Review: Generations of Images (2025)
Diagonale
Documentary Competition
To paraphrase Leo Tolstoy’s quote and apply it to the second half of 20th-century European politics: “All prosperous, capitalist countries look alike, while every communist country is miserable in its own way.” The quote also applies to the 90s after the communist regimes fell: the capitalist countries of the West continued to evolve their system. In contrast, the post-communist countries had to endure the transition to a capitalist economy, and each individual transition left different marks.
It seems that Albania drew the short straw both in communism and post-communism. Their communist dictator, Enver Hoxha, and the regime he established after World War II were at the top of the table regarding both the brutality and the bizarreness in the Eastern Block. It was comparable only to Ceauseşescu’s Romania regarding the terror, paranoia and poverty, but with an additional angle of unpredictability since the dictator changed the country’s geopolitical alignments and every change was followed by purges in the Party’s “upper- and mid-management”. The transition times opened rifts between the classes, culminating in a short civil unrest after the collapse of the pyramidal schemes in 1997.
The relatively recent history of Albania attracted the Austrian filmmaker Johannes Gierlinger to try to understand it and put it in a certain perspective, so we got Generations of Images. History and its echoes are definitely Gierlinger’s topic, which could also be noted from his previous feature-length documentary work, Past Futures. After the world premiere at Bergamo, we caught Generation of Images at the national one at Diagonale.
Gierlinger approaches the topic as an essayist, digging through the public and private archives, commenting on the things he found and letting others do the same thing to open a dialogue between the two times, both brutal in their own ways. In the archival footage, we can see the parades thrown for Hoxha, where seemingly exalted people try to feel and memorise every word he speaks. We can see the lavish lifestyle he enjoyed, complete with a modern villa, Mercedes Benz limousine and trips abroad to the European capitals of Paris and Vienna with his family clan while the people starved. We can also see the short excerpts from the 1991 revolution when the citizens turned against the party they seemingly believed in, blowing their anger on Hoxha statues. For the 1997 riots, Gierlinger uses excerpts from a black-and-white documentary filmed on the spot.
To open the dialogue between the past and the present, Gierlinger also films some new material. Some of the elderly people express their nostalgia for the bygone times, while others who were the victims of repression highlight its bad sides. On the other hand, young people talk about the challenges of the present and the capitalism that comes from abroad to exploit the domestic workforce and conquer the market. The paradox is that it happens on the call of the prime minister, who is the leader of the Socialist Party. However, the film moves away from strictly a historical and political examination because of a test the filmmaker invents for some of his younger subjects. Namely, they had to read and analyse a poem written during the communist regime and to understand it, they used both their own instincts and their parents’ stories.
At one point, Gierlinger states that equality without freedom is a prison, while freedom without equality is a jungle. Albania seemed to jump from the former to the latter without even the vaguest attempt to create some balance. However, the filmmaker does not simply draw the conclusions for us, the viewers, but leaves us to ponder on the topic while demonstrating technical skills and correct choices, such as filming on 16mm. Hence, the newly filmed material fits (although not seamlessly) with the archival one and the “strikes” of droning music to separate the chapters in his free-wheeling essay. With a runtime of 103 minutes, Generations of Images might be prone to unnecessary repetitions at certain points, but even with them, it is never boring. It is definitely a fine piece of documentary cinema.
Original title:
Generationen von Bildern
Year:
2025
Runtime:
103’
Country:
Austria
Languages:
Albanian, German, English
Directed
by: Johannes Gierlinger
Written
by: Johannes Gierlinger
Cinematography
by: Johannes Gierlinger
Editing
by: Johannes Gierlinger
Music
by: Benjamin Klug, Gökar Arslan, Tefta
Tashko-Koço
Sound design by:
Johannes Gierlinger, Florian Kindlinger
Sound
recording by: Mira Klug, Jan
Zischka
Produced by:
Johannes Gierlinger, Lara Bellon
Support
by: BMKÖS – innovative film, CINE
ART, Stadt Wien MA 7, Land Salzburg Kultur
