It is very troublesome and difficult. I don't mind if someone creates such opportunities for me, but I create them for others. It must be desperation... Just kidding. It's just that, perhaps, like all of us, I save myself with this. I do what I'm used to doing, and it gives me a sense of normalcy that Russia wants to deprive me of. It's my way of fighting, my resistance, my resilience - just to keep doing it.
195 projects were submitted to the competition, and my British colleagues and I carefully reviewed them, formed a long list, then held a round of interviews with 12 teams, and four projects were shortlisted. Mosaics and Stargazing are two of them. It was very, very difficult and risky to select them, especially given that the authors of both projects do not have any significant filmography. But it worked out. And a lot depended on our British colleagues.
Two more films are currently in production, and I hope they will be completed soon. And then, I think, we should change the format a little bit. This is the first time we have announced such a wide open competition, and it is difficult and challenging. I would like to take into account certain lessons, and if we do it again, it will be in a slightly different format."
Mosaics of Kyiv
In Mosaics of Kyiv (dir. Kyrylo Svyetashov and Svitlana Symakova), the artist Svitlana Hryb tells about her fascination with monumental mosaics - their history and techniques of creation. Together with her husband Serhiy, they go to flea markets, antique shops, garage warehouses and look for old decorative tiles, dishes, and pieces of smalt. For Svitlana, upcycling is more than just an urban term, it's about treating things almost like living things: ‘You take a thing and think: what happened to you?’ And in general, ‘when new meanings are created from old things, this is already cultural upcycling.’
Mosaics inherited from the USSR are perhaps one of the most controversial topics in our urban environment. On the one hand, some of them, made by Alla Horska, are a real cultural treasure, but on the other hand, many of these panels were pure propaganda. Svitlana and Serhiy want to preserve the technique itself, if not save this heritage, and so they make the mosaics themselves, lovingly fitting together brightly coloured pieces of tiles, earthenware and porcelain from completely different sources. They are expecting a baby and want it to live in a beautiful world.Stargazing
In Stargazing (dir. Nastya Kanaryova), Olena Kompaniyets directly addresses her future, also unborn daughter, ‘a very naughty but inquisitive girl’. But if Svitlana's story from Mosaics is about the optics of the microcosm, then Stargazing is about the macro level, because Olena is an astrophysicist. Her interests include black holes, dark matter, the birth and evolution of the Universe.
In general, the films contrast not only thematically but also visually. Mosaics of Kyiv is a smooth, direct, simple narrative. In contrast, Stargazing has rather abrupt editing decisions: either the screen proportions the sound of a rocket's arrival after Olena says that she likes to watch meteors, or a blackout in the observatory happens a moment before the heroine starts to think about dark matter. Red apples are always present in the frame, sometimes in the centre, sometimes on the periphery - a kind of dotted line of an astronomical paradise. Olena's world is bright, a little childish (although she operates in colossal categories), and questions are quite acceptable in it: is the Moon really made of cheese, and are there colourful cars racing around Saturn's rings? And Olena herself is a bit of a child in her spontaneity, openness, rich imagination, and ability to enjoy life - and that is why the kids are so attentive and interested in her astronomy lessons held in the bomb shelter.
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In essence, these films form a kind of chamber dilogy about young people who are as committed to their work as they are concerned about the world they will leave for their children. It may sound pretentious, but Nastya Kanaryova, Kyrylo Svyetashov and Svitlana Symakova have made films that are restrained and intelligent, despite their very unintelligent circumstances.