Pushkin House presents the next in our series of charity events helping Ukrainian artists and humanitarian organisations. The screening consists of three films, all united by the idea of movement. This theme manifests itself in a unique way in each work, while also serving as an important feature of Ukrainian society in the process of constant transformation and renewal.
All proceeds from the ticket sales will go to the Freefilmers art collective from Mariupol that is coordinating humanitarian aid in Ukraine.
This is an in-person event. If you wish to watch this screening online, please see the Online Moving Forward event beginning 6pm Friday 1 April.
THE FILMS
Circulation
Oleksiy Radynski
Ukraine, United Kingdom. 2020. 11 min
Three years of observing the moving landscape of Kyiv, condensed into 11 minutes of screen time. This is how the underside of the metropolis looks from a train window.
Don’t Worry, the Doors Will Open
Oksana Karpovych
Ukraine, Canada. 2020. 75 min
Don’t Worry, The Doors Will Open was shot over several months on the elektrychka, a typical Soviet commuter train that connects Kyiv with small provincial towns. Oksana Karpovych invites us to share a ride with primarily working-class and rural passengers who talk about their life’s difficulties and political views. Through this beautiful mosaic of various characters and details of everyday routine, she touches upon issues of national identity and the war in Donbas. As a result, the film becomes a humane portrait of Ukrainian society on the move.
State Institution
Roman Himey, Yarema Malashchuk
Ukraine. 2018. 8 min
The camera is constantly following a state institution’s workers and visitors as they go through their daily routines. Nobody can understand the issues they are trying to solve or find the final destination of their marathon journeys along the corridors.
ABOUT THE FILMMAKERS
Oleksiy Radynski is a filmmaker and writer based in Kyiv. His films have been screened at International Film Festival Rotterdam, Kurzfilmtage Oberhausen, Docudays IFF, the Institute of Contemporary Arts (London), and S A V V Y Contemporary (Berlin), among others, and have received a number of festival awards. After graduating from Kyiv-Mohyla Academy, he studied at the Home Workspace Program (Ashkal Alwan, Beirut). In 2008, he co-founded Visual Culture Research Centre, an initiative for art, knowledge, and politics in Kyiv. His texts have been published in Proxy Politics: Power and Subversion in a Networked Age (Archive Books, 2017), Art and Theory of Post-1989 Central and East Europe: A Critical Anthology (MoMA, 2018), Being Together Precedes Being (Archive Books, 2019), and e-flux journal.
Oksana Karpovych is a film writer, director and photographer born in Kyiv (Ukraine), living and working in between Kyiv and Montreal (Quebec). Her debut feature documentary film Don’t Worry, the Doors Will Open won the New Visions Award at the RIDM festival in Montreal in 2019 and received an honourable mention in the Emerging Canadian Filmmaker category at Hot Docs. In her personal projects, Oksana explores the everyday lives and oral histories of ordinary people and how state politics invades the personal sphere and influences the communities she intimately documents. Oksana is a Cultural Studies graduate of the Kyiv-Mohyla Academy National University in Ukraine and a Film Production graduate of Concordia University in Montreal.
Roman Khimei and Yarema Malashchuk are Kyiv-based artists and filmmakers, who have been collaborating at the edge of visual art and cinema since 2013. They graduated as cinematographers from the Institute of Screen Arts in Kyiv, Ukraine. They were awarded the main award of the PinchukArtCentre Prize (2020), VISIO Young Talent Acquisition Prize (2021), Best Short Documentary at Festival Internacional de Cine Silente México (2019), as well as the Grand Prix at the Young Ukrainian Artists Award (MUHi 2019). Their debut documentary feature New Jerusalem premiered at Docudays UA International Film Festival 2020. The film received the Special Mention Award at Kharkiv MeetDocs and the duo also recently participated at Future Generation Art Prize 2021, a prestigious international award for artists under 35 years of age.
All images courtesy of the filmmakers.