Film, Faith, Filth: The Photographic Taboo in the Elflands

CHAPTER FOUR

The imperial court of Dakhenbarizhan, the Untheileneise, is serviced by two separate prison complexes: the Esthoramire, built to house those criminals considered to be of low risk to the peace, and the Nevennamire, a labyrinthine structure buried several stories beneath the court, intended for the violent and dangerous. In practice, in the time of the Varedeise dynasty and continuing into the early years of Edrehasivar VII’s reign, the Esthoramire housed the wealthy, and the Nevennamire the poor.

At time of writing, only three of the Nevennamire’s six circular layers remain. The lowest two levels have been walled off permanently, the third lowest transformed into maintenance space. Of the enduring layers, the cells on the middlemost rings have been transformed into recreational space, brightly (if artificially) lit, with a running track, a library, a small Chapel of All Gods, visiting rooms, and a commissary. Those of the inner and outermost rings have more than doubled in size. In Edrehasivar’s day, the cells of the Nevennamire were cramped enough the average man could touch both sides at once, and it was not uncommon for prisoners to find themselves unable to sleep on the hard shelf that served as a bed without bending their knees. Blankets were forbidden in the reign of Varenechibel II, for men would be found to strangle themselves from the caged windows in their cell doors.

The living conditions are not so dire now: the cell doors typically remain unlocked, and inmates make use of shared bathrooms rather than buckets stored beneath their beds. They have mattresses, and blankets, and a lamp they control themselves. Still, Dakhenbarizhan lags behind many other modern nations in its carceral policy, with the death penalty mandated for murderers and certain oath-breakers and in some principalities regularly prescribed for other crimes; inmates are often charged for their involuntary room and board, leading many—even those who work in prison manufactories—to finish their sentences in debt to the state; at trial, though Dakhenbarizhan demands a higher burden of proof for conviction than, for example, the Veriarol, the alleged holy vision of a priest can be taken as evidence. This last is an ancient precedent which had fallen out of use during the Varedeise, before Edrehasivar VII’s highly controversial decision to appoint a clerical Witness vel ama for the Dead to the matter of Varenechibel IV’s assassination brought the priest-detective back into vogue. These clerical Witnesses are often brought in in situations where a traditional judicial investigation lacks the evidence necessary to build a case.

The case against photographer Ulkeris Zhikarmened had a preponderance of evidence, including Zhikarmened’s own testimony. This was his second time giving testimony on an instance of criminal photography—he had in fact helped Edrehasivar’s favorite Witness vel ama, Thara Celehar, uncover the Cemchelarna affair (discussed in chapter two) in 1 E’has. 7. Only a year later, he would once again meet Celehar in the eshen’theilian, but this time Zhikarmened himself was the defendant. Celehar was one of the victims.

The photograph Zhikarmened was tried for is famous in the Democratic Republic of Thu-Athamar, perhaps even moreso than Solchenar’s A Ghoul on General Shulivar Street. Though the original film negatives were destroyed and interred with the photographed, the image was reproduced extensively, appearing as the front page splash image of nearly every newspaper and periodical in Thu-Athamar and as the background image for propaganda campaign posters plastered across the cities of Amalo, Zhaö, and Cairado. One of the surviving positives hangs in the Museum of Thu-Athamar. Outside the elven nations, however, it is much less well known; for a foreign audience, the cannibalistic undead illuminated by a street lamp is much more immediately recognizable as newsworthy than the mundanely gory aftermath of a public execution, a sight many in those days had seen in the flesh. What was shocking about this photograph—what made it the defining image of a revolution—was its subjects.

This text declines to reproduce nonconsensual photographs out of respect for those photographed, but Edrehasivar with the Head of Coralis Clunethar can be found easily in any number of libraries by the interested. There are five people in the frame: the corpse of Coralis Clunethar, first cousin to the Prince of Thu-Athamar, beheaded by sunblade for treason; Maia Drazhar, also called Edrehasivar VII, then-emperor of the Ethuveraz; Thara Celehar, whose posting in Amalo Thu-Athamareise nationalists characterized as imperial spycraft; Edrehasivar’s second nohecharei, Kiru Athmaza and Vara Telimezh. To those who thought Edrehasivar VII and Orchenis Clunethar unfit rulers, the photograph of the ‘goblin emperor’ with fervent allies at his back and the head of the leader of the Thu-Athamareise nationalist movement at his feet was a declaration of war. Decades later, the photographer would say,“We thought ourself quite clever. The long lens shallowed the depth of field, yet we managed to capture subjects in both foreground and midground; instead of mourning the loss of architectural detail, we treated the windows and pillars as shapes, malleable for our design. See how the blurred components of the ceiling seem to form an arc? It was a photograph for photographers, not for newspapers. For Zhikarmened, the most discerning viewer of all. We were not a warmongerer. We simply liked to climb.”¹

 

Though Ulkeris Zhikarmened was tried for Edrehasivar with the Head of Coralis Clunethar, he was not the photographer. That was Lana Pershar, a fourteen year old boy in Zhikarmened’s employ. The kamera used to take the photograph belonged to Zhikarmened, and the darkroom which developed the negative was in Zhikarmened’s Dawn Court studio; several Witnesses suggested, though Pershar himself denied, that Zhikarmened compelled Pershar to take the photograph, an endeavor which not only involved committing multiple felonies, but also put the boy in substantial danger—he had snuck on top of a roof to get the photo, and might have fallen, or he might have been noticed by Edrehasivar’s nohecharei and neutralized with a maz. Zhikarmened himself agreed under oath that it was possible Pershar may have felt pressured to capture a photograph of the Ethuverazhid Zhas, which Zhikarmened had made no secret of wanting. Ultimately, the case was open-and-shut. Zhikarmened was sentenced to life imprisonment in the Nevennamire for Felony Solicitation of a Minor for a Criminal Offence, vel michen Felony Trespassing for the Commission of a Secondary Crime, and vel michen Felony Photography of a Member of the Imperial Family, under the Imperial Order to Ban the Practice of Photography of 39 V’nech. 4. This was a light sentence; photographing the emperor was, technically, an act of treason, and was punishable by execution. Camolis Ivrithar, the Witness for the Emperor, described Edrehasivar as “caught between his compassion and his obligation to uphold the law”. Were it not for later events, we might take these as empty words reassuring us of an autocrat’s benevolence, but a year and a half later Edrehasivar VII formally commuted Ulkeris Zhikarmened’s sentence.

Two days beforehand, he had paid Zhikarmened a visit in his cell in the Nevennamire. Private imperial audiences in prison cells were (and are presently) highly irregular for other Dakhenbarizheise emperors, but Edrehasivar VII made it something of a habit in the first six years of his reign, visiting his father’s assassins, his own would-be assassins, and a number of other criminals of both high and low notoriety. Of the meeting between Edrehasivar and Zhikarmened, little is known. The surviving notes of imperial secretary Csevet Aisava note that the meeting lasted roughly forty-five minutes; a letter between Csethiro Zhasan and the Archduchess Vedero refers to the dirt gathered at her husband’s hem upon his return from the depths of the Nevennamire. Of the five individuals who later claimed to be within earshot of the conversation, only two have been verified as prisoners within Zhikarmened’s sub-ward—and only these two refused to elaborate upon the visit. They would say nothing more than that their emperor had been there.

Many claim to have discovered Edrehasivar’s precise motivations in commuting Zhikarmened’s sentence, or to have identified some discrete event which pushed him at last to do so—both scholars and those who knew him. The Athamareise War of Independence was reaching its conclusion, and perhaps he meant to return Zhikarmened like a prisoner of war, suggested some. The Barazhid Dakhenavar had recently contracted the first of many fevers which would lead him to his death bed, and Csethiro Zhasan was pregnant with their eldest child, Archduchess Cheno; perhaps, then, reminded of mortality, Edrehasivar had been struck by some urge to put his affairs in order and clear his conscience of the guilt Csethiro Zhasan’s diaries describe him as carrying as a result of Zhikarmened’s sentencing. “M[aia] values himself not at all sometimes,” she wrote, “and Cel[ehar] is somehow even worse. I do not understand these men, but very well. If I am the only one willing to hate Ulkeris Zhikarmened for what harm he has done my husband, then hate I shall, fervently and enthusiastically.”² The Zhasan was baffled by Edrehasivar’s choice, which he either never sufficiently or convincingly explained. Edrehasivar VII left behind no diaries of his own, and his characteristically terse letters did not illuminate the matter. This text will not claim special insight on the personal decisions of a long-dead monarch—whatever Edrehasivar’s reasoning, Ulkeris Zhikarmened was released from the Nevennamire on 18 Flood 2, 4 E’has. 7.

 

For the next seven years, contact between Zhikarmened and Edrehasivar VII remained limited. There are a small handful of letters in the files of Csevet Aisava charting Zhikarmened’s multiple failed attempts to return to his home in Amalo. At first, the ongoing War of Independence denied civilians on either side access to the world beyond the opposing border. Post-secession, despite Edrehasivar VII’s personal seal marking a letter of appeal sent on Zhikarmened’s behalf to the new government, in the eyes of the Democratic Republic of Thu-Athamar Zhikarmened was a convicted criminal with Ethuverazheise citizenship, and was forbidden the right to immigrate to the place of his own birth. For the rest of his life, Zhikarmened lived in a small apartment in the city of Cetho.

As the Ethuveraz became the Dakhenbarizhid Commonwealth, Zhikarmened’s connection with the Amaleise opera scene granted him work as a lighting technician in various Cetheise opera houses—a position which kept him in the arts, if nothing else. His passion for photography had not dimmed, but proximity to the Untheileneise Court limited both his activity and the scope of his work. His experiments with the medium in this period played with lighting and lifeless portraits: an ornate chair coated in a fine layer of dust, a collection of bowls and glasses half-filled with eerily stagnant liquids, a series of broken lamps. He blurred the line between photograph and film by splicing together time-lapses of leaves changing and falling with the seasons, snow piling up and growing muddy on the stoop. “An I cannot express myself through my favored subject,” he wrote to fellow photography enthusiast Paviret Delara, “I will express myself through its absence.”³

Naradezho v. Malazhar was brought to Zhikarmened’s attention early in the proceedings, by the Malazhada themselves; Zhikarmened was, after all, the inventor of the medium, and his release from prison by Edrehasivar VII had led the first generation of Dakhenbarizheise kinemeisei to hold out hope that His Serenity was more favorable to film and photography than his father Varenechibel IV had been. It was clear from the beginning that Naradezho v. Malazhar would be a landmark case, as the first time the growing mythology of ‘photograph syndrome’ was formally acknowledged and extrapolated to its logical conclusion: if a photograph did an individual harm, capturing someone’s image on film without their consent was functionally indistinguishable from physical assault. The brothers Malazhar, presuming Zhikarmened had pull with the emperor, wrote to him in hopes he would leverage this relationship in order to affect a more favorable ruling for the future of Dakhenbarizheise film and photography. There is no record of Zhikarmened’s reply to the brothers, but Zhikarmened did not write to Edrehasivar VII—at least not until the Witness for the Photographed began draping fabrics over secretaries.

The concept of a person’s name bound to a photograph must have affected Zhikarmened greatly, for shortly after Dezhu Athmaza’s second appearance in the eshen’theileian, Zhikarmened sent the following letter to the emperor:

Irregularly for Zhikarmened, who kept meticulous files of his correspondence, Edrehasivar’s response—which Zhikarmened’s diaries note as received on 12 Harvest 1, 11 E’has. 7—does not survive, but fortunately for this text, we are not left entirely in the dark as to its contents. Within the week, Zhikarmened’s name appears on several copies of the internal schedules kept by Aisava. For an entire month, Zhikarmened attended at least three meetings a week in the small audience hall directly without the emperor’s residence. Later on, he would also appear at private luncheons and, even later, the occasional dinner party.

Despite the fact Zhikarmened spent nearly as much time in Edrehasivar’s orbit as a member of his Corazhas, mutual respect never became friendship. In a letter to a fellow filmmaker, Zhikarmened wrote: “[Though His Serenity] so clearly hates it when people hug the floor in front of him, it would be no real surprise if he were to make an exception for me.”⁵ For the remainder of Edrehasivar VII’s reign, Zhikarmened’s correspondence would frequently make joking reference to his ‘inevitable’ execution, and directly address parentheticals to Csevet Aisava’s intelligencers. Csethiro Zhasan’s writings suggest the enmity was not wholly imagined.

Those early audiences—also attended by Prince Idelis of Thu-Cethor and, from the Corazhas, the Witness for the Prelacy and the Witness for Laborers (the latter an office of Edrehasivar’s making)—were the stage for a debate whose impacts on Dakhenbarizheise kinema law are felt to this day. Though it is impossible to say how much Edrehasivar’s mere presence in the room influenced the shape the law ultimately took, he was not directly involved in writing them. Whether his choice to sit in on the debates he arranged was simply personal interest in their outcome or calculated to sway Prince Idelis’s decisionmaking remains hotly debated.

What is certain is that Edrehasivar’s was the most conservative opinion in the room by far: his sect, the Zekhetneisei, hold everything created by divinity to be ensouled, which for the emperor introduced concern not only for his elven subjects, who certainly could consent to be filmed, but for the voiceless mountains, sky, and field.⁶ The Witness for the Prelacy, a divine of Akhalarna, did not share this belief; he took moral issue only with photography of the unwilling and those too young to take oaths. The Witness for Laborers was even more pragmatic, and as the inventor of the motion picture, Zhikarmened served as kinema’s fervent spokesperson and defender. Prince Idelis, never particularly devout and “pathologically incurious” according to his wife, apparently held no opinion on the matter of photography until these meetings took place.

Ultimately, the rulings—discussed in our previous chapter—focused on the matter of consent. Being familiar with nearly all the kinemeisei in Dakhenbarizhan, and with the ways their sets were being run, Zhikarmened, with the help of the Witness for Laborers, was able to pinpoint critical weaknesses in the drafted legislation. And if Pel-Thenhior is the father of Thu-Athamareise kinema, then Zhikarmened holds the same honor in Dakhenbarizhan, for his impassioned argument that the ‘responsible kinemeisa’ could turn the tide of public opinion to great positive end ultimately swayed Edrehasivar VII to an uneasy patronage which would continue for the remainder of his reign.

 

Zhikarmened would release Silkmaking in the Spring of 14 E’has. 7, with funding from the Drazhada. With a runtime of one hour and forty-five minutes, Silkmaking was considered a short film⁷. Its brevity would soon prove advantageous—“At that length, there is little excuse for not watching it,” wrote an anonymous author in the underground bulletin Notes From Merrem Boronaran. Newslets such as Merrem Boronaran, distributed through limited mailing lists to evade the newspaper ban, were instrumental to Silkmaking’s initial traction among an audience of wealthy commoners. Meanwhile at court, the film was pushed by Csethiro Zhasan and Edrehasivar’s sister, Archduchess Vedero, both of whom had established themselves as politically-minded and well-connected individuals prior to Edrehasivar’s arrival at court; now a united front with the emperor, the two women leveraged their reputations to great success.

The film was itself a product of the imperial audience chamber. In a letter to a fellow filmmaker, Zhikarmened presented his idea for a “gamble of a project” shortly after describing having witnessed the emperor, the imperial secretary, and the Witness for Laborers “complaining of the Corazhas, who know nothing of the true cost of a single bolt of sharadansho—measured not in muranai but in blood.” He went on to write: “How terribly [Edrehasivar] wished for someone to make [the Corazhas] understand. ‘If only one could show them,’ he said. Oh, if only! The solution very literally sits before him, and yet!”⁸ Thus inspired, Zhikarmened began research that same day. Though he could not yet access the silk manufactories, he could trace the path of their damage. “The asylum in Northside has accepted victims of snowblindness and permitted me to speak with them so long as I did not disturb the other residents... I know His Serenity is aware of what [the silkmakers] face; the trick now is to convince him to let me make the world aware."⁹

He succeeded: Edrehasivar VII afforded him 15,000 muranai (1.2 million drammarks in today’s money) and a statement of support on imperial letterhead to facilitate the project, which Zhikarmened would later credit as the sole reason the distribution of unfaced kinema was not criminalized. The result was a stark and unflinching portrayal of the heinous living and working conditions of the nation’s sharadansho silk producers. This was in contrast to the exorbitant luxury associated with the material, a dichotomy which Zhikarmened took full advantage of at every turn. At one point in the film, he intercuts a sequence in which a manufactory owner and his wife don sharadansho overveils and dance together with shots of an artisan in his employ rifling through a teahouse’s refuse for food. “Sharadansho is my greatest pride,” the owner claims from behind his polished desk. “Sharadansho is the noblesse of the empire!” A year later, Edrehasivar’s Corazhas would at last pass his proposed reforms.

 

As a documentarian, much of Zhikarmened’s career followed in the same vein as Silkmaking. Though his projects would vary in approach, all retained consistent focus on bringing visibility to labor abuses and other eleemosynary concerns in the Commonwealth. In the end, threats received from chemical manufactory owners in the wake of the film Poisonmaking (5 E’has. 8) pushed him into retirement—though whether he truly ceased all work for the industry or merely took on work behind the scenes is a topic of debate amongst kinema scholars.

He would also not be the only documentarian to gain the support of the Drazhada. In later years, social activism-oriented photojournalism and educational documentaries alike received funding from the imperial coffers; in contrast to the kal’operai of neighboring Thu-Athamar, the foundational genre of Dakhenbarizheise film might be best defined as “nonfrivolous”. This is fitting for a nation whose film industry developed under Zekhetneise rulers; while not strictly aniconic, this sect traditionally spurns ‘art without purpose’, teaching that the act of creation is a sacred gift to be honored with the making of only useful things. The useful may also be beautiful, such as the skillfully carved tangrishi on Edrehasivar VII’s Wisdom Bridge, but perhaps an opera put to film seemed to him no different from sharadansho silk: extravagance for the sake of extravagance, and impossible to separate from the exploitative nature of its creation.

To this day, both documentary and historiography (including the fictionalized biopic) remain genres of significant importance to the culture and economy of the Elflands. Illiteracy rates remain high compared to other similarly-developed nations, resulting in a general public which embraces visual media as an accessible alternative to print. The Drazhada have clearly recognized the efficacy of the medium as propaganda, to both negative and positive end: surely, films like Silkmaking and Poisonmaking proved to greatly improve the daily lives of Dakhenbarizheisei by drawing attention to matters putting the most vulnerable at risk.

Unfortunately, these films draw the attention of more than just their intended audience. Lacking context and at times care, foreign viewers will fail to understand that a given documentary is one piece of a much larger information ecosystem. They will never see the positive impacts fostered by the state-sponsored exposure of injustice. What is there to know about Dakhenbarizhan except what is so bleakly painted on screen?

—

1 Lana Pershar (Photographer of Edrehasivar VII), interview by Themeian Nelin, 14 Winter 2, 18 E’has 8, University of Amalo Archive

2 Csethiro Drazharan Zhasan, Diaries, vol 5 (11 E’has. VII): 112-114

3 Zhikarmened to Paviret Delara, 17 Flood 2, 9 E’has. VII, University of Amalo Archive

4 Zhikarmened to Edrehasivar VII Drazhar Zhas, 9 Harvest 1, 11 E’has. VII, Untheileneis’archive

5 Zhikarmened to I. Pel-Thenhior, 23 Harvest 1, 11 E’has. VII, University of Amalo Archive

6 For a much more in-depth examination of the Zekhetneise sect, see Ema Bralevezhed’s Seven-in-One (22 E'csen. I).

7 Unlike fiction films, Dakhenbarizheise documentaries were not born of the operatic tradition and favor shorter runtimes.

8 Zhikarmened to Senet Marilar, 12 Winter 1, 13 E’has. VII, University of Amalo Archive

9 Ibid.