On 11 September, the gallery “Dubulti Station” (Art Station Dubulti) in Jūrmala opened the exhibition “Ukrainian Sheriffs: Holding On to Home” by director Roman Bondarchuk and screenwriter Daria Averchenko. Roman Bondarchuk reported this.
According to the description, the project is based on Bondarchuk’s documentary film “Ukrainian Sheriffs” (2015), produced as a co-production between Ukraine, Latvia and Germany; the directors’ video diaries; and materials from the Ukraine War Archive.
The events shown on the exhibition screens have been unfolding since 2012 to the present day in the village of Stara Zbur’ivka in the Kherson region. The main characters are village head Viktor Maruniak and two men appointed to maintain order — the “village sheriffs”, Viktor and Volodymyr. The exhibition shows episodes from the sheriffs’ daily patrols and from village life itself shortly before and after the occupation of Crimea. On 17 March 2022, Russian troops entered the village for the first time. The Russians captured the village head and tortured him for three weeks. He later escaped from the occupied territory and underwent treatment in Latvia. One of the sheriffs, Volodymyr, joined Ukraine’s Territorial Defence Forces and is still serving in Donbas. The other, Viktor, went into hiding from the occupiers and later found temporary shelter in Kherson, where he suffered concussion as a result of a Russian missile strike.
As Bondarchuk and Averchenko note, the exhibition aims to preserve people’s voices and the memory of a world irreversibly transformed by war.
“The ‘Dubulti Station’ gallery is located inside a real railway station, in the middle of touristy Jūrmala, where wealthy Russians still live and holiday,” Bondarchuk writes.
He says the funds raised during the exhibition will go towards a vehicle for serviceman Volodymyr Rudkovskyi, who was previously a sheriff.
“Ukrainian Sheriffs: Holding On to Home” will run until 2 October.
The project was created with support from the State Culture Capital Foundation, Jūrmala City Council, Samsung, the National Film Centre of Latvia, “Avantis”, “Baltic Sea Docs”, “Vivi”, the “Dubulti Station” gallery, “ISSP”, the Ukraine War Archive and the Mystetskyi Arsenal.
About Roman Bondarchuk:
- Ukrainian director and screenwriter;
- art director of the Docudays UA film festival;
- named among Ukraine’s top 100 cultural figures in 2017 by NV;
- in 2018, during the premiere of the film “Volcano” at the Karlovy Vary International Film Festival, he spoke out in defence of Ukrainian film director Oleh Sentsov, who was imprisoned in Russia.
- in 2019, he became a laureate of the Shevchenko Prize in the “Cinema Art” category;
- his directing credits include “Euromaidan. Rough Cut”, “Dixie Land”, “Volcano” and “The Editorial Office”.
About Daria Averchenko:
- Ukrainian screenwriter and producer;
- member of the DOCUDAYS UA Selection Council;
- worked on the films “A Beach for an English Lord”, “Radunytsia”, “Voyage Café”, “Ukrainian Sheriffs”, “Dixie Land”, “Euromaidan. Rough Cut”, “Dixie Land”, “Volcano”.
About Art Station Dubulti:
- an inclusive and experimental platform for contemporary art at the railway station in Jūrmala;
- founded in 2015 by Inga Šteimane;
- exhibition programmes are run with support from Jūrmala City Council and the State Culture Capital Foundation.