“In the film, I tried to visually convey the fluidity between cultures, time and wounds that marked a piece of land stretching from the Baltic to the Adriatic. The withering of certainties that marked the end of the nineteenth century is counterbalanced by the encounter with something different and new. This, in turn, causes unexpected movements. Gestures and actions that are able to transform an individual's fragility into works of art, into a kind of dance that creates a new reality. Utopias that come true, if only for a moment,” the director of the film Jan Mozetič says. “The world is given to us when we are children, but we have to create it as adults.”
The documentary takes the viewers on an emotional journey through the concepts, cultures, innovations, and annihilations that defined central Europe between the end of the 19th and the start of the 20th century. It was a moment in history that witnessed the flourishment of a prosperous and cosmopolitan civilization in Europe. This golden period, however, did not last for long, as by the beginning of the 20th century new shadows cast a period of decline. The cosmopolitan civilization of the European “Belle Époque” found itself more suspicious and uneasy under those conditions, and things began to fall apart.
The first character presented in the documentary is the Lithuanian musician and painter Mikalojus Konstantinas Čiurlionis (1875–1911). A man whose pursuit of a personal expressive language was strongly influenced by the Russian oppression of Lithuania. He found profound inspiration in the relationship with nature, and by recovering traditional arts, which he combined with the new ideas of symbolism. By doing this, he created a new route where dreams try to influence reality.
“Čiurlionis’ works are full of symbols. One of the most popular and common symbols in his works is a king. But what is a king? Čiurlionis was always interested in the creation of the world. Who created the world? What kind of world did they create and why? As Čiurlionis wrote in a letter once, ‘I imagine a world, it's a bit strange, but I feel good in it,’” says Danutė Gruzdienė, curator at the Čiurlionis National Museum of Art, guiding viewers through his works and turbulent life story.
Close to Druskininkai, Čiurlionis' birthplace, is Białystok. At the time, the city was also a part of the Tsarist Empire. At the end of the 19th century, Białystok was a city with rapid economic growth and a predominance of Jewish residents. Nevertheless, it was shattered by plenty of intolerance instances. This was the environment that gave rise to Ludwik Zamenhof (1859–1917). When he was 15 years old, his family relocated to Warsaw. Zamenhof was the inventor of Esperanto, a worldwide language that was initially developed to fight prejudice against Jews and eventually to bring all peoples together. His response to the escalating societal tensions was an effort to bring utopia to life in response.
“In the middle of the 19th century Białystok wasn't a big city, it was a very multilingual city. Most of these people were meeting around the city hall, where there were a lot of markets. So Ludwik Zamenhof was hearing people who were talking different languages. Yiddish, Polish, German, Lithuanian, Belarusian. As a 10-year-old boy, he was dreaming about how to solve the problem of communication among these people,” says Agnieszka Kajdanowska, senior specialist at the Bialystok Cultural Centre/Ludwik Zamenhof Centre.
In the 19th century, Hungarians increasingly sought to find their voice, both in the political and cultural spheres. It was in this context that Ödön Lechner (1845–1914) attempted to shape a more Hungarian style of architecture. By working abroad, he came into contact with the late 19th-century style of Art Nouveau. He wanted to produce authentically Hungarian art rather than merely copying other trends. As a result, he included Indian and even Islamic themes. In the capital's public spaces, Lechner's architecture established a brand-new architectural style that shaped Hungarians' perceptions of their own identity.
“Lechner was quite a multicultural person, he was from Germany and his family settled down in Hungary. He attended the university in Berlin, but after his studies he went on a so-called grand tour, he visited Italy. But after his wife died, he escaped to France, where he started to work in the studio of Clément Parent, who was dealing with the reconstruction of castles. When he returned to Budapest, we are in the period of historicism, he designed different buildings, but the difference and what was new in his architecture was that he used French elements instead of the Italian neo-Renaissance, for example,” says Ester Baldavári, curator at the Hungarian Museum of Architecture.
“He was quite bohemian; he didn't like administrative things,” she says. “After he won the tender for the competition for the Hungarian Postal Savings Bank, he redesigned many elements, which wasn't popular with the politicians and the government. Due to his behavior and his architectural philosophy, after completing this building – arguably the masterpiece of his oeuvre – he didn't receive many more design proposals.”
In another context of the Austro-Hungarian Empire, more precisely in Gorizia (Gorica, SL), we find the school where Marica Nadlišek Bartol (1867–1940) studied to become a teacher. She was originally from Trieste, where she first held the position of editor of Slovenka, the first Slovenian publication devoted exclusively to women, in 1897. Marica was a pioneer in the fight for women's independence. After the end of the First World War, it was in Trieste (at this point included already in the Italian territory) that the first fascist action in Europe took place, the fire at the Narodni Dom (the Slovenian Cultural Centre) in 1920.
“Marica Nadlisek was a defender of women's rights, she stood up for the equality of women in higher education as well as their equality in public life. She strongly believed that women were indispensable for an ethnic community to thrive. Marica fought for women's emancipation, and she portrayed emancipated girls in her works,” says Marta Verginella, historian at University of Ljubljana. “Hence, her disappointment after her marriage to postal clerk Gregor Bartol, who persuaded her to leave the editorship of the first Slovenian women's newspaper and to break certain intellectual friendships. This breakoff was extremely painful for Marica. Although she continued with publicist work despite the many children she gave birth to, there remained in her some bitterness for not being able to fulfil some emancipatory model in her own life.”
“The present is very much informed by the past. Our lives are mosaics, the present is not only the right now, but also what others achieved before us,” says Jasmina Jerant, publicist and guide of feminist tours. “In the late 19th century, women began to get more involved in the cultural and social life, and by the end of the 19th century, they began to demand voting rights through the Slovenian teachers association. This shift towards women's rights, not only political, but also economic and social rights, was an important wheel through which women liberated themselves in terms of clothing as well. They got rid of corsets, skirts began to turn into trousers, they became autonomous and independent.”
“It is paramount for plurality that different experiences be considered, as far as discourse and society are concerned. Once we recognize, acknowledge and respect them, only then can we say that there is plurality in our society,” she says.
In the places visited by the documentary, people were confronted with various kinds of conflicts, such as ethnic, linguistic, religious, and gender. These historical conflicts, have rotted European history, and have penetrated the souls of European people and become part of them. However, this unique experience of suffering does not represent just a spiral of turmoil, but also a starting point on which to create new proposals, optimistic visions, and ideas, to be more human. A shared memory that enriches us and makes us more varied, and welcoming.
