How can we use film to understand a country and its history, society, culture and inhabitants? The Deutsche Kinemathek museum’s film series Perspectives of Ukrainian Cinema (12–30.06.2022) explores this very question. Hosted at venues in Berlin (Delphi Lux, City Kino Wedding), Hamburg (Abaton Kino) and Leipzig (Schaubühne Lindenfels), the program offers diverse insights into Ukraine’s past and present as well as conversations with film and culture makers from the country. The series will begin on 12.06 at 20h at Delphi Lux with the expressionist silent film “Arsenal” (1929) by Oleksandr Dovzhenko, which will be shown with a new musical score from Bronnt Industries Kapital and English intertitles. It recounts the suppression by pro-government troops of a Bolshevik uprising at Kiev’s Arsenal arms factory in 1918. Besides feature titles, curators Victoria Leshchenko and Yuliia Kovalenko from the Sloїk Film Atelier Initiative have also included documentaries in the program. The line-up includes the light entertainment of mother-son comedy “My Thoughts are Silent” (2019) by Antonio Lukich but also the post-apocalyptic science fiction drama “Atlantis” (2019) by Valentyn Vasyanovych, in which all roles are played by soldiers, volunteers and veterans of the war in eastern Ukraine. A total of seven feature films and two shorts offer a glimpse at southern and western Ukraine and Donbas in the east.

Meanwhile, the film “Klonkie” by Maryna Er Gorbach follows the story of a couple during the period of the Donbas war and the shooting down of flight MH17. The film won the Panorama Audience Award at this year’s Berlinale and the Director’s Prize at the 2022 World Dramatic Competition at Sundance. The experimental documentary “War Note” by Roman Liubiy, which was edited from Ukrainian soldiers’ footage taken on cell phones, cameras and GoPros, is particularly stirring, bringing you directly to Ukraine’s eastern front line. Also in the program: a tragicomedy from the south (“Volcano”), documentaries about family life in the east (“The Earth is as Blue as an Orange”, “Territory of Empty Windows”) and a reconstruction of Ukraine’s recent past (“Nail”). Check out the full program online.
 

Text: Nike Wilhelms / Stills: My Thoughts Are Silent, Reason8 Films; War Note, Babylon 13; Volcano, Elemag Pictures

Delphi Lux, Yva-Bogen, Kantstr.10, 10623 Berlin–Charlottenburg, map
City Kino Wedding, Müllerstr.74, 13349 Berlin–Wedding map

Perspectives of Ukrainian Cinema (12–30.06.2022)
You can view the program online. Free tickets can be booked in advance. All films are shown in their original version with English subtitles.

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