Our very own Ministry of Culture and Belarusfilm have conspired to take Listapad film festival away from its dedicated team (Irina Demyanova, Igor Sukmanov, and many other wonderful people) who have labored for more than 10 years to make it an essential event that was the highlight of the year for any local cinephile, a worthwhile adventure for a casual film-goer and an important platform for young Belarusian filmmakers. More than that, ART Corporation (an umbrella company for Listapad, TEART, art film distribution, etc.) is being shut down altogether. While Belarusfilm is bragging that it will uphold the existing traditions and improve on them, it should be obvious to anyone that they have no expertise whatsoever to do this. After all, Belarusfilm has always been infamous for failing to submit even the films by its own filmmakers to international film festivals. Also, let's face it: their only films worth sending anywhere were the ones where directors were left to their own devices, because a documentary or an animated short wasn't considered worth bothering with. Watching any of their fiction features for the last twenty years, on the other hand, should be reason enough to say: they don't know a thing about cinema, and if there's anything at all they're proficient at, it's pleasing state officials. And yet they're supposedly going to try and use Listapad to promote their film studio and Belarus as a production site for foreign companies (while doing next to nothing to improve the actual production conditions). Belarusfilm managers might even award the films they produced in a lame attempt to boost their own prestige. Still, to each their own. Belarusfilm has settled comfortably in its opportunistic role that's neither that of a scab, nor quite culture police, but rather resembles both. Me, I'm just going to boycott this year's fake festival. I'm also reasonably sure that the days of this corrupt studio are over since it relies so heavily on public funding and the current unsustainable system in general.
