Cinema in the ‘local perfect position’: children and education in the documentary work of Xhanfise Keko

Abstract

Xhanfise Keko, the sole woman director of communist Albania, has recently been discovered by the international academic and critical community, and her films are, for the first time, reaching global audiences. To date, such recognition has focused on her fiction films made between 1972 and 1985, which were most noted for the director’s subtle work with child actors. Often deemed a director of children’s films, Keko managed to work safely within the system, yet transcend its confines. Situating her non-fiction work within the historical context of the Albanian documentary, this article will explore her career as a documentarian and director of newsreels from the time of her studies in Moscow in the early 1950s through 1971, prior to her emergence as a director of fiction films. Its approach to her work will be mediated in part by a 2017 documentary by Mevlan Shanaj, Koha e pelikulës: Xhanfise Keko/Xhanfise Keko: A Woman Director in the Time of Celluloid, a work that reveals the importance of Keko, not only for contemporary Albania, but also for today’s international audiences. Keko’s documentaries comprise vivid depictions of what was arguably the most closed society of the 20^th century. Although highly conventional in structure and thematics, they are clear forerunners of the innovative ways in which she fought for authenticity in her fiction films. Keko’s quest as an artist was to learn more about her craft and the children whom she depicted and with whom she worked.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.

Notes

1 Coincidentally, in what concerns the argument here, as Victoria Massey (2000) has asserted, the present perfect fulfils a similar role in Albanian to its English counterpart.

2 Keko’s first name, Xhanfise, is relatively rare in Albanian. On many of her film credits, it is misspelled as ‘Xhanfize’, which reflects an easier pronunciation for Albanians. A street in Tirana bearing her name is designated ‘Rruge Xhanfize Keko’. The ‘xh’ of the director’s first name is pronounced roughly the same as the ‘j’ sound in John’.

3 In Mevlan Shanaj’s documentary Koha e pelikulës: Xhanfise Keko/Xhanfise Keko: A Woman Director in the Time of Celluloid (2017), which will be referenced throughout this discussion, veteran Kinostudio director Viktor Gjika, known for such films as Clear Horizons/Horizonte të hapura (1968) and White Roads/Rrugë të bardha (1974), asserts that since Keko directed for children, and hence for the future, her loss is greater than that of any other director. The importance of Keko as a director of children’s films is further underscored by Mark Cousins in his documentary A Story of Children and Film (2015), which features a discussion of Tomka and His Friends, is one of the first non-Albanian critics to have recognized Xhanfise Keko outside of her homeland and to have fostered her posthumous international celebrity. Bruce Williams, on the other hand, has strongly argued that Keko’s fictional work cannot be described as ‘children’s films’. Rather, she uses children as a vehicle to explore issues of equal importance to adults (Demo 2016). In light of this perspective, the present discussion will avoid designating Keko a director of children’s films. Rather, it will refer to her work with child actors and to depictions of childhood in her film.

4 In the Albanian alphabet, there are a number of ‘letters’ which consist of multiple characters, as in the ‘xh’ of Xhanfise. The final letter of the alphabet is ‘zh’, which has a sound very similar to the ‘s’ of ‘leisure’.

5 Shanaj founded Zig-Zag film in 2001, with the goal of providing a venue for the free expression of contemporary issues and problems. In light of Albania’s circuitous path to democracy—we need only recall that its regime was the last of the Eastern European state to fall, and moreover the country plunged into civil war in 1997, the result of failed government-condoned pyramid scheme--, the path to an open society has indeed been a zig-zag, and the company’s name reflects this dynamic.

The Time of Celluloid was produced by Zig-Zag in cooperation with Albanian Radio-Television and the National Center for Cinematography. It was intended to be the first in a series of documentaries on Kinostudio directors. The second documentary, which is still in the planning stage, is likely to focus on Kristaq Dhamo, director of Albania’s first feature film, Tana (1958). The Time of Celluloid is a 60-minute work primarily comprised of five elements: 1) extensive interview footage with Xhanfise Keko; 2) numerous clips from her films; 3) comments from her family and personal friends; 3) assessment of her work by Albanian colleagues; 4) testimonies by the child actors who worked with her, and 5) perspectives by international critics and film professionals. The film’s structure can best be described as a tapestry that weaves together these discourses, and although it eschews a rigid chronology, it roughly travels from her childhood and education to her death. As the film approaches its conclusion, it becomes increasingly more personal, and brief mention is made of personal tragedies that marked her later years.

6 The Albanian State Film Archives (Arkivi Qendror Shtetëtor i Filmit) have digitized and provide free access to hundreds of these documentary films on their website at http://www.aqshf.gov.al/arkiva-1-2.html

7 Keko’s personal and professional relationship with her husband is discussed at length in both her autobiography and in Shanaj’s film.

8 Stratobërdha’s existing documentary work has been highly edited. The Albanian State Film Archives (Arkivi Qendror Shtetëtor provide free online access to the afore-mentioned films at http://www.aqshf.gov.al/arkiva-kerko-1.html?category=2&title=&screenwriter=stratoberdha&description=

9 It is significant to note that Hakani, who had pursued film studies at FAMU in Prague, would later become the director of Kinostudio’s second feature film, Debatik (1961).

10 No director is credited for Bekim Fehmiu in Albania.This Fehmiu documentary attests to a highly politicized move on the part of the Albanian government. It was hoped that Fehmiu would star in an epic film about Skanderbeu, Albania’s national hero. For further discussion of Bekim Fehmiu in Albania, see Williams 2007.

11 One recalls the dynamics of camaraderie between Albanians and Soviets depicted in Kujtom Çashku and Piro Milkani’s Face to Face (1979) and of the film as testimony ‘to the years of friendship and community, which are now only remembered by older Albanians [… and] come face to face with the human side of historical processes that constructed communist Albania and which still inform it today’ (Williams 2016b, np).

12 Another visual cue here underscores the proximity between Albania and the Soviet Union; Kinostudio’s main building was modeled on the Cathedral of Vilnus.

13 In the descriptions provided for the newsreels and documentaries, there is inconsistency in the spelling of Keko’s first name. Together with the alternation between ‘Xhanfise’ and ‘Xhanfize’, one also encounters the spelling ‘Zhanfise’. In the films of the early 50s, she is credited as Xhanfise Çipi.

14 Her son, Teodor Keko, was born in 1958. She may well have taken a hiatus to care for him as an infant. Teodor would later become a noted writer of poetry and prose. For an homage to Keko on the 20^th anniversary of his death, see Yzeiri 2018.

15 Gërmenji, who played a pivotal role in the establishment of the Autonomous Albanian Republic of Korça in 1916, an undertaking supported by the occupying French forces, was ultimately executed by the same forces following what is widely considered to have been a mistrial. Gërmenji was subsequently deemed to be a national hero. For an extended discussion of the life and work of Gërmanji, see Piro Tako’s Themistokli Gërmenji

16 Kristaq Dhamo, discussion in The Time of Celluloid. The lives and work of the majority of the Albanian film professionals who appear in The Time of Celluloid are discussed in considerable detail in Abaz Hoxha’s Enciklopedi e kinematofrafisë shqiptare, a significant reference work published in 2002.

17 In 2017, Mark Cousins published in Sight and Sound an outcry against the Albanian Institute for Communist Crimes proposal that films from the communist era be banned from television broadcast.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Bruce Williams

Bruce Williams is Professor of Cultural Studies in the Department of Languages and Cultures and co-coordinator of the program in International Cinema at the William Paterson University of New Jersey. He has published extensively in the areas of cinema history, film theory, Latin American and Eastern European cinemas, and language and cinema. He is the author, with Keumsil Kim-Yoon, of Two Lenses on the Korean Ethos: Key Cultural Concepts and Their Appearance in Cinema. His current research focuses on Albanian cinema, with particular emphasis on the Kinostudio era, the transition to international coproduction, and women directors. Williams is at work on a book-length manuscript on Albanian cinema. His article, ‘It’s a Wonderful Job: Women at Work in the Cinema of Communist Albania’, published in Studies in Eastern European Cinema in 2015 received the 2016 award for best essay in the Central, Eastern, and Southern European Media Special Interest Group of the Society for Cinema and Media Studies.