On Silenced Issues, Personal Stories and the Power of Community

Conversation with Elena Chirila, Ana Gurdiș

Interview conducted by Ira Tantsiura

The first time I saw your film, I realized it had been made with thought and care. It’s a personal story for Elena, as I understand. How did you decide to collaborate on this video poem? 

Elena: We started this project as a part of an art residency in Bucharest organized by RHEA Association, focused on the topic of arranged marriage in the Balkans. We tried hard to combine our experiences. At first I didn’t want to be the main character, because I was thinking that simply narrating my story is not enough for creating a good art piece, so we tried to focus on symbols like traditional Moldovan carpets or the white dresses that young girls wear at celebrations in schools instead. The more we tried, the harder and more complicated it got. But at this residency, we had the opportunity to discuss and to develop the project collectively in a group of women and I received a lot of support and felt that it’s enough just to tell your story directly – that is the most touching and powerful way. It gave me a sense of freedom and encouraged me to share my story with the audiences I wanted to reach. And video poems are a very apt format for such stories. So we used the video archives that I filmed and we kind of made this poem as a voiceover. I very much enjoy seeing the audience, watching their reactions. Sometimes we have people crying in the audience and it’s very touching. I feel we did something very meaningful and personally significant for me as an artist, and that’s one of the most important parts of our work.

Ana: We discussed a lot in those two weeks. I hope that safe space allowed Elena to start talking more about her personal experiences. We share the same roots and country of origin, which made us feel more connected to each other. We looked in detail at Elena’s personal archive, at footage her brother sent to us, and pictures from her childhood. They just started to come together to form this project.

I personally didn’t have that kind of experience. I’m not married. But in Moldova it’s very common to be asked when you will marry, even if you’ve just finished school, and plan to go to university. Nobody asks you about your experiences or achievements. To be a woman just means to be married and that’s it. So I think that too was a part of the topic we discussed together.

In Ukraine, we have the same issues with normative presumptions that women should be married by a certain age. We also lack sufficient  networks of support for survivors of domestic abuse. And this work is outsourced to NGOs and initiatives rather than receiving  state support. What is the situation in Moldova with these issues?

Ana: In terms of law, I think in 2022 Moldova ratified the Istanbul convention. But several weeks ago, a group of activists protested against it, because the law is not being put into practice. Domestic violence is still happening. There are some types of abuse that young women don’t even recognise as such (for example, online bullying, psychological abuse). It’s not discussed in schools, in public. Only some feminist focus groups in Chisinau are doing this work.

I made a documentary project with Victoria Pruteanu, who defended herself by taking the life of her husband. She was facing imprisonment, even though she had children, and the whole of Moldova was behind her, because she had previously reported the abuse to the police and nobody intervened. After the public outcry, her sentence was  revised and she was allowed to raise her five kids at home. But to be seen and heard, women always have to kill their abuser, as in Victoria’s case or run away from home, as in Elena’s case. And this lack of support is obvious.

Elena: I didn’t find out about all the organizations that support women, shelters and legal support services, until a few years after my escape from an abusive situation. At that time I really needed legal and psychological support, but I didn’t know where I could get it. I’m afraid our efforts as a society are not enough, because primarily middle-class women have access to these kinds of services. I was embarrassed to ask for help, to call the police, and now I regret it, because that meant I had to deal with the situation on my own. When you’re in that vulnerable position, it’s completely life-altering. Everything is falling apart in front of your eyes and you don’t know what to do, where to go. If you lack support from your parents, family or friends, and you have no contact with services – you’re basically alone facing a very big problem. I was very lucky, in that I had no kids and I did have a job. I just can’t imagine how it would have been, if I didn’t have the privilege of employment, of access to education and support from my friends and parents. Because I really felt like the law did not protect me in any way.

Both of you are working on separate projects as well. Ana, I know you previously worked as a journalist. What themes are you trying to raise both in journalism and filmmaking?

Ana: I worked as a journalist at a media NGO and I was focusing on topics about youth and people with disabilities. After 4 years I switched to cinema and joined film school in Bucharest. My first full-length documentary “Our Eve” was about a family with disabilities raising their child. When the pandemic started, I was taken aback by increasing numbers of domestic violence and I made two films on this issue 35 mm movie “His shirt” and “My Courtyard”, about Victoria Pruteanu. Currently I’m working on a documentary project about twins. One sister is in Italy and has a traditional family, but the other sibling is a non-binary person who is becoming a prominent voice in a queer community in Moldova. In my work, I focus on the stories of people from vulnerable groups. 

Also through the RHEA residency I discovered the genre of video poems and made a second poem about myself and my family, using some personal archival materials and additional footage that I found. This video poem was screened last week in Timisoara. I must say it is very hard to start working with your own story, as Elena previously mentioned, because you think it is not so interesting, but every story deserves to be told. Why not mine or yours?

Elena, I know you work in visual arts and multimedia. I came across some projects that touch on the imagery and construction of narrative around the war in Ukraine and also its impact. Can you tell us more about that?

Elena: Yes, I’m a visual artist and interested in subjects related to social, and sometimes political, issues. I’m aware that I don’t understand every aspect of every subject I work with, but I try to handle them with care. At the start of the war I was volunteering at the Romanian side of the border with Ukraine, and I was deeply traumatized by what I saw. We weren’t really physically affected, it was more mentally. Because you have this debilitating fear of potential violence. After living with it for over a year, I kind of accepted it. When we were working with Ana on the video poem, there was news regarding Transnistria and we got scared that things would start to escalate in Moldova. So that particular piece about social media reflects my fixation on the news, where you’re subject to a torrent of information and some of it is fake and very triggering. So I documented all the news that had an impact on me. The media were not interested in raising awareness, but rather in using horrific images just to increase viewing figures. I find it immensely disrespectful and exploitative to profit from the war. And once it’s no longer a hot topic, suddenly nobody talks about the war anymore.

That happens all the time. The war in Ukraine is not the only war in the world, but there is the question of power relations, of what deserves to be covered but is not. What is the situation in Moldova now?

Ana: We just had local elections in Moldova and next year we will have presidential elections. Even though we like Maya Sandu and European vectors, she’s had a lot to deal with thanks to the pandemic and the war. People get tired and frustrated when they can’t afford food and heating. And rates of emigration are high.

Elena: After the war started I took the decision that I will never return to Moldova, because I’m not strong enough to live with the fear. But my parents decided to stay. Most people accepted the situation and some of my friends, who left in the beginning, have already returned. 

Ana: I remember the first days, when I texted all my Moldavian colleagues based in Romania to meet and stay together in that hard situation, but my Romanian colleagues  knew very little about what was going on. It was hard for us to hear all this about places we’d visited, about our friends in Ukraine. After two or three days, I started to volunteer as a translator at the border. Now we are working on this documentary workshop with Romanian and Ukrainian kids. One participant, Olena, who I think is 18, is an architecture student and working on a project constructing toilets for bomb shelters in schools. And it’s very inspiring to learn from them.

Elena: It’s always hard for me to talk about this subject, but especially with you because we don’t feel even 1% of what you feel. We are safe, we’re privileged and it feels like I would diminish your experience.

It is relevant to share your experience, because this situation is traumatizing for all of us. But I wanted to come back to your work. Are you planning to collaborate on other projects? 

Elena: We’ve actually started to collaborate on the next project. Before “Tell Me a Poem” I never paired up with someone and I’ve found out that collaboration is very important because it opens up new ways of doing things. For “Tell me a poem” I came up with the story and Ana brought her skills and vision. It was completely magical because her editorial skills transformed my ideas into a visual format. And now we’re making a short animation together.

Ana: I came across some cartoons on diafilms at the flea market in Chisinau. We were raised on these cartoons and the stories they contain, so we did a two-minute film based on cut-outs from those diafilms. Elena cut out characters from the film and we edited them to match our memories of cartoons, because recollections from childhood are often partial. It was interesting but challenging work. I think we will be able to collaborate on other projects in the future.

Elena: Collaborating with others teaches you a lot about yourself: you come to understand what you are good at, your interests, how you deal with stress and delegate tasks. It’s very important for us to forge ties, help one another, share opportunities, because this is how our cultural spaces become stronger, more resilient and sustainable. Capitalism has made us think that we can survive simply as individuals and don’t need a community. Humans are becoming more and more alienated from each other, but it’s important to fight this segregation and to focus on building our communities.