We have chosen a long title full of contradictions, which recalls, makes mistakes, and adds a bit of irony while exploring itself. In Ukraine, it has become part of the new folklore. For the international audience, it is a call to learn more about our history, about Russia’s aggression in it, about the causes of this war. What Ukraine is and who its citizens are.
We plan to talk about historic memory, its fragility, and our enemies’ constant attempts to change and rewrite it. About the cyclic nature of history. About the preservation and search for identity.
We are going to talk about responsibility. About punishment for war criminals, and about the responsibility of those who hide behind the word ‘peace’ and avoid the word ‘justice.’
With every new day under attack by Russian missiles, we have more and more questions for the global security architecture. What is needed for Western leaders to finally implement an effective system for protecting Ukraine, Western European countries and the rest of the world from Russian aggression?
The price of irresponsibility grows with the threat of new wars in the world. The memory of political compromises and devastation should be protecting the world from repeating the historic cycle of the Second World War.
It is memory that shapes our feeling of responsibility for our choice and our confidence in the correctness of our actions.
We invite you to a conversation about memory with the filmmakers after the film screenings, at the panel discussions of the RIGHTS NOW! and the Ukraine War Archive programmes, at the events and discussions of DOCU/SYNTHESIS, DOCU/PRO masterclasses, and at meetings with the creators of impact stories — these are the people who make up the team of the DOCU/CLUB Film Club Network, which marks its 10th anniversary this year.
Text: Darya Averchenko, Head of the Communications Department of Docudays uA, member of the Selection Council
Visual solution for the 21st Docudays UA
“In three centuries, there hasn’t been a single generation of Ukrainians who would inherit their material memory in full. Houses, furniture, kitchenware, jewelry, photo albums are lost in wars and revolutions. Favorite vases from each family’s cupboards, decorative swans, crystal cornucopias are being destroyed right now in this war, in this new turn of history. Something fragile breaks in our soul. Something beautiful loses meaning or becomes a memory. But to move on, we have to come together. Remember our heroes to be able to imagine the future. Never forget who our enemies are. So that all the sacrifice, all the victims and our century-old struggle are not in vain.
In creating the visual solution for the 21st Docudays UA, we were inspired by the art practice of the artist Mykhailo Alekseenko, who has been working for over 10 years with crystal—whimsical, gleaming, fragile like memory itself,” comments Roman Bondarchuk, the Art Director of the Docudays UA festival.
Poster design: Dasha Podoltseva.
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The 21th Docudays UA will be held on 31 May–9 June 2024 at several locations in Kyiv and online at the same time. It will include a film programme (at least 50 films in competition and non-competition sections), RIGHTS NOW! human rights events, Ukraine War Archive events, DOCU/CLASS discussions and masterclasses, the DOCU/PRO industry section for documentary professionals, and the DOCU/SYNTHESIS interdisciplinary art programme. The festival’s online component will take place on DOCUSPACE: film screenings and livestreams/recordings of offline events.
