Victor Asliuk: Vostrau Belarus
Asliuk is a veteran at Cinéma du Réel. He has won prizes at the festival for his lyrical short documentaries from the countryside of Belarus. It is therefore only natural that he is invited back with his new one-hour long documentary, English title ”Island Belarus”.
But it is painful to experience that Asliuk does not master the long format at all. He goes from one more inauguration of the president Lukashenko to an old man in his garden in the countryside where he has placed small sculptures that illustrates the agricultural life as it was. Which is a theme for the film – the disappearance of traditional agriculture and values in the countryside, while people are demonstrating against the dictator in the capital Minsk. Being brutally beaten by the gorillas of Lukashenko.
Two different worlds, yes, a divided country, yes, an elegy for a culture and a nation, yes maybe, but it is not enough to just go from A to B and back again, where is the director? Asliuk has chosen a genre, a political statement that is not the right one for him.
The film is shown at Cinema du Réel friday the 26th and saturday the 27th.
Belarus, 2009, 52 mins.
