Documentary without borders: Salomé Lamas’s Extinction and the orientalism of post-soviet borders and space

Abstract

Portuguese director Salomé Lamas’s experimental documentary Extinction (2018) is a poetic exploration of post-Soviet and post-Socialist space. The documentary follows Kolja, a Moldovan national living in the de facto state of Transnistria, a breakaway region on the border of Moldova and Ukraine. Shot in stark black and white, the film seeks to investigate the current geopolitical borders of eastern Europe by undermining those between documentary and fiction. It combines modes of the essay film, ethnographic documentary, road movie — even the paranormal spy thriller — to interrogate the subject of borders and the borders around its subject. Critics have thus far failed to note how the film exoticizes the image of eastern Europe. Using Extinction as a case study, I would like to question how experimental ethnographic documentary that blends modes of fact and fiction addresses issues of borders, citizenship, and identity in post-Socialist and post-Soviet space. Extinction, I suggest, misrepresents particular post-Socialist and Soviet spaces like Transnistria and its bordering countries in the interest of making an abstract global commentary on borders. In the film, experimental devices intended to question borders end up voiding post-Socialist spaces of their historical meaning and commodifying them for a film festival market.