TOVARISCH, I AM NOT DEAD

UK, 2007, 85 minutes, Colour.
Directed by Stuart Urban

Tovarisch, I Am Not Dead was the title of a 1980 autobiography by Garri Urban, the father of the film director. There were many highly dramatic episodes in the book: growing up in Poland, an escape to Romania which was thwarted by capture and internment, time in the Ukraine and then travel after the war to England. The title comes from an escape incident where Garri plays dead to survive and when approached by a Russian soldier, tells him, ‘Tovarisch, I Am Not Dead’.

With home movies, Stuart Urban shows how his father was a larger than life figure, strong, opinionated, loud but also secretive. Urban makes his growing up and the film selection an interesting childhood memoir.

However, with the fall of the Soviet empire, Garri Urban was able to visit Russia and other eastern European countries. His son accompanied him with his camera. Quite a journey it is – although they discover various people, including an old woman who was in love with Garri in the 1940s, and his brother comes to visit from Israel, Stuart is told by Russian officials that there are some stories about the past which cannot be released and would make his hair stand on end. Sorry to say, curiosity about these episodes is not satisfied. Was he a spy? Did he do deals…?

What the film does is offer a portrait of Garri – and we can respond in many ways as he is dominating, attractive, gung-ho, careful, a showman.

We share Stuart’s surprise at what he does discover, about the experience of the war, of the Russian gulags, of people in the Ukraine whom his father visits and who welcome him after forty years.

This is a very interesting ‘first person documentary’.