Who If Not Us?
Who If Not Us? streams for free during the entire month of December as part of ArteKino
The film title is a phrase built into the 21st-century humanist’s vocabulary. It comes with the package of empathetic morality that defines the best of us. It also has its origins in the ancient Jewish philosopher Hillel the Elder, who taught: “if I am not for myself, then who will be for me? But when I am for myself, then what am ‘I’? And if not now, when?”. Maybe there is a sly play behind director Nicole Medvecka’s title choice for her new doc detailing the subculture life inhabited by the now famous SHUM Rave DJs and artists in the far eastern part of Ukraine before and during the war. The title itself inspires action and makes the action personable: We must act. But, perhaps – just perhaps – the title choice intentionally harkens back to its Jewish origins as a nod toward the Ukraine of old, where nearly one in three citizens was Jewish. The Russians – just as they are doing now – are in part responsible for the destruction of that culture.
Who If Not Us? is a brief (the movie has a duration of 66 minutes), mostly non-narrative portrait of young artistic adults in the eastern part of Ukraine, about 60 kilometres from the front line. On the second intertitle, a few minutes into the film, there is an easy-to-spot grammatical error in a line describing the new context for the DJs after the start of the war: “Some of their homes are under russian occupation since then.” The word “Russian” should be capitalised as it is a proper noun. This is not playing grammar police or lambasting a team of small filmmakers whose first language is not English. This “error” is a representative testament to the incredibly personal and homey documentary that follows. And at home, it is okay to make mistakes. Perhaps not coincidentally, “SHUM” is all capitalised.