The Problem of Problema
In 2009, an outdoor conference was held in Bebelplatz square, located in the Mitte district of Berlin. A select group consisting of one hundred prominent authors, professors, biologists, artists, journalists, philosophers and humanitarian activists from around the world was assembled within the square at what could only be called the world’s largest round table. One hundred digital cameras were set up to simultaneously film each of the subjects as they were asked one hundred questions. One hundred frontal shots, from one hundred cameras, each placed the same distance away from the person speaking.
Translation devices assisted with the presentation of the questions to this global panel. Each question was submitted by concerned citizens, academics and activists from around the world and the discussion was moderated by actor Willem Dafoe. The focus of this 100-headed interview was to formulate a basis for illustrating the human predicament at this point in its history, as well as offer ideas about where it’s headed and what can be done to remedy the global crisis. Made at the close of the first decade of the new century, Ralf Schmerberg’s Problema (2010) was intended as a unilateral crisis conference for the world at large.
The 2009 Conference at Bebelplatz square in Berlin
This public square, located within an east-west thoroughfare in the heart of the city, was one of the infamous sites of Nazi book burnings during the Third Reich. So it seems appropriate for Bebelplatz to serve as the site for an enlightened discussion regarding what to do about a world in crisis, the nature of which is constructive, sentient and humane. The questions asked are monumental in scale. For all purposes, they are The Big Questions with respect to the most urgent and serious issues facing humanity today. The panel itself comprises a kind of anti-Nationalist United Nations, with each contributor speaking as if they were addressing the world as a whole, rather than their own countrymen specifically.
There’s a general air of cooperation and understanding about the proceedings, and despite the grave and sometimes defeating nature of the responses given, it’s relatively cheery and hopeful. Of course, not every interviewee may agree with the opinions of every other interviewee, but the Bebelplatz conference seems to have been conducted in the spirit of humanism, respect for the planet, and a disdain for authoritarianism and its ongoing projects. It could be looked at as a blueprint for how the human race should proceed carefully going forward.
The problem with all of this is that almost no one seems to know Problema exists. It is not the nature of the ideas presented in the film or their blunt delivery that impairs the potential of this film to reach anyone with a conscience and a stake in the future of the world, but rather the ancient and hideous nature of its inescapable fate as a movie, which must be evaluated and released as a product according to its market potential and commercial viability. Its specific, un-gimmicky nature as a political polemic that cannot be dumbed down or streamlined for a wider audience in the eyes of distributors and exhibitors makes it a niche item, despite that it was conceived at every stage to speak to the entire world as plainly and simply as possible about the morass that’s pulling us all in. Once again, explicit politics, uncluttered by abstraction and pitched above a sixth grade level are what deem a vital and timely work unsuitable for mass consumption by its mercantile purveyors.
Apparently, clear-minded observations and solutions regarding any number of ongoing national campaigns of murder, hedgemony, surveillance and the suppression of civilians and their human rights around the world are not seen as things which unite audiences in the eyes of potential distributors. They are seen as niche attitudes, relegated to one cross section or “demographic” of the potential audience. In other words, a movie that comes down on hate, fascism, poverty, environmental collapse, third world starvation, resource shortages, slavery, social alienation and capitalist tyranny as thoughtfully and explicitly as Problema does is too upsetting and divisive to be considered for release on a large scale.
Whereas the success of a movie like An Inconvenient Truth (2006) was due in no small part to the visibility afforded it by studios who believed in it. It was screened for critics and given ample space in theaters alongside the empty-headed Hollywood fantasies of the day. Its success, which had the effect of gaining political traction for action on climate change, was due to its overwhelming resonance with audience members who didn’t have to drive several miles away to a major city to see it. People saw it because they knew about it.
I’m not sure it made sense to give Al Gore the Nobel Prize for forecasting doom, but I’m a fan of the movie nonetheless
This is why large box office numbers for Hollywood blockbusters have never meant much to me. High grossing features have millions of advertising dollars behind them and play on the most screens possible across the country. Their successes (commercial success specifically - artistic and political success as well as all other forms of success, which cannot be measured on a ledger, are never discussed) are all but financially preordained. So we don’t know whether Problema, which I saw at the Chicago International Film Festival in 2010, would have been as successful as An Inconvenient Truth because it was never given a chance. It didn’t have an ex-presidential candidate attached to it. Nor did it have the endorsement of a number of high-profile Hollywood stars.
The majority of the subjects in Problema are not American and though a number of them speak English, many of their responses are subtitled. This is another thing studios believe hurts a film’s potential despite the fact that many elements of what people see in movies and TV shows these days (alien races, Mexican cartels, crossover Korean hits) deploy subtitles and people seem to have no problem with them. The movie is too globally sordid to be considered for a mass audience, which is just a fancy way of saying it’s too worldly. One has to go into the movie without the mindset that the United States is the only country on Earth that exists, that English is the only language that is spoken, that American culture only culture that matters, and that its problems are the only problems worth addressing. This is just one more thing hindering access to Problema, a movie that was made specifically to be viewed free of hindernace by everyone in the world.
Following the release of the film, a website was established where one could watch the film for free. The filmmakers opted for full visibility of their work over profit and the site was put up with subtitle options available for people in any country. You could also view each subject's response to each of the questions asked. Schmerberg fashioned his film by taking snippets from the best answers for each question and cutting them together using stock footage. Responses to play out over the images for the sake of illustration, making for a livelier visual result. But the website enabled users to look up a subject and view their responses to each successive question individually. Viewers could essentially choose the movie they wanted to watch by choosing a subject and watching their entire interview.
How do Isreali activist and filmmaker Udi Aloni’s responses compare to those of say, Nigerian democracy and civil rights activist Hafsat Abiola? What are the similarities and differences between German entrepreneur and philanthropist Roland Berger and clown-faced Russian performer and artist Antoshka, co-founder of the World Parliament of Clowns? What does American philosopher and author Dr. Cornel West have to say in response to the question of what to do if everyone in China wants to own a car? With the video feed for each subject available on the website as well as the finished theatrical film, one could essentially view Problema a hundred and one times and get a different experience with each viewing.
This website was up for years but has been taken down. I linked it on my social media accounts years ago but it’s gone. There is no video copy of the film that I've been able to find. There’s a vimeo link to the film but it seems it's without subtitles (which itself could be a microcosm of the Tower of Babel-style obstacle facing the globalization of labor and protest movements). At least the movie has survived on YouTube. It is free there for all to see, but since there was no press surrounding the film upon its release, this is not exactly cause for celebration. It’s one more item to be “discovered” on the internet for specific tastes. It’s just one more Youtube video, competing for your attention with limitless amounts of uploaded nonsense.
It will put off conservative cranks, who will see the subjects as stuffy elites in no position to inform them on how to cope with their suffering. But to be honest, I see this film as relatively nonpartisan. There is no trace of partisanship in it. The problems facing us today are not political problems, it tells us, but human ones. Do we care about each other and about our environment or don’t we? The great divide in the years to come will be not between liberals and conservatives, nationalists or globalists, socialists or fascists. It will be between sentient and nescient individuals.
Approaching these questions as they’re put to the panel can be daunting. What are the basic dignities that each human being deserves and why do we let so many people go without them? Is there a modern version of colonialism? Why do we still believe in nationality more than humanity? What does courage mean now? These are some of the questions submitted and the answers given transcend the confines of political demographics. One learns so much about how warm and humble the humanist cause actually is by the disposition of people fighting on the front lines. There is intelligence and dignity in the discourse. No one here is loud or arrogant. No one speaks in extreme, inflammatory terms. No one is plugging their own agenda. Patient logic and rationality are the intellectual tools. Empathy, compassion and grace are the delivery systems. At no point does a subject ever state that the answer is just to disempower the bad people, even when perhaps doing so may be effective.
This is simply not the worldview of enlightened people who blame social and political problems not on groups of people with the solution lying in the disempowerment of those perceived as unworthy, but on more complex causes like institutions, attitudes, prejudices and toxic ideologies. There is a distinction shown here in these educated, considered schools of thought. Sentience, empathy and the regard for otherness and nature are shown to be facets of progressive ideology. A regard for things outside of one’s own immediate self-interest.
The subjects are persuasive without being insistent, grave without being violent. They’re fueled by the clarity of their sense of compassion. This is the quality that makes dignity, humanism and anti-authoritarianism feel like morally correct attitudes. You can see it for yourself. Look at the people on this side of the democratic struggle and how gracefully they come off. Note how they’re eager to shake hands and meet each other. Those who would join you in a noble cause are immediately your brothers and sisters.
And the responders are not all stuffy intellectual elites, as some of the more negative critics of the movie have charged. In fact, a surprising number of the subjects interviewed in Problema could hardly be called elites at all. Many are activists lacking formal education, working within grassroots organizations in their respective countries: Organizations seeking to protect indigineous peoples, or prevent sectarian wars, or reclaim water or resources for their populations. Or they’re ecologists or poets. They’re not what you think of when you hear the term “elite”. These are the people down in the muck, doing the unglamourous and not terribly financially rewarding real work of making the world a better and more habitable place and anyone with even a minimal working knowledge about capitalism knows that these positions are, in today’s world, not how you become part of the privileged inner circles.
I’ve linked the film at the bottom of this piece. I urge you to watch it. You owe it to yourself. At the 1:25:12 mark, evolutionary biologist Elisabat Sahtouris answers a question about the myths and creations stories societies tell themselves and what could be told to younger generations today. I found her answer astounding. I certainly would not attempt to relate it here, despite the fact that it’s not the kind information that can “spoil” a movie. This is a project whose lack of apparent marketability is present at every minute. And yet, I presume that anyone with a shred of humanity would find this worth their time.
I’ve said little about the movie itself because I've been focusing on its disastrously limited exposure but in a way, this is the best endorsement I can give to it. It’s not that I think people are apathetic to global tyranny. Many of them just don’t know about what’s going on and how their own suffering fits into the international democratic struggle and this is the problem. We have to know about what’s going on in the world in order to change it. I bet you had no idea this movie existed. Its own story is framed by its omission from the cultural sphere, which has the effect of reaffirming the necessity for its urgency in the face of what could be called a passive form of anti-humanism, an omission that I can’t escape the feeling is by capitalist design.
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