For this year’s DOCU/YOUNG – documentary movies program for children and teenagers – we have selected five films.
Roman Bondarchuk’s “Dixie Land” will open the program. This movie is a touching story about growing up. On the shore of the warm Black sea, there lives an amazing children’s jazz band. The old wise teacher is bringing up his little music geniuses with love. The years are passing by. Some of these young musicians will live celebrity lives, performing abroad, while the others will stay in their native city, in order to preserve the band after its leader’s death.
When I just moved to Kyiv and haven’t yet heard about Docudays UA, a friend invited me to the cinema. He said, “My friends are organizing a film festival, let’s go take a look”. This is how I saw the cute shabby hall of the Cinema House for the first time. I remember that a children’s band was performing before the screening. It was funny, lively, and seemed to animate the walls of the Cinema House that became rather dim after years of neglect. This band was actually “Dixie Land” from Kherson. This year, it will return to the festival.
As if by magic, all the other movies of the program are also related to music.
In all these stories, music plays a crucial role in the process of becoming adult. We meet 16-years old Sia, for whom rock’n’roll and friendship are the only cures from exhausting depression. We also meet Young Isaac, who brilliantly plays drums on the streets of Zimbabwe, trying to provide for his family together with his blind father. Finally, there is Briana, 12-years old violin player from a dysfunctional family, who, due to a special government program, receives an antique violin from Joe – a Jewish Holocaust survivor.
Therefore, we see how music connects different generations and cultures. Music also helps our movie characters to change themselves and their worlds, to discover something new, to learn the unknown, and – most importantly – to move incessantly towards their dreams. "Little Kids Big Dreams" – this is the motto of this year’s screenings for youngsters.
Darya Bassel
Docudays UA program coordinator
On photo "Rocknrollers" by Daan Bol
Age rating: 8+
CINEMA HOUSE / Red Hall
Saksahanskogo St., 6
