Stoa
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As part of the exhibition There will be no landscape after the battle. we will have two special screening sessions. The first one focuses on the work of Oleksiy Radynksi.
Oleksiy Radynski is a filmmaker and writer based in Kyiv. His films have been screened at International Film Festival Rotterdam, Kurzfilmtage Oberhausen, Docudays IFF, the Institute of Contemporary Arts (London), and S A V V Y Contemporary (Berlin), among others, and have received a number of festival awards. After graduating from Kyiv-Mohyla Academy, he studied at the Home Workspace Program (Ashkal Alwan, Beirut). In 2008, he cofounded Visual Culture Research Center, an initiative for art, knowledge, and politics in Kyiv. His texts have been published in Proxy Politics: Power and Subversion in a Networked Age (Archive Books, 2017), Art and Theory of Post-1989 Central and East Europe: A Critical Anthology (MoMA, 2018), Being Together Precedes Being (Archive Books, 2019), and e-flux journal.
PROGRAM:
Incident in the Museum, 2013
Director and Camera: Oleksiy Radynski
Editing: Justyna Tafel
Length: 8 min
Synopsis
A Russian priest pays a visit to an art museum in Kharkiv, East Ukraine. For some reason, the museum’s staff is sure that this priest is a spiritual father of Vladimir Putin…
People Who Came To Power, 2015
Director: Oleksiy Radynski and Tomas Rafa
Camera: Tomas Rafa
Editing: Oleksiy Radynski
Production: Lyuba Knorozok
Length: 17 min
Synopsis
The film recreates the gradual transition of society from peaceful life to the state of war. Shot in March-April 2014 in Donbass, it follows the transformation of social protest into an armed revolt, supported by covert foreign invasion. The film does not focus on individual stories, instead showing the mechanisms of inflaming the war that lead to the social collapse: from the blockade of arms storages of Ukrainian army by pro-Russian saboteurs to the takeover of the town of Sloviansk by the armed groups led by the Russian military. Festivals: 59. Doc Leipzig IFF (International Program); XIII International Human Rights Documentary Film Festival Docudays, Kyiv (Main Prize in the National Competition)
Landslide, 2016
Director: Oleksiy Radynski
DOP: Max Savchenko, Sasha Bojko
Sound: Oleksandr Gorbunov
Editing: Mykola Bazarkin and Oleksiy Radynski
Line Producer: Lyuba Knorozok
Production: Svitlana Zinovyeva
Length: 28 min
Synopsis
Landslide represents post-revolutionary Ukraine through a community of people who ‘try to build a new society’ in the cracks and pores of a collapsing social system. The film unfolds in central Kyiv, in a space that has been reclaimed from the city by forces of nature. As a result of a series of landslides, the area of Petrivska street has become untenable and was subsequently occupied by the outcasts and outsiders of all kinds. A secretive graffiti team, a group of tech geeks and an avant-garde gay theatre that fled the war in Luhansk all struggle to create a place where they could coexist outside the pressure of dysfunctional social structures.
The Film Of Kyiv. Episode One, 2017
Direction: Oleksiy Radynski
Production: Lyuba Knorozok
DOP: Max Savchenko
Sound: Andriy Borysenko
Editing: Mykola Bazarkin and Oleksiy Radynski
Length: 8 min
Synopsis
This is an observational documentary focused on one of the biggest unfinished bridge projects in the world - Podilsky Bridge in the centre of Kyiv. Its construction started nearly 25 years ago, but was halted in the late 2000s due to lack of investment and overwhelming corruption. The locals have adapted the unfinished bridge to their own needs - from sports and leisure to risky parcour-style attempts at getting from one river bank to another. In the meantime, Kyiv’s mayor Vitaliy Klitschko is trying to figure out a way to complete the unfortunate project - with a little help from German politicians.
Festivals: 64. Oberhausen International Short Film Festival, 86 Film Festival (Slavutych)
Circulation, 2020
Direction: Oleksiy Radynski
Production: Lyuba Knorozok
Camera: Max Savchenko
Editor: Oleksiy Radynski
Music: Kelly Jayne Jones
Sound: Andriy Borysenko
Length: 11 min
Synopsis
Circulation presents the landscape and cityscape of Kyiv captured in a perpetual loop from the viewpoint of Kyiv’s ring railway, representing the gaze in permanent displacement, flight or purposeless wandering. The train’s circular movement suggests a society in constant transition without destination; a transition from the Communist ‘never’ into the Capitalist ‘always,’ revealing the city’s decrepit post-industrial areas, its newly-built affluent housing estates, its crumbling pieces of social infrastructure and parts of its ‘Westernised’ city centre. Festivals: DocuDays International Documentary Film Festival – Special Mention in Docu/Short competition (2020), Kyiv International Short Film Festival, Molodist IFF (Kyiv), New Holland International Film Festival, Saint Petersburg (2020)
For those further interested in Oleksiy Radynski's work, we recommend as the following texts:
Is Data the New Gas?
https://www.e-flux.com/journal/107/322782/is-data-the-new-gas/
The Case Against the Russian Federation
https://www.e-flux.com/journal/125/453868/the-case-against-the-russian-federation/