Meeting will be held in english

Pryazovia, or the Cis-Azov region, is a geographic area on the north coast of the Sea of Azov, located in southeastern Ukraine, with Melitopol, Berdyansk, and Mariupol as its largest cities. Despite facing brutal Russian imperial expansion and occupation, the territory remains tightly bound through the sensuous connections to the lived experiences of those forcibly uprooted. Although being factually occupied, the intimately bound places host a tangible mental work of rediscoveringthe misunderstood past and reimagining the future in a radical way.

The screening includes two experimental films, which maintain to politicize these mental connections. While Vasyl (Tkachenko) Lyakh uncovers oral histories and private video archives as sites for excavating the colonial past of the region, Sashko Protyah’s fictional diary ventures into the cinematic expression of hope for its future, a powerful political affect. Both are members of Freefilmers, a cine-movement that combines filmmaking with volunteer activities, thereby extending the agency of cinema to rebel against and care for the depicted state of affairs.

Conveyed by Olexii Kuchanskyi

Olexii Kuchanskyi is an independent film curator and a PhD researcher at eikones—Centre for the Theory and History of the Image, University of Basel. Her research focuses on the history of Soviet media. Her curatorial activity primarily concerns decentralizing, decolonial, and feminist moving image practices related to the (former) Soviet contexts. She has (co-)curated film programs and exhibitions for the Kyiv Biennial, Coalmine—Raum für Fotografie, e-flux Film & Screening Room, BAK—basis voor actuele kunst, among others.

In the Yard
Vasyl (Tkachenko) Lyakh
2023
18:48 min.

This work examines the relations between image and transgenerational trauma by interviewing members of Lyakh’s family, who are of Azov Greek origin, and observing private video archives of minority community’s representatives. The protagonist searches for relics hidden underground by his relatives in the yard, discovering meanwhile multiple layers of repressed and abandoned memories of the Second World War, the experience of deportation, gender-based violence, and the destruction of the ongoing war.

Vasyl (Tkachenko) Lyakh works with film, painting, photography, as well as sound. In August 2019, he joined the NGO Freefilmerz and took part in the Creative East-2 project. His practice concerns the issues of living together and the transmission of experience between minor social groups, gender identities, species, regions and cultures. His artworks were shown at Nad Bohom (Ukraine), Rotterdam International Film Festival, Naked Room (Kyiv), Diogen gallery (Lviv), among others. Lyakh’s Metalabour was awarded with a Special Award for Creative Directorial Vision and Promising Independent Voice of the Kyiv International Short Film Festival, Ukraine.

Khayt
Sashko Protyah
2022
8:44 min.

Khayt is a fictional diary about the Ukrainian city of Mariupol in 2068, where a protagonist, Sister Protyah, arrives to participate in an art residency. The traditional dance of khaytarma, practiced by both Crimean Tatar and Azov Greek minorities, is revived by the future underground electronic music scene of Mariupol in a drive to rediscover the local cultural life of the 2000s. Combining reels from the amateur online-archive of DIY Azov Greek music videos with the reconsideration of khaytarma’s rhythmic structure by the Mavru Sproutsku Paromit music collective, Protyah nurtures an imaginary horizon of the peripheral Ukrainian city after the global anti-carbon revolution.

Sashko Protyah is a film director and activist from Mariupol, Ukraine. In his films, he works with topics of memory, otherness, and alienation. Protyah is particularly interested in experimenting with the inclusivity of moving-image production and alternative routes for the distribution of images. Today Protyah is based in Zaporizhzhia and volunteers for internally displaced people and the Ukrainian army.