Naemi Victoria faces the ghosts of history in her review of this psychedelic docu-essay.
A tour de force of queer cinema, Uchronia is camp, queer, and uncompromising. Created by artist-academic duo, Fil Ieropoulos (Director) and Foivos Dousos (Screenplay), the docu-essay unearths stories that did not make the history books. Rejecting glossy liberalism, this film reinvigorates an artistic counterculture in an era of social media and streaming services. Through a haunting reimagining of the past, the ghosts of revolutionaries – queer activists and radical thinkers like Emma Goldman, Edward Said, and Marsha P. Johnson – tackle Europe’s cultural and political conventions. This film’s impressive philosophical fierceness casts a caustic eye on Europe’s blind spots and deliberate silences.
Uchronia’s ghosts lament the future – our present. A present that never realised an end to inequality and bears the marks of colonialism, fascism, and the ongoing oppression of marginalised identities. At a time when the claim to common sense is appropriated by the right, Ieropoulos and Dousos’ docu-essay is a defiant challenge to popular culture that takes audiences on a thought-provoking voyage through the alleyways of revolutionary histories.
The film is loosely based on the elusive poem Une Saison en Enfer (A Season in Hell), which is written by 19th-century French poet Arthur Rimbaud – social outcast and celebrated creative visionary. Inspired by the poem’s structure, Uchronia articulates its political statements in episodes. Snapshots include the European anthem, Ode to Joy, sung eerily off-key, which leads into the Nazi appropriation of the Olympic Games in Berlin in 1936, including the introduction of the modern Olympic torch relay. In instances like this, the essay casts a critical eye towards the past and traces the ideological foundations from which contemporary cultural practices emerged. This dialogue between the ‘then’ and ‘now’ is led by spectres who rise from beyond the grave to push back against the current rise of nationalism. Figures like ‘Deleuzian Bodybuilder’ take to the podium to denounce its disastrous return. Patriotism divides geographies and people, the ghosts warn. Its premise of an alleged superiority of one locale over another quickly slips into the realm of fascism – an ideological snare that also captures queerness in the tilt to the right.
The figure of the ghost is central to Uchronia’s narrative. Spectres stand in for the stories that never got told. They are there but not quite, an absence that draws attention itself, because there is something – or someone – missing. When subcultures, for example, fade into obscurity, their disappearance conjures this metaphoric ghost (Derrida’s work on hauntology lays the theoretical foundation for this; Mark Fisher’s Ghosts of My Life talks about it too, but is a tad more accessible). Uchronia articulates these absences through provocative visuals and politically charged commentary. Emma Goldman’s haunting presence states that: “In the so-called enlightened Europe of today, you are not allowed to speak about Palest-,” her speech cuts off with a glitch. Here, Uchronia steps out of its cinematic realm and into the reality of its world premiere at the 76th Berlinale earlier this year. Goldman’s comment is an uncanny foreshadowing of the festival’s opening press conference, during which jury president Wim Wenders responded to a question about Germany’s position on Gaza – at the same time, the conference’s live broadcast broke off. Berlinale later issued a statement that this was due to a technical error.
Uchronia’s reimagined spectres reject ideological absolutes and condemn nation states for writing revolutionary voices out of their narratives of nationhood, either by violently oppressing them or repurposing their legacies as symbols of national belonging. The docu-essay conjures the ghosts of Alan Turing and Marsha P. Johnson, who revolt against their stories’ appropriation by the very states that not only failed to protect their human rights but caused their suffering. Turing was convicted by a court of gross indecency as a gay man and chose hormone treatment (“chemical castration”) as an alternative to imprisonment. In 2013, almost six decades after his death, he received a royal pardon – now a celebrated genius proudly reclaimed as a British national. The case of Johnson or Turing shows that the very nature of their struggle rejects the canonisation of their stories. It defies their non-conformity to social norms during their lifetimes.
Today’s version of queerness, which permeates popular media, no longer dreams in radicalisms and drastic changes, the ghosts further critique. Instead, it has turned into a tampered complicity that upholds the very system that oppresses it. They disapprove of marriage as the supposed pinnacle of equality for selling queer liberation short. Rainbow flags and a month in the spotlight are not enough for the revolutionaries of the past. By far. For them, they transform apprehension into appearance. When absorbed into this cultural mainstream, queerness loses its political bite, Uchronia suggests, while its ghosts put pop icon Andy Warhol on trial. He is judged for succumbing to mass culture and condemned with a mash-up of Baudrillard and Adorno (Adorn-YES!). This surreal scene highlights the ghosts’ distinctly different take on modernity; for them, radical politics have watered down into capitalist complicity, and Warhol’s pop art is an emblem of it.
Above all, Uchronia is camp (check out Susan Sontag’s essay on this): subversive and defiant of labels. Its combination of archival footage, nightmarish acoustics, and obscure interiors creates an uncanny audio-visual texture (sprinkling in some Freud here), which serves as an atmospheric backdrop for a kaleidoscope of critical thought. Its ghostly apparitions remind audiences that heteronormativity is man-made. So is capitalism. Neither is a preordained given, nor a fixed category, but part of an ongoing political project that constantly updates what “normal” means (Gramsci’s work on hegemony is worth looking into here). The docu-essay then clothes this rejection of mainstream culture in flamboyant theatrical performance. Costumes and make-up range from fantastical to futuristic and resonate with the pieces’ challenge of normativity. Together with the actors’ performances, its mise-en-scène is something to marvel at and incessantly innovative.
Drawing on a range of philosophical perspectives, this text raises more questions than answers. It is not always possible to fully grasp the ghosts’ debates, which can be disorienting at times. Rimbaud’s poem might provide a loose map for the narrative structure – but it does not guide you through this complex critique of normativity and pop culture; that task is up to you. Uchronia’s timeliness and political urgency, however, are more than enough reason to venture into this uncharted territory. It revives a political spirit that will haunt you long after its showing.
Uchronia premiered decidedly political and politicising at the 76th Berlinale earlier this year, with limited screenings taking place in the coming months.
Film Ireland Editor
