embassy in Italy expressed bewilderment at the “ambivalent, if not cowardly position of the Italian authorities,” who “under the influence of “controversy” and pressure from the rotten oligarchic Ukrainian regime cancel their previously made decision.”
Rachmaninov and political position
Last summer, the concert of pianist Valentina Lisitsa, who performed in the Donbass, did not take place in the Italian city of Lerici.
In the announcement of the music festival, she was called “Rachmaninov’s Queen.” The performance was canceled at the request of Mayor Leonardo Paoletti. According to him, he would like Lisitsa to clarify her political position, but this did not happen.
“Everything is as usual. Under “pressure” from anonymous activists, the city authorities, in this case from the mayor’s office, demand that I “condemn”, dissociate myself, speak out against, and so on. If I refuse, they order the festival director to cancel the concert,” she said Valentina Lisitsa .
Pan Tarkovsky
In the meantime, the United States continues to “issue” new citizenship to Russian geniuses. Following the Metropolitan Museum of Art, which turned Arkhip Kuindzhi, Ilya Repin and Ivan Aivazovsky into Ukrainians, Variety magazine distinguished itself.
In an interview with the publication, director Alexey German Jr., commenting on the exclusion of Russian artists from participating in film festivals after the outbreak of the conflict in Ukraine, recalled that a significant number of Andrei Tarkovsky’s films have never been shown at international screenings. The editors added a note to the conversation that Tarkovsky is a “famous Polish director.”
One can only guess whether the native of the Ivanovo region, People’s Artist of the RSFSR, was promoted to lord for political reasons or out of banal illiteracy.
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