The Story of the Year of 1912 in the Village of Elza Darzins scrutinises the Australian film industry in a most entertaining satire indeed.

TSotYo1912itVoED? No, too long. Henceforth (mostly) ‘Elza’s Village’.

Erika Cavanagh is an unemployed school teacher who doesn’t want to take up a position she’s been offered in outback NSW, when her flatmate Louise, an aspiring actor, takes over the task of scanning the job ads in the newspaper. (Yes, this was in The Olden Days, it’s set in the 1980s.) Louise finds a job that she thinks is perfect for Erika. The NSW State Film Board needs a translator fluent in Latvian and English.

Erika isn’t really fluent, having learned it only from her mother who’d left Latvia years ago, and they don’t hang out with the local Latvian community. Erika’s idiom would therefore be out-of-date, and she doesn’t know the cultural factors. But Louise, an indefatigable friend, pressures her into applying and she bluffs her way through to get the job. Which is not too hard because her boss Stuart Cullen is more interested in his own opinions than in listening to her, and he could span a great ignorance with a couple of generalisations and several detailed comparisons.

Erika’s job is to write the sub-titles for an art-house film called The Story of the Year of 1912 in the Village of Elza Darzins on loan from the Soviets. Directed by Balodis and produced by Leblenis, it’s about ‘the peculiar tragedy of the peasants’, and was created by these two (presumably fictional) Latvians under the iron rule of the Soviets in the postwar era. It’s amazing that a Latvian peasant (Balodis) got funding from the Soviets to make it in the first place. But having funded it, the Soviets then suppressed it, and the film has never been released. No one knows why. But by a fluke, Cullen has been able to get a copy, to screen at the Sydney Film Festival.

Well, it may be the era of Gorbachev’s Glasnost and Perestroika, but this still makes the screening a coup for the Sydney Film Festival. The Soviets, however, must still be handled delicately so Cullen is very pleased with himself.

To read the rest of my review please visit https://anzlitlovers.com/2023/07/03/the-story-of-the-year-of-1912-in-the-village... ( )