КАТАЛОГ СATALOG

КРІЗЬ ІЛЮЗІЇ BEYOND ILLUSIONS
Dar’ya Averchenko,
PR director
The illusion of change. The illusion of
stability. The illusion of peace and safety.
Our world is full of illusions. Living in the
world of illusions is like floating on a block
of ice down the spring river, admiring the
view, even though you should rather be
calculating the distance to the shore and
thinking how to reach the solid ground.
The central program of the 13th Docudays UA
is about the world that turned out to be not
exactly (or exactly not?) as we imagined it.
In his film Bitter Lake, director Adam Curtis
decided to unravel the complicated history
of Afghanistan, and came to the conclusion
that Western politicians manufactured the
simplified story of militant Islam, and called
all the military operations a struggle of good
against evil. They did not even suspect that
it would all soon turn against themselves:
by ruining other people’s country, they
brought chaos to their home.
Director Sergei Loznitsa, in his film The
Event, looks into the faces of Leningrad
locals in August 1991, trying to understand
what in the end happened that summer.
How, in just one day, did ordinary Soviet
people develop the total passion that
stopped the monster called the State
Committee on the State of Emergency?
How did the monster later manage to put
this human force to sleep? And will the
dream of those brave people, the dream of
a new democratic Russia, stay unfulfillable
forever?
These films raise us above our everyday
chores, above the information garbage
which the space around us and inside
us is filled with, above the times and the
myths, and turn us back to the most crucial
question for every human being: What can I
do to make this world better?
And the next films in the program propose
an answer to that question, and inspire us
with examples of the unstoppable passion
of heroes.
In the film Grozny Blues by director Nicola
Bellucci, three Chechen activists, defying
threats, firmly refuse to forget the Russian
aggression against their people, and do the
nearly impossible to honor the memory of
their dead.
In her film Democrats, director Camilla
Nielsson watches the clash between the
old populists and the new idealists who
are working together on the draft of the
Constitution of Zimbabwe. However, the
former are doing everything in their power
to override the latter’s work.
In the film Ukrainian Sheriffs by Roman
Bondarchuk, a village head and the two
sheriffs appointed by him replaced the police,
psychological help and the ambulance in a
southern Ukrainian village. In that way they
rid their fellow villagers of illusions about the
almightiness and irreplaceability of power
institutions. Instead, they gave them back their
faith in law and order, justice, and humanity.
These films’ protagonists, by overcoming
the illusions – both those imposed externally
as well as those created by their own fears –
change the world around them and motivate
the audience to discover new qualities inside
themselves. So do not be surprised if, after
you watch films from the BEYOND ILLUSIONS
program, you will discover a passionate
person inside you who is ready to change
the world and yourself for the better.
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