Spending time with Letter from Siberia and Season of Dying Water
I offer a morsel of my drawn spiral bannock, at the shore of this drawn Lena River. I ask in my spirit, with these few lines, for safe and bountiful passage and shelter by its shore as I contemplate two films made in its presence.
In 2022 I was invited by Samara Chadwick (Scottish/Irish/British decent) to program Flaherty NYC. This invitation was sent to me especially on the occasion of the centennial anniversary of Robert Flaherty’s (Irish/German) 1922 film Nanook of the North. I knew immediately that I didn’t want to give space to a film that already takes up so much space in my world. I also knew it was appropriate for a descendant of the land where Nanook of the North was made to take up space.
I decided to put my focus on artists who really inspire me and storytelling imbued with integrity. In the quest for films to share, I dropped a message to artist/filmmaker Svetlana Romanova (Sakha/Even) inquiring about viewing her film work. As I scrolled down her list of films, one notation jumped off the screen, moving me to urgency: “The one that should be watched with Chris Marker’s Letter from Siberia is Season of Dying Water made with Chelsea Tuggle (Jewish/American).”
The following are sketches of a conversation among Chelsea, Svetlana, and myself.
Asinnajaq (Inuk)
When did you first see Letter from Siberia?
Svetlana Romanova
Chris Marker’s (French) Letter from Siberia is one of the first times I actually saw the region that I’m from on-screen. The experience of seeing it was part of the growing pains of my fully understanding that I also belong to Indigenous people. There were two things that I was trying to put together at the time. I was actually starting to look from the critical side of my homeland’s being in Russia. In that sense, it was very eye-opening. And the film sequences are structured in a way that I was probably not used to at that time. And it was very interesting to see Siberia being shown in that way, specifically, because I think in some sense the film is a response to the rhythms and to the chaos that is happening there. And it’s interesting because it’s disruptive, violent. But then again, it’s continuous because it’s still going.
Chelsea Tuggle
Yeah, I feel like you saw that film as we were starting to work together. We were going places with a camera, to a lot of reservations and Native land, and making weird stuff, and also talking a lot. What we were doing, and continue to do, is a weird reaction to essay films in general. And so it was like, “Holy shit, Chris Marker made a movie about Lana’s home.” We didn’t know. At the time you were starting to think about being from Siberia in a more critical context, the context of American Indigenous politics. So we were taking those politics over there, which at the time wasn’t so much of a thing yet, you know?
SR
Yeah, there was nothing back home. I feel that we were going to the reservations a lot because I was so mesmerized by the idea that it was so different, yet so similar, to home in the way the communities function. Later, looking back, I think we were unknowingly trying to mimic the feeling of my home. So we’re situating ourselves in something completely unfamiliar, but whose environments are somehow familiar, and then trying to process it. And Marker was the breaking point, where it was like: Wait a second. We have been doing this thing, but we have to do this right.
With that also came this realization of how sad it actually was. That the conversations about Indigenous politics did not exist back home. It took me to look at the other Indigenous people and their problems to understand that we’re also situated in that sense. That’s how much that narrative is nonexistent in Russia. So I was just like, Holy shit.
CT
Coming from an American perspective and going there and talking to punks, weirdos our age, and not being in a conversation about colonialism there at all. And these ideas being really, just not a thing. I think there was some level of offense at bringing colonialism up. It really put into perspective Lana’s interest in the history of Native resistance in America. All of a sudden, it was like: Oh, people here need to start thinking about themselves in a certain context. There are things happening. Land is being taken.
SR
The main conversations we were having in Siberia, filming the Season of Dying Water, was about colonial history. Somehow it always ended with the same sentiment: Would you rather be under the USA, China, or Russia? There’s never a conversation of being independent, just the choice of an oppressor—who would be better? It has changed a lot since the war.
HOW DO WE HOLD MULTIPLE TRUTHS AT ONCE?
Letter from Siberia contributes something quite incredible to cinema. In watching it we can see an auteur finding their voice. At the same time, it extracts from Indigenous Siberian people while flattening their image and giving no credit to the Indigenous people in the film. Where does a film like Letter from Siberia sit in the world of the Indigenous people whom it depicts?
It is interesting to take the images from films like Nanook of the North and Letter from Siberia into the realm of so called ethnographic artifacts. In the conversation about repatriation, there are many angles. The angle we will look at is this one.
SR
Scholars also say that we had no places to store our artifacts. So, in some sense, maybe stealing benefited us because we were able to, say, preserve the artifacts. But then again, those artifacts are fully stripped.
They’re just artifacts or just like any image, but the knowledge was taken out. Then again, the fact that that knowledge was taken out was good because otherwise it would have been destroyed by the Russians. But then again, we can’t really extract knowledge from these items because of their being removed from the larger context of our culture. But then again, we have them. I don’t know what the benefit is, but it is like this.
It reminds me of a recent visit I took to Ulaanbaatar, Mongolia, to the Golden Ger Film Festival. Of course, on the occasion of the centennial of Nanook of the North, the film was screened at the festival. After the screening, the interest in the film was not at all about the narrative it posed, but in the marvel at Inuit being so similar to themselves. And they [were] interested in the very same things that I can find beautiful in the film—the details on the clothing, tools, and seeing the familiar landscape.
Regardless of authorship, the documentation of a people who do not have the habit of documenting themselves can become helpful when their culture is disrupted. Making the documentation, however, is a powerful connection to the place in another time. In that way, it can be a gift.
The gift does come at a cost, though, when the narrative tied to it is careless.
A
Why make a response?
SR
It’s just that no one was looking back into history in that way, in my mind. It was interesting to be looking back at someone looking at us or commenting on it. It is very important to me because we essentially were also trying to talk about autonomy, about being able to visually represent yourself or respond to your own representation, which is, which was, and is still very absent in local conversations.
CT
It’s like he made a movie about communism. And we were making a movie about capitalism. Communism has this “we’re gonna build the land” vibe and make something new. Capitalism is about recycling over and over and over until whatever material you’re using just deteriorates. I think there’s a level of us thinking this is a form, let’s fuck with it. Let’s respond because this is Lana’s perspective on her home, returning to it, and then sending the world a letter from that address, from people there.
SR
Yeah, that’s also part of the response; that letter from Chris Marker who was visiting and that letter from the perspective of the person witnessing it for the first time. And our letter was from community, about the community, but to the outside world.
A
Does a film belong to anyone?
CT
In an authorship sense, or in an ownership sense?
A
Who does it belong to? Can it belong to someone? Is it your film? Is it the film of the land where it’s made—the people? Can a film have its own spirit? Is it the universe’s?
SR
The way I see [the films] is as thoughts, to be honest. It’s a form of thinking, and it’s someone’s fragment of a thought. Which then becomes its own entity in the sense that it has your thought. It doesn’t matter whose thought it is.
In the case of Season of Dying Water, it is me and Chelsea’s conversation bottled up in the images. During the time we were making it, we were talking about it continuously. But once it’s edited and you feel like it’s done, there is a shift. It becomes a thing that can generate its own energy, which means that [it] is its own entity, to me.
CT
At this point, it just belongs to a certain time. Like Chris Marker’s film does. And like that, there’s a personal element to it. There’s a personal expression from the both of us. The world so rapidly changes that the film does exist specifically to this mid-2010s period of economic expansion in that region and cultural homogenization. That time belongs to all of us. That’s a global phenomenon. So it is its own thing in this time, in this space, and people are going to relate to that and see what they see.
A
What does it mean to collaborate?
CT
I think so much of our collaboration has to do with these long talks, trying to get energy to think of an idea we haven’t figured out and then just talking. We’re always reinterrogating what we’re doing, which is why everything takes so long. But I also think, on a personal level, we’re just best friends and, yeah, she’s my sister and I love her. I just find Lana endlessly interesting—her life experience, yes, but also as a person. And I think she tolerates me.
SR
Tolerates. (laughs) There’s also a certain amount of trust, right? You have to trust someone to be able to collaborate. And I think that feeling of safety is very important. And it’s very hard to find.
CT
Yeah, I think she’s probably the only person that I’m like, “I have this terrible idea, but I’m going to tell you.”
SR
(Laughing) Really bad poetry.
CT
When I was super young, being friends with Lana gave me access as an American to thinking about Indigenous politics here, and also to position my own family’s history here and my own personal connection to identity. Not in the way that was being pushed in pop culture, but in a spirit. Lana gave me a lot of trust. We’ll have difficult conversations about all this. There’s a lot of trust, and I think that’s the foundation.
The first time I remember meeting other Indigenous people out in the wilds of Montreal was when I dipped my toes in the underground punk scene of Montreal. So let’s have…
A VERY BRIEF HISTORY OF PUNK CULTURE IN YAKUSTS
(as told from an outsider who’s never been there).
SR
Punk culture has like the longest history ever. (laughs)
Punk culture has probably been around forever but we will start here; In the early 2000s, it began with a school-yard question: Are you a rocker or a rapper? As the century moved on, as it always seems to do in the common human frame of perception, the answer became clear: rocker. One band turned into two bands turned into a community of bands and [into] an entire punk rock scene in Yakutia. Along with, or perhaps by chance during this time, people were becoming more socially conscious and getting into movements like “Food not Bombs.” Members of the punk scene used their network for the most natural thing—to promote ideas. They started to get into Siberian art and began using the traditional graphics for patches, educating, and promoting cultural pride in the younger generation.
In the film we meet youth from the north community. When the scene was at one of its peaks, it shifted and morphed many times before and since then. At this time, its almost certain what is left of the scene, as the country they live in wages war, is filled with more political angst than ever.
A
Where do you think Chris Marker got his information from? I read a bunch of reviews of Letter from Siberia recently, and so many reviews talk about the informational aspect of his film and what information he gave about the area. I was thinking about how films are taken as truth, which is one thing for a documentary. Who knows where he got any of this information from? He probably got it from somewhere, but could have made it up. I was waiting for the credits, where, unsuprisingly, no Indigenous people were acknowledged.
SR
Honestly, he wasn’t even there physically. To me, it looks like the reels from Soviet newsreels or something like that. I don’t know how he got his information, but there’s this element of discovery, right? With this film it’s also the discovery of his voice through these really distinct countries. He’s also practicing his excessive privilege. In the narration he comes off as intellectually superior.
In that sense, responding is also de-narrativizing the narrative that is created in his film, whether you want it or not. Whether it’s Chris Marker or not. Prior, before we even were able to talk.
A
Yeah, there were some things this time watching it that I was mad about. And also the thing that was troubling to me is this instance that everyone brings up, about the three narrative devices. One is supposed to be neutral and, of course, it’s not neutral.
SR
That part, actually, is also the part that I think about. The film became a hit back home; for some reason, a lot of people started watching it. At that moment everyone gets very offended. In the beginning, it was very hard. I was thinking, it’s really smart that he’s showing the way narration works with the visuals, and then the propaganda, understanding that it was pretty much similar language that is used. But then, reflecting back, obviously, there was no consideration or space for Indigenous voices whatsoever. That was not his interest. Indigeneity was completely absent from the film, other than as visual presence.
A
After watching his film again this time—and I think you’ve kind of nailed it right now—I was thinking, what is his film actually about? And does it matter that it takes place in Siberia? At the core of his film, it’s about his voice, his filmmaking, and it’s not about a place.
SR
The Siberia there is the most flat representation.
A
It could be anywhere. That was ultimately the feeling I had. I was like, what was that even about?
The handful of Indigenous people that he shows becomes a placeholder for everyone, and it becomes meaningless really fast. And there’s more compassion for the bear. The bear gets much more screen time than it deserves. And that’s the spectacle of it. There is just a continuous language of exoticization and spectacle. What I really appreciate and respect about what you and Chelsea did together is, even though there are so many difficult things in Letter from Siberia, your instinct was to speak back. Not to tear down him or his work, but to respond to it and to make things more complex.
SR
The whole thing does bring something more fruitful because, essentially, he’s talking about the time, we’re talking about the time, and it would be silly to disregard someone’s attempt to take a look at the time. Okay, I respect that he didn’t go in and start trying to talk about the Indigenous population in the end, because that would be awkward.
WE CONTAIN MULTITUDES.
In Season of Dying Water, Svetlana and Chelsea made a letter from the people with their collaborators, mainly Svetlana’s family and friends. It is a complementary film to Letter from Siberia, each work bringing a drastically different set of intentions and points of view.
Several questions lingering in the minds of Svetlana and Chelsea after seeing Letter from Siberia prompted them to make a response. These questions complicate the narrative proposed by Marker so many years before.
Indigenous people hold so many things at once. We resist simplicity. We berry-pick, play games, rave, mosh, farm, gather, boat, bake, chat, make films, resist, and reclaim. Seeing a film that holds these pieces together brings me so much joy. Beginning a long and ongoing process that looks different for every one of answering: How does one visualize themselves?
At the end of this journey, I would like to bring our minds back to the Lena River, which has extended to us a safe and grounding place to have these conversations about friendship, authorship, and representation. We part ways with these words from Chris Marker on his preference to keep his early work low-key. In the above writing, Chelsea, Svetlana, and I share with honesty our feelings, and I think Marker understood there were issues with this work.
"We have the right to learn, it is not essential to spread out the stages of our learning. Even if—and this is the only thing I still hope for— we never stop learning."
—Chris Marker (translated from French)
Experience Тарыҥ (Season of Dying Water) by Svetlana Romanova and Chelsea Tuggle, with Letter from Siberia by Chris Marker together at the Walker Art Center on May 5 and 6, 2023.
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