No to war
(28.09.24) A Statement on the Signing of the Palestinian Campaign for the Academic and Cultural Boycott of Israel (PACBI)
Samizdat Eastern European Film Festival stands unequivocally with Palestine against 76 years of occupation and the ongoing genocide in Gaza.
When we started Samizdat in 2022, one of our primary principles in developing our first programme was centred around solidarity with and representation of anti-Imperialist and decolonial struggles, with a careful and dedicated focus on the war in Ukraine.
From the beginning, our opposition to this illegal incursion on Ukrainian sovereignty has been a core facet of our identity. In light of this, we feel that it would be a violation of these principles to remain silent on Israel’s ongoing genocide in Gaza and continued expansion into the West Bank.
As film programmers, we strongly believe in the power of narratives to change perceptions and draw attention to atrocities around the world. We also recognise the importance of stories in resisting cultural erasure and imposed amnesia. In an age of information overload and fluidity, practices of documentation and archiving are crucial for oppressed and defending societies to remain in control of their stories. Our programme, therefore, has highlighted the voices of Ukrainians living under occupation and navigating the liminal space between free and occupied territories, and we grounded our curatorial choices in attempts to tackle the dominant narratives of victimisation and dehumanisation.
While we acknowledge the distinct differences between the war in Ukraine and the ongoing genocide in Gaza, including the role of Islamophobia and systemic racism in the disparities of media coverage, we follow our Ukrainian colleagues in emphasising the shared core of colonial violence that links these struggles. We believe that the pursuit of global anti-imperial and anti-colonial solidarity is a critical step toward a world with fewer inequalities and injustices—a step to which we, as cultural workers, scholars, and programmers, have a moral duty to contribute. From our perspective, ignoring the brutal violations of the Palestinian right to self-determination contradicts this mission and the core values of our festival.
A note on the wider persecution of indigenous peoples
As a festival, Samizdat works with filmmakers hailing from and working across a troubled and fractured socio-cultural space. We stand in solidarity with all victims of genocide, all indigenous peoples and everyone forced to live in precarious situations of war across the Caucasus, Central, North and Western Asia, and Central and Eastern Europe. In particular, we stand with:
The indigenous peoples of Qırım/Crimea – QırımtatarlAr/Crimean Tatars, Krymchaks and Karaimes – who face disproportionate persecution from the russian occupational authorities;
the indigenous Armenian community of the former Nagorno-Karabakh Autonomous Oblast (NKAO) and all other individuals displaced from their homes in the former NKAO, The Nakhchivan Autonomous Oblast, other parts of Azerbaijan and Armenia by military violence and ethnic cleansing. Due to Azerbaijan’s humanitarian blockade and subsequent ethnic cleansing of the former-NKAO (both illegal under international law) last year, we have made the curatorial decision not to screen films from Azerbaijan this year;
the indigenous Pamiri people of Tajikistan, who have faced decades of discrimination, repression and forced assimilation policies;
the people of Qaraqalpaqstan Respublikası/The Republic of Karakalpakstan, who face a humanitarian crisis, internet blockades and unprecedented repression at the hands of the government of Uzbekistan;
the indigenous Abkhaz and South Ossetian peoples of Georgia, the Pontic Greek community in Abkhazia and all other individuals displaced and otherwise affected by russian imperialism and ethno-nationalist violence in the country;
all indigenous peoples under the colonial russian administration and, in particular, the so-called ‘small-numbered indigenous people of Siberia and the far-North’, such as the Nenets of Yamal, who face man-made environmental catastrophes that threaten their culture and physical survival, as a result of russia’s colonial extractive practices.