Kino Reticulator

Michael commented on one of the Kalinovski Square posts, asking if I had seen the 6-part documentary, “A lesson of Belarusian,” that had been posted on YouTube by the same person. I hadn’t, but I just now watched the first part, even though I should really be working on other things.

Already it has helped fill in some gaps in my knowledge about Belorusia, such as the fact that there was a time of greater freedom before Lukashenko came to power. I’ll be watching the rest of it, even though I can’t kill two birds with one stone and learn some Russian while watching it. This documentary seems to be in the Belarusian language. I recognize some words that seem to be very similar in the two languages, and there are probably more that I miss because my Russian vocabulary is quite limited. But a lot of the Belarusian seems very different. (I had the same experience when listening to some Ukranian recently. It was more different from Russian than I had expected.) But it still is worth watching.
And I’d have to use the subtitles whether it was in Russian or Belarusian.

I’ve been showing my parents some of the things one can find on YouTube and Internet television. Mostly it’s been Bach music clips of various kinds that I had been bookmarking in preparation for their visit– child keyboard prodigies, ancient organs, choral groups, etc. But Dad was also interested in foreign movies. He has macular degeneration such that he can’t read words on the screen unless they are very large, but he can recognize faces and seems to be able to make out a lot of other details. There are a few Russian movies on YouTube, but not much in the way of really good stuff. I have to read the subtitles to him, so it’s somewhat of a cacophony — people speaking Russian while I’m reading English subtitles as well as I can in a much less expressive voice. And then if I get a coughing fit that’s leftover from my recent bout with bronchitis and pneumonia, Myra steps in and reads for me.

I told Dad that one can’t watch the news on RTR Planeta for long without seeing Vladimir Putin, and indeed we did get to see him on the evening’s news. It seemed to be in a story connected to the Russian opposition to the U.S. and NATO. Then we watched some teevee from Hong Kong, and then I stumbled on a German television station that featured naked women dancing. Myra ordered me to close it quickly, though she found it somewhat amusing. After that I was more careful about not just picking stations randomly, but I was gunshy and didn’t find much.

Finally I remembered the documentary, Kalinovski Square. That was a success. It sustained everyone’s interest. We watched the first four parts tonight and will continue tomorrow. Myra and I had watched it together once, and I had watched all of it at least once more for the language-learning. Mom came and got interested, too. It has to be difficult trying to get the full meaning out of my reading of the subtitles, when even the subtitles are probably an inadequate translation of the original Russian. It’s a shame Dad can’t read them, because it’s very humorously done — in a dry, ironic fashion — even though it’s about a very serious subject. Just the same, everyone was fascinated (and appalled at Alexander Lukashenka).

One thing that’s disappointing is to see that some of those segments haven’t been viewed by more than 500 people — and I’m probably at least three of the 500 myself. The documentary is banned in Belarus. One can learn from it not only about Belarus but general principles about how democracy is suppressed.