My Perestroika (2011)

When does history become history?  There is uncategorized historical detail that encompasses everything in the past time continuum, and then there are the moments that make you aware of yourself and your surroundings suddenly, in revelation, that makes you blurt out-loud, "I just witnessed history," or something to that effect.  Historic history, if you will: the kind that's qualified and remembered even if it is something you did not live through yourself.  A thing that embeds itself into a total consciousness of a society; the essence of its collectively branded self, perpetuated as a legitimizing indicator of what that historical moment actually was and has come to mean.  How you arrive at widespread historical agreement is confusing and deceptive, particularly if the historical event in question is one that took place in your own lifetime, for what if your personal memories--your unique understanding--of an event doesn't match the story popularly held?  The discrepancy of one's personal memories are a side matter for later thought.  For now I want to hone in on the process of history-making and the kind of self-consciousness it--the history-making thing--has to have in order to survive a long-term frame of time, that is, the process of consciously making "one for the record books."

I'm fascinated by this within the context of the new documentary film My Perestroika (2011) by Robin Hessman, a film whose majority of footage is derived from old 8mm home movie reels starring its five primary characters.  They are a mixed group of thirty-something Russian citizens who came of age during the dissolution of the U.S.S.R.  Their reels of film are long and pristine.  Starting within the household of Borya and Lyuba Meyerson who grew up across the street from one another, we get to know them and their childhood friends and acquaintances.  All five are from roughly the same neighborhood and they all went to school together, so Borya Meyerson's home movies capture--by virtue of mere vicinity--the film's other four subjects, Lyuba, Ruslan, Olga and Andrei, as well.  That the film carries footage of each of these characters is necessary to know, firstly, so you know how the documentary is structured.  My Perestroika is a combination of this 8mm footage and present-day interviews with its grown subjects.  In some scenes, footage of the same location (a shot of Borya entering the front door of the apartment, for example) is spliced together from the two different time periods, giving us a sense of uncanniness, downright spookiness, but also sheer amazement that the footage should exist for the comparison.  The extant body of silent film reels were available to cover each character with a strong, if somewhat ineffable, level of historical accuracy.  But the mere availability of these film reels serves as the preface to a much larger question: why were so many spools of film purposefully shot in regular routine and in great detail and kept on record?  Everyone nowadays has a video camera to capture family moments, but few (with the exception of Exit Through The Gift Shop's (2010) obsessive videographer, Thierry Guetta) have documented their family and friends' lives as well as Borya Meyerson's father.  Robin Hessman: "Borya opened up a closet stacked with 8mm film cans--his father had been obsessed with making home movies.  To my utter amazement, he had even followed Borya into school many times and filmed his classmates!"

Borya's father, apparently, made it his business to author history.  By the simple practice of committing the regular dealings of his family and community to film, he gave meaning to the mundane that might have been forgotten within the larger context of the documentary's subject, Perestroika, or the total restructuring of the Russian government in 1991.  If Perestroika is the "historic" event, widely covered by the media at the time, what life was like as a kid in propagandistic Soviet society in the 70s and 80s becomes relatively minor by comparison.  Yet, the arc of the film is made by the comparison of this day-to-day life in the Soviet Union versus revolutionary Russia in 1991, as well as the decades that succeed it up to the present.  In the film, each of the characters recount the stories of their childhood.  They talk about their friends and neighbors, the clothes they wore, their first day of school; and while this is happening we get a glimpse of them all on Borya's family films.  The first day of school in Soviet Russia (September 1st) is a ceremonial day.  Formal dress is required, and bouquets of flowers are brought to school administrators and teachers.  It's a moment documented on Borya's films that is later superimposed with the same event taking place in the present day.  This time, Lyuba and Borya, and Andrei take their own kids to school.  The dress is still formal.  The blooming flowers are still in arm.  As the comparative story shows us, the value of certain cultural and social institutions are unchanged even after 30 years, and in spite of the highly-documented historic revolution of 1991.  Which leads me back to my original question, when does history become history?  While there may not always be widespread media coverage to show it, in reality, everyday is one for the record books.