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The truth, if you can call it that, is altogether more complex, and these myriad complexities are laid bare in the documentary featureUkraine Is Not A Brothel, which will screen at the Melbourne International Film Festival this week.
Director Kitty Green, a VCA graduate, embedded herself with a core group of FEMEN members when she travelled to Ukraine in 2012 to research her family tree. Consequently, she found herself caught up in the group’s ascent. “When I first arrived in Ukraine, Femen was a Ukrainian movement,” she recalls. “I filmed some of their first protests. After each protest, I would edit a video together and hand it to them on a USB, and they would distribute that footage to the press. So in some ways, my presence had an impact on the international growth of the movement. The footage was screened on BBC, CNN and across the internet.”
A scene from Australian film maker Kitty Green's documentary, Ukraine Is Not A Brothel.
Thus Green, like the activists she was filming, was arrested numerous times, abducted, had footage stolen by the KGB, and was at one stage deported to Lithuania. It’s heady stuff, and initially, difficult viewing for anyone with a set idea of FEMEN’s politics either way; seeing committed young activists, who have been rejected by the group, talking about how “In order to promote the brand, FEMEN needs beautiful girls” with a resigned shrug, it’s easy to feel one’s blood begin to boil. But seeing naked women dragged through the streets, set upon by mobs, and at one point, kidnapped, is just as disquieting.
Your blood may boil for a different reason, however, upon watching the entire documentary, as it's slowly revealed that FEMEN was founded and is controlled by a man, Victor Svyatski, often referred to as a “consultant” to the movement.
Green maintains that the film’s revelations mirror her own discoveries. “The structure of the film and the ‘revelation’ of Svyatski [as a mastermind] reflect my own experience of the situation. Immediately, upon arrival, I thought it was a contradictory movement. The situation only grew more absurd and complex as I spent more time with the women.”
Members of FEMEN protest against Russian intervention in Ukraine. Photo: STAN HONDA
And it’s the women who complicate any preconceived notions you might have about FEMEN. For this reason, it’s worth viewing Ukraine Is Not A Brothel first and foremost as an exploration of a Ukraine-based feminist movement that sprang up in response to a very specific cultural climate, which is in turn the reason why many of FEMEN’s international protests have been culturally tone-deaf.
Indeed, that the women involved have discovered feminist politics at all seems remarkable given some of their circumstances. Green agrees, and admits she wrestled with the implications of revealing the extent of Svyatski’s power over the group. “I was really worried about ‘outing’ Victor’s role,” she says. “I didn’t want to ruin this organisation. Whilst I had my doubts about the way that the organisation was run, I believed in the women and wanted to support them. I didn’t want to discourage them from their activism.”
If anything, illustrating Svyatski’s influence may mean that FEMEN are viewed with a renewed sense of context; is it not, in fact, a tragically ironic portrait of what happens when a patriarch designs his perfect “feminist” army? Key FEMEN member Inna Shevchenko wrote, upon Ukraine’s Venice Film Festival premiere, “Having been born in a country in which feminism was unknown, in the best traditions of patriarchal society we just accepted the fact of a man taking control of us. We accepted this because we did not know how to resist and fight it.”
Promotional poster for Ukraine Is Not A Brothel, showing at the Melbourne Film Festival this week.
That the women of FEMEN have since diversified their ranks and continued to educate themselves is a testament to their tenaciousness. It’s possible that despite their shaky, flashy start, FEMEN may evolve as its members learn more about feminism in a global, intersectional context.
In a way, this relates back to the current “PR problem” within feminism, which is that certain corners of the movement expect a monolithic feminism, and one that has little room for nuance or the consideration of cultural context. (The irony of FEMEN’s own lack of cultural appropriateness is not lost on me.)
Green tells me she wanted to provide a portrait of a movement within the culture that gave birth to it. “Femen Ukraine is a product of the patriarchal culture that is deeply entrenched in the post-Soviet states,” she says. “The film aims to paint intimate portraits of these women’s lives in a corrupt, poverty-stricken, patriarchal Ukraine. By living with them in their crumbling apartment blocks and interviewing their family and friends, I wanted to shed more light on just how such a deeply paradoxical feminist movement came about.”
That is, it must be stressed, not a ‘Get Out of Jail Free’ card for some of FEMEN’s more bombastic protests; since they have relocated to France, much of that country’s hardline stances on religion (particularly of the anti-Islam variety) have influenced their politics.
As feminist academic Susan Carland wrote last year in the aftermath of Amina’s FEMEN-supported protest in Tunisia in which the group called for an “International topless jihad day”, “FEMEN supporters even openly ridiculed Muslim women who argued that such behaviour was problematic, calling them ‘fearful victims’ and ‘brainwashed’ on the official Femen Facebook page.”
There is considerable irony, then, in the FEMEN members in Ukraine essentially admitting to having been brainwashed by Svyatski, victims of Stockholm syndrome.
In other words, Ukraine Is Not A Brothel offers no easy answers - something lost on some feminist commentators who have already attacked Green for “promoting” FEMEN, or for not editorialising within the course of her film (apparently they are unclear on the impartial nature of documentary filmmaking). “I often feel like I’m forced to defend them in a situation like that,” she says. “It is a difficult position for me to be in as a filmmaker as the film is an exploration of all the contradictions; I’m not an activist, I’m a filmmaker. I really hope audiences are intrigued and excited by this bizarre story and I hope it encourages some lively post-screening conversation. Truth really is stranger than fiction.”
Ukraine is Not a Brothel is screening at the Melbourne International Film Festival, on Thursday, August 7, at 9pm at Hoyts Melbourne Central.
16 comments
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Refreshing, is truth. Sounds like a film worth seeing, specially because feminists are complaining that it is too truthful.
Commenter
Melinda
Date and time
August 06, 2014, 6:47AM-
One of the points of the article is that feminism isn't a monolith so at most SOME feminists might be saying that, although the article suggests they are more calling for a contextual discussion within the documentary. The piece by ""feminist academic Susan Carland" linked to in the article argues that women's rights are damaged by Femen's outrage due to the groups cultural tin ear. There is no such thing as feminists in the sense that you wrote in that comment.
Commenter
Nick
LocationDate and time
August 06, 2014, 11:07AM -
Fascinating insights Nick, thanks so much, I often hear that feminism isn't a monolith and I always find it fascinating that you think so.
I agree with Cam below, I will give Femen more credence when I see saggy baggy women involved in the protests. But for now it is just some bloke, sitting back with his mates drinking vodka and laughing at all the gullible young women who he has convinced that their very pretty young bodies are vehicles for protest rather than just a enjoyable afternoon with the mates. There must be 50 ways to get women to bear their breasts and this is just one of them.
Commenter
Melinda
LocationDate and time
August 06, 2014, 3:02PM -
Have you ever heard anyone say 'the anti-racism or anti-homophobia movement isn't a monolith'. What exactly does 'feminism isn't a monolith' mean'? Feminism is simply a movement to attain human rights and liberation for girls and women. It's not that complicated. A lot of activism described as feminism is actually libertarianism, and so 'feminism' becomes highly individualistic and whatever anyone wants it to mean. It waters down the actual meaning and intent of feminism, which I'm not sure is an accident.
Commenter
Mel
LocationDate and time
August 06, 2014, 4:56PM -
So you agree with at least two feminists...your starting to sound like a feminist yourself 🙂
Commenter
Nick
LocationDate and time
August 06, 2014, 4:59PM -
*bare
Commenter
Melinda
Date and time
August 06, 2014, 5:35PM
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Likewise Pussy Riot is founded by men from the political group Voina who have demonstrated appalling mysoginy and mysoginist 'activism', and some of the 'feminists' behind the masks are apparently male. These movements have nothing to do with feminism unless you think feminism is all about getting your tits out or getting rooted in public by self serving, ideologically driven men in order to stick it to 'the man'.
Commenter
Leah
LocationDate and time
August 06, 2014, 9:56AM-
Some of the 'feminists' behind the masks are apparently male? Thanks for exposing these frauds - we all know feminists can't be male.
Commenter
Laki
Location
M
Date and time
August 06, 2014, 12:54PM -
If men are pretending to be women feminists in order to push their own self serving agenda then no, they're not feminists.
Commenter
Leah
Date and time
August 06, 2014, 4:14PM
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So censorship requires that nipples be pixilated but Fuck Putin's Occupation is OK? I'm a little lost here...
Commenter
Lawrence Arabica
LocationDate and time
August 06, 2014, 11:22AM
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Ukraine Is Not A Brothel
NUDITY WARNING: Australian filmmaker Kitty Green recorded a Femen protest in Turkey for her documentary Ukraine is Not a Brothel.
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