RESISTANCE CINEMA PRESENTS: UNEXPECTED SOLIDARITIES: The Last Word dir. Binka Zhelyazkova @ House of Solidarity

Sun 6 August 2023 | 8:00 pm - 11:45 pm
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RESISTANCE CINEMA PRESENTS: UNEXPECTED SOLIDARITIES: The Last Word dir. Binka Zhelyazkova

1973 | Bulgarian with English subtitles | 118 minutes

SUNDAY, AUGUST 6
In House of Solidarity (Teder 2nd floor, across Romano Restaurant)
doors – 20:00
film – 20:30

“𝘐 𝘸𝘪𝘭𝘭 𝘱𝘢𝘪𝘯𝘵 𝘩𝘪𝘮 𝘵𝘩𝘦 𝘸𝘩𝘰𝘭𝘦 𝘸𝘰𝘳𝘭𝘥… 𝘴𝘰 𝘵𝘩𝘢𝘵 𝘩𝘦 𝘸𝘪𝘭𝘭 𝘴𝘦𝘦 𝘪𝘵 𝘢𝘭𝘭 𝘤𝘰𝘭𝘰𝘳𝘧𝘶𝘭 𝘢𝘯𝘥 𝘨𝘢𝘺.”

In the 1970s, Binka Zhelyazkova, a relatively unknown director until that point due to the communist Bulgarian government’s strict censorship, found her work finally gaining wider international recognition. Her film,The Last Word (1973), selected for the Cannes Film Festival’s competition, tells the stories of six female political prisoners during WWII waiting to be led to death row, boldly questioning the meaning of physical survival and the price of compromising with personal beliefs and dignity – a theme that permeates Zhelyazkova’s entire filmography.

Hope, optimism, trust, martyrdom, expediency and the possibility of linear time while living under repression are weaved into both classroom and prison cell debates between the six women. In these moments of siege from all sides – whether it be living under a fascist regime or foreign occupation – little room remains for either melancholic nostalgia for a lost past or resigned ambivalence about the future.

The film’s anti-fascist focus is staged during the war, during which the six political prisoners are imprisoned for their resistance to the ruling Bulgarian monarchy and its allied Nazi forces. But the film regularly flashes between ‘then’ and ‘now’, often cutting to the 1970s, where we witness Bulgarian socialist youth celebrating the six prisoners’ memory. Zhelyazkova’s film’s anti-fascist camouflage manages to make its way past Bulgarian state censors, but its message also manages to pick at the growing gap between the lofty ideals of Eastern Bloc socialist states and the corruption and crack down on freedom of speech that tarnished such utopian projects.

Fast-paced editing and distortion combine with seemingly absurd performance to erect a landmark film on the collective experience of awaiting death with no timeline, pierced by ephemeral moments of solidarity under the most impossible of conditions.
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סרטה העוצמתי של בינקה ז’ליאזקובה, מהבמאיות החשובות של בולגריה והבלקן, ‘המילה האחרונה’ (1973) מתמקד בשש אסירות פוליטיות אשר מחכות להוצאתן להורג בשל פעולות ההתנגדות שהובילו נגד המונרכיה הבולגרית ובעלי בריתם הנאצים. הסרט מדלג בין העלילה המתוסרטת של “אז” וקטעים דוקומנטריים של “עכשיו” – ימיהן האחרונים אל מול חייהן לאחר המוות כסמל של התנגדות.

בזכות נקודת המבט האנטי-פשיסטית של הסרט, ז’ליאזקובה הצליחה להעביר מתחת לפני השטח ביקורת על הגבלת חופש הביטוי והשחיתות ששלטה במדינה. למרות הצנזורה המדינית המחמירה, שפסלה מספר רב של יצירות אומנות באותה תקופה, הסרט זכה לראות אור ואף התמודד בפסטיבל קאן בשנת 1974.
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