Perspectives of Ukrainian Cinema

Press release, 30 May 22

 

Berlin, Leipzig and Hamburg
12 to 30 June 2022
Opening with guests: June 12, 2022, 8 pm, Delphi Lux, Berlin

 

There has been a war taking place in central Europe since February 24, 2022. The Russian attack on Ukraine has shaken German society to the core. Solidarity with Ukrainians and the will to help is great among many. At the same time, awareness has grown among people in Germany that we know very little about Ukraine, its history and its society. What is the self-image of Ukrainians, and what are its discourses, perspectives, people and places? And how better to contextualise the images of war that we have seen than in the image itself?

From June 12 to 30, 2022, the Deutsche Kinemathek and participating cinemas in Berlin (Delphi Lux, City Kino Wedding), Hamburg (Abaton Kino) and Leipzig (Schaubühne Lindenfels) invite you to an eclectic Ukrainian film series featuring seven full-length films and two shorts, flanked by introductions and talks with Ukrainian

cultural figures. The programme is curated by Victoria Leshchenko and Yuliia Kovalenko, whose film curators’ initiative, sloїk film atelier, gives space to underrepresented voices and promotes them internationally.

Russian war rhetoric is attempting to deny Ukraine its own history and culture. Yet the country looks back on a long cinematic history, in which Ukrainian directors have used the film to reflect on the past and present and to dream of the future. In recent years, Ukrainian cinema has experienced a boom with the rise of a new generation of filmmakers who follow this tradition and testify to Ukraine’s lively independent film scene.

Victoria Leshchenko and Yuliia Kovalenko say: “In the 1920s, Ukraine was one of the most active countries in European cinema. In the following decades, this legacy was partly weakened ideologically by the totalitarian Soviet regime, and partly usurped by Moscow: In 1948, the KGB took films from studios in Kyiv and Odesa to Moscow, and since then Ukraine has been trying to retrieve its heritage by buying or taking it back, film by film. Today, Ukrainian cinema is experiencing a revival, with new names and a colourful map of genres – and this programme expands the view of that map.”

“Perspectives of Ukrainian Cinema” spans an arc from comedy to documentary film and from science fiction to drama. It also covers viewpoints from the south and west of the country to the Donbas in the east. Among the selection is the award-winning ‘Klondike’ by Maryna Er Gorbach which was shown at several international festivals in 2022, and tells the story of expectant parents against the background of the war in the Donbas and the shooting down of the MH17 passenger plane.

The series will open with ‚Arsenal’ (1929), a classic of Ukrainian cinema directed by Oleksandr Dovzhenko on June 12, 2022 at 8 pm at the Delphi Lux cinema in Berlin. Guest: Anna Onufriienko (Film scholar, Oleksandr Dovzhenko Centre, Kiev), Moderation: Barbara Wurm (Research Associate, Institute for Slavic Studies, Humboldt-University, Berlin)

Admission to all screenings is free of charge.

 

The complete film programme and venues can be found here: www.deutsche-kinemathek.de/en/ukrainian-cinema

 

Press photographs here: https://www.deutsche-kinemathek.de/en/kinemathek/press/perspectives-ukr…

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Press talk with film curators Victoria Leshchenko and Yuliia Kovalenko (Videonote), Rainer Rother, Artistic Director, Deutsche Kinemathek
June 2, 2022, 10:00 to 11:30, Deutsche Kinemathek, 4th Floor, Potsdamer Straße 2, 10785 Berlin
Please register with: presse [at] deutsche-kinemathek.de (presse[at]deutsche-kinemathek[dot]de)

 

The project was funded by the Federal Agency for Civic Education (bpb).

The Deutsche Kinemathek is funded by the Federal Ministry of Culture and the Media and by the programme NEUSTART KULTUR.