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Mariia Ponomarova "Perception Of Strength"
53 Plays2 years ago
In our first episode of the new season, our guest is film director, screenwriter, and creative producer Mariia Ponomarova (1991, Kyiv). Mariia studied film directing and screenwriting at Karpenko-Karyi Kyiv National University of Theatre, Cinema & Television in Ukraine graduating cum laude in 2013. Focusing on character development in film during her course, Mariia graduated from the Master of Film artistic research program in 2016
at the Netherlands Film Academy. Short fiction and documentary films written and directed by Mariia were screened at such festivals as Sarajevo FF, Vancouver IFF, VIS Vienna Shorts, Netherlands FF, Odesa IFF, CineDOC-Tbilisi, Go Short ISFF, ArtDocfest, Molodist IFF, and others. Mariia's first producer's documentary project 'Fragile Memory' was a part of the Ex-Oriente Film workshop and received pitching prizes at Odesa IFF Film Industry 2018 & 2019, and East Doc Platform 2019. Mariia's directing debut documentary feature 'Nice Ladies' received a B2Bdoc Pithing Award at Producers Meet Producers. Mariia's works capture the rich cultural heritage of Ukraine, and, like a sculptor chipping away at a block of marble, she reveals the essence of Ukrainian identity, always present, but invisible to the untrained eye. She lives and works in Amsterdam visiting Ukraine for her film projects on a regular basis. And today she is with us in the Yellow Van and I couldn't be happier that she could find the time.
Welcome to the Yellow Van, Mariia!
MARIIA'S WORKS
ponomarova.com
Ardea
May 9th
Family Hour
Fragile Memory
Nice Ladies
TOPICS
The Fall Of Lenin, Ukraine 2017, Svitlana Shimko
Olia Hercules, Ukrainian-British cookbook author
Dziga Vertov, Ukrainian director & camerman
Everything Is Illuminated, USA 2005, written and directed by Liev Schreiber
Killing Eve, TV Series, 2008-2012
The Gulag Archipelago, Soviet Union 1973, Alexandr Solzhenitsyn
What We Got Wrong About Solzhenitsyn, 2022, Essay by Blake Smith
Svetlana Alexievich, Belarusian journalist and author
Nikolai Amosov
On Photography, USA 1977, Susan Sontag
Takflix
INITIATIVES TO SUPPORT
Docu Help
Come Back Alive Foundation
100 Drones Organisation
MUSIC
Love In The Face Of Fear, Jim Kroft
Yellow Va
Yellow Van Stories is a
Recommended
Transcript
Introduction and Context
00:00:04
Speaker
It's important to know that, of course, in the situation of victim and perpetrator, people sometimes downplay the victim in a way. But in our case, I strongly believe in the Ukrainian victory. I strongly believe in the Ukrainian army. I strongly believe in the power of Ukrainian people. I strongly believe in the importance of existence of Ukrainian narratives. This is something that is not just like, oh, please help poor Ukraine.
00:00:33
Speaker
It's help you strong Ukraine to withstand. So I think the position of strength is very, very important. And that's what also people who perceive this war through Russian lands should also understand that they're not pitying us. We don't need a pity. We need a fair, as you said, fair share. A fair share of recognition and fair share of our voices.
Focus on Ukrainian Narratives
00:01:01
Speaker
Hello and welcome to the very first episode of the second season of the Yellow Van Stories. We are so happy and grateful that you have made the time to come on board with us today. I'm your host and driver Bastian. We have been waiting just for you and kept your seat by the windowside from Season 1.
00:01:23
Speaker
After Russia's invasion of Ukraine, the topic of the second season became very clear to us. We decided to invite Ukrainians into the van to share their stories with us and to learn more about Ukraine's cultural identity. Because too often, it has been appropriated by a chauvinistic Russian narrative. The same narrative now serving as a pretense to the war.
00:01:49
Speaker
Supporting Ukraine in our opinion therefore has a strong cultural dimension as well. Fonzie is in first gear already and we are good to go. So buckle up and sit back because today we're going to meet Maria in Amsterdam.
Maria Bonnarova's Journey and Work
00:02:12
Speaker
Hello and welcome to a new episode of The Yellow Van Stories. Here with us today is the screenwriter, director and creative producer, Maria Bonnarova from Ukraine. And I am very happy to have you here, Maria, today to talk to us a little bit.
00:02:29
Speaker
Hi, and it's my pleasure to be here with you and it's great that there is an opportunity to speak and discuss things. Thank you. I am so happy that you've said yes to this because first of all, you were kind enough to send me a link to your works, which I think are fantastic. I'm going to just introduce you a little bit more also about what you do and about your work a little. We're going to talk about your work as well also about the
00:02:54
Speaker
the current situation for you personally, and a little bit also about film history in Ukraine, because I think it's very important to understand a few things about that. So thank you very much for making the time today. Very excited, and I feel very privileged for you to be here. And so before we start off, where are you right now, Maria?
00:03:15
Speaker
I'm in Amsterdam. I live in Amsterdam since August 2014. And I moved here because of the master programme in the Netherlands Film Academy. So I decided to continue my studies after graduating from the directing course in Kiev. And I was looking for a place where I could either look at filmmaking from a different perspective or to expand my horizons. So there was this master programme here, Master of Film.
00:03:45
Speaker
And actually, my application process was during my downtime. So that was quite bizarre, because I already submitted documents, and then the process was on a peaceful kind of stage at that moment.
00:04:05
Speaker
when I submitted and then it all really escalated in January and then of course horrible events of February happened and then after all the you know the annexation of Crimea at the start of the war in the east of the country and by the time I received the
00:04:21
Speaker
Yeah, the call that I'm accepted in the program, it was so bizarre to realize that I'm going to leave the country at this point, because yeah, that's not the moment when you leave this moment when you stay. But I felt I felt that it's important for me to continue my studies. And it's important for me to sharpen my brain in order to tell the stories and convey Ukrainian perspective also in the world.
00:04:51
Speaker
And I keep on working with Ukraine, I keep on working with Ukrainian projects, I keep on doing my own Ukrainian projects till now. So this almost, yeah, it's seven and a half years, even more than I think it all worked out as I wanted.
00:05:10
Speaker
That's fantastic. Also, it ties right in with kind of also the reason for the podcast and also what I spoke with Alexei about last week, about this putting Ukraine also culturally on the map, not for Ukraine itself, but for the outside world. Because obviously, the outside world has just always put Ukraine in context with Russia and also with Soviet Russia. And I think it's about time to also really value the amazing culture that Ukraine has to offer on its own account, without a context at all.
00:05:41
Speaker
And your work is doing that. So when you said that that's what you set out to do, I watched your films, they're wonderful, and they're doing exactly that. And I feel that I have benefited immensely from watching them to understand Ukrainian culture a little better, and what is going on there. And
00:05:56
Speaker
sometimes also weirdly enough, I feel it strikes a chord with me because I know the Balkan region a little bit. I'm by no means an expert, but because I work and live in Greece a lot of the time, there are some similarities even. And when watching your films, I also received Ukraine a lot more European than I have ever before because I could make that parallel in a way in my head a lot easier. So thank you very much for giving me this beautiful insight through your work that I hadn't had before.
00:06:25
Speaker
I'm very happy to hear it also because I think even for my generation, I was born in 1991. It was always kind of ingrained in our upbringing, this whole post-Soviet context.
00:06:41
Speaker
the idea of our parents living through certain collapse of the country where they were raised, and us being raised on similar tracks that were in the making. So all these programs of the history books were changing, so language
00:07:00
Speaker
distribution of the language lessons was changing. I studied in a Russian gymnasium in Kiev, and I felt actually privileged.
Cultural Identity and Russian Influence
00:07:10
Speaker
I remember thinking, I'm studying in an institution that's related to Russia, something that is big and cool. What did I know when I was 11?
00:07:25
Speaker
It just seemed, and also I felt that there was a lot of this colonial and post-colonial perception of the lingua franca Russian, of course, and the whole idea of, yeah, why don't Ukraine get the second official language? People are anyhow speaking Russian, so all this kind of, you know,
00:07:49
Speaker
things that were not really emancipated yet from from their actual like, no, I don't know, even if it's actually emancipated from something, it's more like, the whole emancipation didn't happen yet. The whole the whole separation and whole discussion about, wait a second, where did we just get out from as a country, you know, like,
00:08:14
Speaker
why this whole, I don't know, the Lenin statue was standing there in Kiev till 2014. And of course, you know, yeah, and it got it got people people put it down during my down protest. And I remember passing by in the trolley bus that state that statue and on the side of it, there was always written something about
00:08:40
Speaker
either inevitable connection of Russia and Ukraine, or I'm not even remember if it was not written like as a small Russia, you know, like Malarosia, which is always like, yes, how they were calling Ukraine and Russian Empire. So it was always about minimizing Ukraine and Ukraine as a supplement and this inevitable ties and also till this day in Ukraine, there is the in Kiev, there is in a city center, the big kind of a rainbow statue.
00:09:08
Speaker
It signifies friendship of Russian and Ukrainian nations. Yes. It's just ridiculous. It's like, yeah, you're a presser.
00:09:20
Speaker
There is a friendship. So that's actually quite a twist that I started realizing much later. When you grow up with it and you just normalize it, because there are so many cultural assets around you that sort of prove it and the power dynamic is not challenged.
00:09:44
Speaker
And then when you see someone challenging it, you actually side with a pressing side sometimes, because when especially as a teenager, you're vulnerable, and you don't want to be attacked. And therefore, you try to stay with this like, yeah, but we cannot overthrow Lenin statue. It's it's all right.
00:10:05
Speaker
Yes, of course, of course, there should be I mean, and then again, when the statue was no more, there was a great discussion about that postiment, like this kind of pedestal of the statue. And there were great art projects with that done by cultural institutions. One of them was called Izalazzi.
00:10:24
Speaker
it's a cultural institution out of Donetsk that they needed evacuate their institution when Donetsk was seized. There was a great cultural discussion about the fall of Lenin. There was the documentary short film made about the erection of Lenin's and their fall down. So how do we actually even do this as filmmakers and I don't know, people in culture, how do we think about
00:10:53
Speaker
erecting idols or like multiplying them and putting them across the countries everywhere. What purpose should they serve? Also, what purpose should they serve? Exactly. And then there is this Ukrainian cultural institution called Izaliatia.
00:11:08
Speaker
They were based in Donetsk and then when Donetsk region got occupied and all these things like so-called Donetsk People's Republic happened, their cultural institution became a prison.
00:11:26
Speaker
So it's actually a very, it's a horrible place now. Like literally a prison. You're not speaking metaphorically. It was turned into a prison. It's a torture prison. It's a torture prison next to Donetsk. And I've been into Zalatso, I've been to that location because they invited me and my film school colleagues to show our student films there. And to Zalatso, I think 11. So, and it was a beautiful place because it was a revitalized
00:11:56
Speaker
It was industrial place revitalized and turned into the cultural hub. So it was a place where the isolation materials were created. It's like an outskirts of the city. And they had this like big production holes that were turned into galleries and to like workshops for artists, they had like a screening place.
00:12:21
Speaker
So yeah, now they operate from Kyiv, but again, now I even don't know if they operate now. I guess they do, but it's terrible because they already once lost their homes and they already once relocated to Kyiv and then now Kyiv was under attack.
00:12:39
Speaker
anywhere in Ukraine is not really safe. So it's just, again, this institution chipped in a lot into cultural reflection about the fall of Lenin. And yeah, I also advise everyone who's listening to this podcast to search for the short documentary. It's called, I think it's called Falls of Lenin.
00:13:04
Speaker
No, I'll definitely link to that, like everything that we're talking about. I'm trying to... Yeah, Default of Lenin. Default of
Western Perceptions and Historical Oppression
00:13:13
Speaker
Lenin and it's by Switzerland National Concorde.
00:13:17
Speaker
All right. I will link to that. It'll be in the show notes. Yes. Yeah. It's really good. It's ironic and it says that it's a farewell to the phantoms of USSR. All right. So these phantoms, I think they are everywhere. And also they're in any kind of type of cultural appropriation that
00:13:38
Speaker
people sometimes do Unveilingly because sometimes even like it's it's it's related to everything from From cultural field that we perceive as culture directly to cooking books, you know, yes, they're like there's also great cookbooks Ukrainian cookbooks actually that are published by Ukrainian British author. She's called all a girl. Yes
00:14:03
Speaker
And Ola Herkules, she is based in London, but she grew up in southern Ukraine. And she does a great job to again emancipate Ukrainian cooking from like generic Soviet cooking, you know? Yeah.
00:14:19
Speaker
to give this like, everyone probably thinks that, yeah, borscht, okay, borscht is like, you know, obviously Ukrainian, but not that obviously, because even like there was a shop, there was this like chain food store chain, that from Russia, that were positioning themselves as this like echo bio store. And they opened two places in Amsterdam. And they were selling borscht as Russian soup.
00:14:48
Speaker
I also would have thought Bosch to be Russian, to be honest with you. I've made this mistake all my life as well. Absolutely. It's terrible. It's terrible. And I actually needed to write a complaint. And their Dutch bosses were like, yeah, yeah, yeah, but you know, we are doing it so people would recognize it. Yes. That's the problem.
00:15:09
Speaker
What the heck? This is like really insane and this is unhealthy. This is like, we'll do it just because it's simpler.
00:15:22
Speaker
No, people. Similar doesn't work anymore. This is the cultural appropriation that has been going on for a long time. And this is also what we discussed with Alexei last week, which is one of the problems. Also, if you look into Ukrainian cinema, for instance, like Giga Vertov, for instance, who made Man with a Movie Camera. What a film! I mean, it is still, when you watch it now, such a great film, even though it's more than 90 years old now.
00:15:45
Speaker
And everybody, if you look into it, the filmmakers are usually called Soviet Russian. But Soviet Russian is such a big
00:15:54
Speaker
and such a huge term, because if you know the Soviet Union, the Soviet Union has always been of a very big cultural diversity. And just by the nomenclature of Soviet Russia for everything is really just a cultural appropriation that has never been right from the start. And it is, I think, something that needs to be broken with in the interest of everybody, of everybody involved in this history.
00:16:22
Speaker
And to be honest with you, that brings me actually to something that I saw yesterday. I watched Everything is Illuminated last night. Have you ever seen it? Yeah, I've seen it. My God, what a film. What a film, really. What do you think of it?
00:16:37
Speaker
I actually have seen it 10 years ago. I think I was still studying in a film school in Ukraine because I remember that my professor was really outraged because I don't remember it very well anymore, but there is a scene with the potato where they eat one big potato and that he felt really offended by that scene. Okay.
00:17:03
Speaker
He felt really that it's this very like Western gaze perception. All right. But to be honest, I'm also watching now Killing Eve. And it's a series with one of the characters is supposedly Russian there. And I feel no mercy to Russian culture.
00:17:27
Speaker
And they really do this kind of one big potato scenes there. So yeah, it's kind of like one big, of course, in general, I don't doubt any type of Western gazing.
00:17:46
Speaker
into any kind of culture, but now I feel so much rage towards Russian imperialism that I'm like, okay, you busters deserve it. Yeah. Obviously, that's a very understandable sentiment or feeling. I don't know about that. I thought the potato scene was very good, but obviously, I have my own perspective. That's also wanted to know yours, but in general, I think
00:18:12
Speaker
It was an absolutely wonderful film. And this is why I actually talked about it with you, because one of the last lines in the film goes, everything is illuminated in the light of the past. And I think having that in mind,
00:18:30
Speaker
will help us also understand, if we understand the past, we can only then move into a future. And this is why it is so, so important to understand that there has been a lot of cultural appropriation, and it is difficult, and it's important to differentiate. And that's also why we are here today. And we're talking a little bit about Ukraine. After watching the film, though, last night, this is something that's very close to my heart as well, though, I realized how much
00:18:56
Speaker
Ukraine has suffered in its history to some degree. And for me to think that what Ukraine is suffering now at this moment again, because of Putin's aggression, it is just
00:19:13
Speaker
also brought back to me yesterday that 80 years ago, it was Germans who committed such atrocious crimes in Ukraine. All that I can do is apologize for it again. This comes from deep, deep inside my heart. I know there are some people now also in Germany going, yeah, but 80 years is enough. We got to move on. But in my eyes, we have to apologize for 100 years more and it still won't be enough because
00:19:37
Speaker
What happened there and in many other parts of the world was absolutely terrible and it was one of the darkest chapters in the world and I just had to get that out because it's important to me. I appreciate it actually and I also want to reflect my own fear that we will not hear such apologies from Russians.
00:19:59
Speaker
And when I'm saying this, I also want to make a very clear, one thing really clear. I'm three-quarter Russian by blood. I'm just one-quarter Ukrainian. But I was born in Ukraine, I was raised in Ukraine, and I have Ukrainian passport, and I identify myself as Ukrainian. And my Russian grandma recently messaged my mom that Ukrainian language doesn't exist.
00:20:27
Speaker
So, you know, it's not about even like this blood or...
00:20:35
Speaker
I think it's about self-identity. It's about identity that belongs to you. And I think that for me, whenever I do ironic comments that Russian culture deserves, it comes from a deep, deep sorrow and deep anger that people who live with the kind of worldview that their culture is privileged
00:20:58
Speaker
that they deserve to oppress, that everyone else is their victim. And whenever it's kind of this abusers talk that I'm going to force you to love me.
00:21:12
Speaker
And if you leave, I'll make you suffer. So that's why I think I'm really hoping that there will be time when Russian people will also feel that 80 or 10 or 100 years are not enough. And I think they should. That's what I feel. But it's so ingrained. Again, my grandma is 80.
00:21:38
Speaker
So probably there are people who are unsolvable. They're incorrigible and that's it. But I also feel that this whole horrible influence of propaganda and also narcissism in people, because my parents are therapists and they say that it's terrible how much narcissism is really a big pandemic.
00:22:05
Speaker
in the world and that people are also heavily traumatized. People in Russia also suffered a lot, I understand, because the Soviet rule also didn't really spare them that much. It was such a
00:22:19
Speaker
Yeah. And that's why even my very highly educated friends from Russia in the beginning of war was messaging me like, yes, we are committing horrible crimes and we're very sorry. But I'm not sure if we were in the empire and there is like this post-colonial thing going on. And I'm like, wait a second.
00:22:40
Speaker
Yeah, it's like, no, I agree. Why, for example, also in the Netherlands, it's so hard to convey to people that I've heard actually from from someone also, like, quite, quite an interesting perspective that Dutch people need to be explained that Soviet Union was not like something like EU, you know, when we all came
00:23:02
Speaker
by will and we were like so happy together and then we just stopped being happy together and we just left like you know healthy relationships no no i mean like it was a mutually beneficial divorce no it was not yes no it was not it was not it was just like a run away from abuser and that abuser tries to hunt you back yes
00:23:22
Speaker
Because it's so unbearable for them that you live now alone and then you have your own identification and you try to look at the pages of history that are actually different. And yeah, I'm telling it is that to many people, at least Ukraine has had and still has this years of decuminization.
00:23:43
Speaker
It's like a national policy of decuminization that at least started the talk about like, wait a second, why our streets are in name this way? Why do we have all these Lenin's around the country? Like how, how does this work? And I need to also say that, of course, like the whole idea of creating Soviet people, like generic Soviet people that no one is like Ukrainian or Russian or Belarusian, it's of course a fake.
00:24:10
Speaker
It's impossible to impose it on someone, but this whole eight, at least eight years of decuminization helped a lot of people who were raised with different standards, with different approach to life, and they were never taught critical thinking. They had the main Soviet newspaper that was called Truth.
00:24:34
Speaker
What's more out of books of Orwell than the newspaper that's called Truth? And at least this whole generation of my parents and people who are older than them, they needed to really have this mind-boggling questions to themselves, like, wait a second.
00:24:54
Speaker
And of course there was a lot of rejections and a lot of denial and a lot of struggle, but it's from struggle where you try to figure out if it works or not.
00:25:06
Speaker
And then people started really doubting, oh, this whole Russian invasion in Czechoslovakia in 1968, maybe it was not out of friendship. You know, they at least started questioning, like, maybe it was not really that good, you know? And people in Russia probably still believe in such friendship.
00:25:30
Speaker
And yeah, they're also thinking that it's an act of friendship to bomb Ukraine and to destroy cities. And I'm like, of course, having this ironic tone of voice now, but it's my maybe defensive mechanism.
00:25:42
Speaker
Which is very understandable, which is absolutely understandable. And this is, you know, I mean, this is also something that is obviously dealing with this as we speak as well.
Acknowledging Ukrainian Perspectives
00:25:56
Speaker
This is an ongoing thing that this is very, very, very challenging, I can only imagine. I just want to stress also, you know, we're not bashing Russian culture here at all either, because I think Russian culture is amazing.
00:26:09
Speaker
I love Russian literature. I love Russian music. It's wonderful. Also, Russian people suffered during Soviet times as well. If you look at the Gulag books like Solzhenitsyn or Svetlana, you know.
00:26:25
Speaker
I just wanted to quickly finish. So it's not about these things. It's just about having a Ukrainian view in this that is not overshadowed by anything Russian or that is contextualized by Russia. This is, I think at least, what this conversation is about. But now you go because I seem to have triggered something. Absolutely.
00:26:52
Speaker
Trigger alert, yes, definitely. I mean, that's one part of the story. Also another part of it. It's like step by step. I'm going to also advise you and maybe we can add it in the podcast's footnotes. Sure, everything. I'll add everything.
00:27:15
Speaker
An article at one of the great Ukrainian news outlets, or actually just online magazines, it's called LBUA. And it's an article by Leta Ostrovska Luta. She is a prominent cultural actor.
00:27:41
Speaker
in Ukraine. And she wrote a great article on what Ukrainians want and what they need in the cultural front now, because it's called Do Ukrainians Really Want to Cancel Russia?
00:27:58
Speaker
And it has these chapters, so what do Ukrainians not want and what do Ukrainians want? And it's a great explanation of that, yes, we actually want to cancel Russia on many fronts, including cultural, because we need to demystify this kind of geniuses like Solzhenitsyn.
00:28:23
Speaker
Yes, Solzhenitsyn, of course, made a great impact in literature, and yeah, Archipelag is a significant work, but he was highly imperialistic.
00:28:38
Speaker
Like, he is a person who was believing in the Great Russia and there was no place for Ukraine in his rhetoric and it's publicly available citations of him. It's, again, us praising these big authors without actually checking what they were standing for, you know?
00:28:59
Speaker
Ukrainian landscape and also it goes the same with Brodsky who wrote a poem on, I think it was at the moment of the collapse of the Soviet Union.
00:29:16
Speaker
Like he felt hurt that Ukrainian government or actually Ukrainian sovereignty exists. All this like great Russians, you really need to do the background check all the time because they were praised by default.
00:29:34
Speaker
And now when we start digging, you're like, wait a second, this is terrible. It's like, yeah, and also the narratives in Russian culture are sometimes very, very damaging. They're damaging because, for example, there is this Finnish Estonian Russian co-production feature film called Comparpent No. 6. And it's a film that one can.
00:30:02
Speaker
So it's like a contemporary film. And one of the leading characters is abusive Ukrainian guy. Oh, sorry. Oh, what a Freudian slip. Let's edit it. No, let's see. No, I'm kidding. It was abusive Russian guy.
00:30:26
Speaker
that's writing in a compartment with the Finnish woman. And it's an adaptation of Finnish book. And there was this whole sentiment to, you know, this kind of 90s Russian mysterious soul, this whole of like, yeah, they're abusers and they're horrible, but deep down, they're very good. You know,
00:30:51
Speaker
They will be rude to you, they will be intimidating, but when shit really goes south, you are being saved by them and they will of course make crimes, but in order to save you. And this film, till today, is in cinemas in Amsterdam.
00:31:14
Speaker
And I'm like, what the heck, you know? And they were trying to defend themselves like, yeah, it's a Finnish film. Yeah, it's also Russian coproduction.
00:31:23
Speaker
So if anyone knows how, what is a co-production and like listeners of podcasts, I could just quickly say that whatever is co-produced also, and it's distributed or having like a cinema run or has any type of sales, the income from the film comes to the producers in the countries of production. Therefore, there is definitely an income from run of this film in at least Dutch cinemas.
00:31:53
Speaker
By going to watch that film, you're funding Russian culture that promotes this terrible Stockholm Syndrome film, where it's romanticized how cute he is.
00:32:10
Speaker
So it's just terrible and it really annoys me and angers me that I actually also stand firmly for boycott of Russian cinema. I have dear friends that are oppositionaries and that they're filmmakers that did important work in the Russian landscape.
00:32:31
Speaker
But until Ukraine is not free from Russian troops, until the country is not restored, until all my colleagues in Ukraine don't have the same chances to be represented in film festivals and cinema runs, if until they cannot really finish their works or shoot in Ukraine, I mean, by shooting, of course, shoot films. Yeah. Because there is other shooting going on.
00:32:57
Speaker
Yes. That's very obvious to me. And there are film festivals who are trying to navigate it. And it's tough for them because they were used to have Russian representation. They made the safe choices like, yeah, anything that's government related are not going to be presented. We're cutting ties. But yes, still.
00:33:19
Speaker
It's very hard for them to acknowledge that it's not just about cancelling culture, it's about power dynamics, it's about representation, it's about same opportunities. Because it's much easier to do what you've done before. And also it's a fact that in a lot of international film festivals, regional selectors were often from Russia.
00:33:49
Speaker
So they were kind of overlooking the whole region, again, acting from the perspective of their vision and their optics. And therefore, you're always at mercy of some pre-selector at some big festival.
Film Festival Bias and Representation
00:34:09
Speaker
And it was always normal for everyone that it's Russian. It's like, who else would represent the region?
00:34:20
Speaker
There's a lot of baggage in that sense. I can obviously pick up from that a lot of baggage, a lot of cultural appropriation, as we have already said, that's been going on for a very, very long time. I think it's becoming quite obvious also
00:34:37
Speaker
to some degree, because the narrative that Putin is using in order to justify his invasion in Ukraine is very much built on that foundation as well, this cultural appropriation. We will free you. We're your bigger brother. Like you said, we're coming to rescue you from the terrible Nazi regime that is led by a Jew that lost some of his family during the Holocaust.
00:34:55
Speaker
So that's why I hear you loud and clear that, and this is also one of the reasons why we're having this podcast. I want to ask you a question though. It's a question out of interest. Yes, okay. Remember the question I just want to comment that I... I will put it down. Yes, please. It's very important to also make sure that we don't always say it's Putin's war.
00:35:16
Speaker
Or it's just Putin, you know, my grandma is involved. It's also her war. It's people who are enabling him. It's people who are now they're like crowds that are cheering for sending tanks to Ukraine. They mean, like, of course, there are people who are saying as well, but you we need to be very, very careful not to call it Putin's war.
00:35:38
Speaker
it's Russian war, it's Russians and they it's like also kind of falls back to my fear that they will never be apologizing because they would be thinking it's not them it's again like this Eichmann shit you know. Yes can I tie in with that because now that you say it I agree with you entirely. You know the reason why I'm refraining from it so much is because
00:36:02
Speaker
I take a lot of things into consideration, like I talk into consideration that there is a mass media in Russia that is very indoctrinating, media control and so on. To some degree, it becomes a question also, how much can you hold someone responsible that is being fed lies on a daily level?
00:36:20
Speaker
It would it would afflict us as well. But that's not really the question. So what I'm trying to say is the reason why I agree with you is because of our history. And that goes back to my apology that I just gave you. If we had stuck with the narrative in Germany, there was only Hitler who committed all these crimes and which for a long time was the case in Germany. People said, oh, I didn't know. But Hitler did all of these things. I never voted for him. So if we had upheld this narrative, which we did sometime until the end of the 60s and then the students revolted.
00:36:51
Speaker
Then there would have been no change and we wouldn't remember history the way that we do now. And I think if there is one thing in Germany, one thing that I think has been done reasonably well, it is the way that we have
00:37:05
Speaker
created a culture of memory of what happened and looking at it in the most terrible form possible and making sure that it is not forgotten. I think this is in parts done well. Not everywhere, not all the time, and I'm not a patriot at all, but I think at least this is something in Germany that has been done
00:37:23
Speaker
reasonably well, at least with some time that it took. And even now it's challenged from people and so on, so on. But this is one thing that I absolutely subscribe to. And that's why I agree with you that maybe we have to change that because otherwise it's too easy to put all responsibility just on one person and it will hinder dialogue in the future. So I agree with you. Yes. Thank you. So no, not to thank you the question. The question is because
00:37:48
Speaker
I hear you also with the cancel culture. Wow. This conversation is just galloping away with us. I have so much stuff written down here, but I don't care. You know, let's throw it all overboard. Let's throw it all over. Let's just go with it. And I just wanted to, because cancel culture is something I believe
00:38:04
Speaker
is sometimes good and sometimes it is bad. This is my personal view, right? I think, yes, sculptures of people that were openly racist or have an imperialistic colonial history that killed people should be taken down and all of that. I believe that because what purpose does it serve? I sometimes do believe cancel culture can nonetheless also take a form where it stands in the way of an open dialogue as well.
00:38:32
Speaker
This has happened before. So it's sometimes a thin line for me. And I don't want to say this in general. I don't say this now about Ukraine, Russia generally. But because of my personal perspective, I would just like to ask you this. What if you.
00:38:48
Speaker
were meeting Russian filmmakers that share your perspective, that are not serving this old narrative, this imperialist narrative of the big brother and the small brother that needs protection, but are like, yes, we need change, and we want to have a collaboration not to be chauvinistic, but to lift each other.
00:39:10
Speaker
I'm would you be would you be willing to do something like that are you saying flat out like all russian filmmakers right now are you know that they're not of any importance to me and i want nothing to do with.
00:39:24
Speaker
I think it's an interesting question because of course I have actual cases. I have actual colleagues that are also reacting very differently. Some of them are getting deeply offended, some of them are, yeah,
00:39:46
Speaker
recalling that they're half Ukrainian. And I constantly ask myself, what if I would be unlucky and I would be born in Russia? I mean, I'm saying unlucky now because not because it's it's deeming bad or good, it's just because I would not live through Maidan. I would not live through
00:40:08
Speaker
um, de-communization and I would need to do all this homework myself. And I'm proud of my friends who actually did that homework and were born there. And it took them so much effort. And they're now also, I'm respecting when they don't say shit, you know, when they, when they're keeping head down and saying, we're no one to collaborate.
00:40:35
Speaker
We cannot collaborate with you because we respect that it's your voice now. It's a platform for your voice. We were for centuries collaborating, you know, in so many ways that we respect your choice and we respect your space.
00:40:52
Speaker
But then also there is another type of close colleagues and everyone who of course I understand they worked on their films for like years. I also have a film now that is going to be released in one month in a big festival that I did as a creative producer. And of course I understand it's like five years of your work. It's a very tough field to work on and you're finally having your film on festivals. And then
00:41:19
Speaker
it's important that when we say that boycott Russian culture and boycott Russian films is that it's a terrible choice. But I either go with the statement of neutrality and saying like, I am not going to capitalize my film or I'm not going to make sure that it sells well, because Putin is mentioned in
00:41:43
Speaker
in its contents, you know, or like, for example, there is this outrageous case. And I again, I have dear friends who edited this film. The film about Navalny is opening the Seattle Film Festival and Seattle International Film Festival made a statement that they are making this film their opening film because the film wrote dissident. Russian dissident, but this Russian dissident had had a very clear statement that Crimea is not
00:42:13
Speaker
to be returned to Ukraine. And they keep on calling it conflict in their statements, not war. So yes, you sometimes try to- Special military operation.
00:42:25
Speaker
not even that. I mean, like, it's just it's just it's just it's just ridiculous how people are willing to help. And then they're stepping in the same like, spaces of mistakes. And it's just it's impossible because it's, it's again comes from from good supposedly, you know. And that's why I respect so much my friends who are like, understanding that it's no space for collaboration now until
00:42:56
Speaker
the moment when the reparations are paid, where the Ukrainian borders are restored in full. I mean, yes, they might have the same ideas, they might have the same vision with us, but it's for them to step back now. It's their call of solidarity. That's how they can show it. They can show their solidarity by not capitalizing on the conflict, by not saying, but we are also victims.
00:43:26
Speaker
Yes, you were. And yes, it got amplified because it got even more unsafe to live in Russia now. But why would I care? My parents are displaced people now. There's this meme of Jesus complaining to someone next to him in a chair. It's like a viral meme. It's like, yes, I hear you, but I also don't hear you.
00:43:56
Speaker
they they ask for understanding and we're as humans want understanding from our friends. That's normal. But again, I mean, I can do this things in private, I can privately message people that I'm happy that they accomplished their work.
00:44:12
Speaker
And then they're getting offended that I didn't do it publicly. I'm like, no, I'm publicly standing for boycott of Russian cinema. It's very clear. It's like, there are clear reasons why. There are clear reasons that it's impossible now to take it case by case, like some people argue, or like, maybe we should be more critical, you know, yes, maybe we should be more critical when the whole homework is done.
00:44:39
Speaker
When the damage is addressed, when space is shifted, when we stop following the same patterns, then maybe. So that's why I think it sounds innocent, you know, when it's like, yeah, you guys probably should be collaborators.
00:45:01
Speaker
with only one asterisk there. I understand because it's not just about this conflict, as far as I understand. And please, you can correct me anytime if because I'm obviously... And it's not just about this war.
00:45:17
Speaker
Exactly. It's not. Because if you look into the history, which I have to some degree, again, I'm not an expert, like I'm not really expert on anything. But from my understanding, at least, this has been a conflict that's been going on for very long, like with Ukraine wanting its independence already in 1914, pretty much when celebrations of the... 17.
00:45:37
Speaker
17, sorry, yes, the Rada was actually installed and so on, and against Russia, going against everything, keeping them down, then invading Ukraine, annexing it, and so on and so on. So there has been a long conflict and also a cultural conflict. Then you go into the works of Parajanov, for instance,
00:45:58
Speaker
Shadow of Forgotten Ancestors, which I talked about with Alexei previous week, and what happened to him, how his movies were forbidden, how he was thrown into prison for four and a half years, who died eventually also because of all the heavy burden that he had to carry after that. Just because he made films that were free of Soviet iconography,
00:46:19
Speaker
And he put his own themes and Ukrainian culture in there. So then these things happened all the time, right? This is something you either were in line with Soviet propaganda or you were imprisoned. As simple as that. Or you didn't do anything at all and kept quiet. That was the only third option. And this has been going on for over 100 years. So this war now is just a culmination, again, of 100 years of this, right?
00:46:47
Speaker
But even more, it's more than 100, you know, like, I think on a cultural front, it's done starts with yam.
Historical Oppression of Ukrainian Culture
00:46:56
Speaker
Like, it's like yam, yam skew cars. I'm trying to actually Google in Wikipedia how yam decree, I think it's called. All right. Yam decree, it's
00:47:13
Speaker
And then there was like this, a value of decree. There this kind of two decrees of Russian empire that prohibit use of Ukrainian language. Yes. Yes. True. Yes. So for me, it's, it's like, yeah, it's called value of circular value of sacred decree. So it was in, since like 1863, you know,
00:47:41
Speaker
It's just terrible. When I learned about it in school, I felt that it's like, oh, it was so far away. Of course, it's hard. But now I'm seeing like, yeah, they also had like Lithuanian press ban. They had like whole tension, of course, with Polish language used there. I mean, like it was very unbearable for them.
00:48:08
Speaker
to know that something is beyond their control and that culture is not really tamable for them. And also it's interesting that I thought that it's all really distant history.
00:48:21
Speaker
that, come on, it's like people who believe that feminism won, you know? Yes, yes. It's like, yeah, but we're good, right? Women are voting. We're fine. Yes, yes. But it's like that with everything. It's like that with everything. Also, if you ask, for instance, in Germany, a lot of people will say, yeah, why are people still asking for reparations, like in Greece, for instance, you know?
00:48:42
Speaker
But then you realize it's easy to say that we shouldn't pay any reparations if you are the one that has kind of benefited from the situation afterwards. And there's a different memory about these things in general. So there's never enough time passed unless nobody is alive anymore to remember it. And even then, there's a responsibility because it is memory. Again, everything is illuminated in the light of the past. And the more light we shine on the past, the more we can look into the future.
00:49:12
Speaker
And there was this one beautiful sentence of Amanda Gorman, which I can't recite now, but which deals with something very similar and is very important to contemplate, I think. I did take another look because it is very worth reciting that part of the poem here in this context. And so in her poem, The Hill We Climb, that Amanda Gorman wrote for the inauguration ceremony of President Joe Biden, she writes the following lines.
00:49:43
Speaker
But while democracy can be periodically delayed, it can never be permanently defeated. In this truth, in this faith, we trust. For while we have our eyes on the future, history has its eyes on us. And of course, my rendition of this poem was very poor compared to Amanda Gorman, but I think it was very worth reciting it here anyway. Now on with Maria.
00:50:12
Speaker
Yeah, I actually also want to say that I think it's important to do your homework on your own first. And I think for me, my homework now is also recognizing how certain things that I tackled in my works are now that I look at it with different optics, we need to return again and again to certain things that we produce. Because in 2015,
00:50:41
Speaker
I did a short documentary and it's available online. It's called May 9th. And it's a documentary about my own birthday. And I was born on a victory day that was back then, just May 9th. But then after the beginning of Ukrainian-Russian war in 2014, we started celebrating it on 8s and 9s.
00:51:09
Speaker
and both days. So the day of remembrance and day of victory. So for me being born on on the victory day, it was always like a cool benefit, you know, like, it's always a day off. I don't go to school. It's always like a nice weather. But all my birthday started at the military cemetery.
00:51:35
Speaker
because the parents of my father are Russian. They're both coming from the village in a Tambov region and they were firm communists and my granddad worked in KGB. My granddad is anti-contour intelligence agent.
00:51:59
Speaker
And I asked multiple times my dad, like, how, how much in blood are the hands of my grandfather?
00:52:06
Speaker
And he tried to convince me that because it was anti-conspiracy, as like this anti-spy person, he always worked with some people, I don't know, like preventing Turkish agents entering Soviet Union, something like this. But I don't know, because, you know, no one knows what people in a secret service did. But the whole thing is that because I made a film about my own birthday, and it's a film that's like, mostly situated in a cemetery,
00:52:34
Speaker
It's a military cemetery in Kiev. I actually don't know if it survived the attack because in one of the first days of assault on Kiev, the big TV station, TV tower was blown up. Yes. Exactly. And the cemetery is right behind. Okay. So it's like literally like right behind. It's like in my film, you see that tower.
00:53:02
Speaker
Yes, because it's just like it has the just a fence in between. So I don't know if there is actually if the grave of my grandfather and the whole location is still there. But the whole thing is that he was buried in a military cemetery because he was having a rank, of course, and he left KGB for like,
00:53:30
Speaker
I don't know, like, he didn't leave, of course, no one leaves KG. It's impossible. Yeah, you know, I laugh a lot in this podcast, but it's, again, just a defense mechanism. Don't think that I'm that insensitive. It's just that I'm trying to laugh it out because otherwise I will just cry all the time.
00:53:49
Speaker
But yeah, I think laughter is not a sign of that. Sorry, just quickly. I think there's one line that goes like, if people say you can't laugh anymore, now they haven't understood the seriousness of the situation. So I think laughing is, as you said, is a coping mechanism, but it's also important to keep that going if it's at all possible. So don't apologize for that. Yeah, thank you.
00:54:08
Speaker
So the thing is that I made a film about my birthday and I was convinced, and you can also attach the film, film is publicly available.
00:54:22
Speaker
There was always, for me, and I was just 24. I just moved to the Netherlands. It was my first year without actual fireworks because they also prohibited them in 2014, fireworks on the May 9th. So it was like a time to reflect on me because I obtained some distance to the situation that I needed to go to cemetery in the morning of my birthday.
00:54:49
Speaker
But I found it peculiar that I need to make a film about this because I don't know many other people who start their birthdays with going to cemetery since they remember them themselves. So I was so normalized for me that I needed to actually denormalize it. And there is this one shot in the film.
00:55:15
Speaker
where I show up close this symbol of KGB on his grave. And I remember that during the editing, we put that shot because we simply didn't have enough material. No, that problem, don't worry. The material is scars. But you know what? You should never, ever do such compromises. You should never do such compromises, but also I
00:55:42
Speaker
I don't want to hide who he was.
00:55:45
Speaker
But back then, I didn't say anything about it. I didn't reflect upon it. I was just, again, normalizing it that, yeah, you know, happens.
Maria's Filmmaking Focus and Challenges
00:55:56
Speaker
My grandfather was who he was, but I'm telling you a story of my birthday. So that's why actually one of my close friends and a colleague told me a couple of years ago that that's why she was irritated by my film, that it was nice
00:56:14
Speaker
But they kind of like, you know, I introduced some sort of level of discussion there and I don't talk about it. I just kind of like, you know, put it in. It's already triggering you and then I'm getting out of there. So because again, I was 24 and I was not really up to speed in my political thinking.
00:56:36
Speaker
I didn't see what I've done. And therefore the film was just like, it's just eight minutes. It's voiceover driven. It's my personal reflection. I wanted to keep it quite small and neat. But now I was like, oh yeah, I actually put a trigger there that I never came back to.
00:56:58
Speaker
And I never really made this whole discussion with myself, what does it mean? Because I was always proud to say to people, it was always this kind of mysterious, kind of out of the spy film thing that, oh, my grandfather worked with special services, like secret services. So it felt as a cool thing. But it's not a cool thing. And I probably would never know how much my grandma was involved in it.
00:57:28
Speaker
because I guess that she was. So and then yeah, you know, they, they like she passed away in 2010, my grandfather passed 10 years before I was born. But again, I don't know, I don't know how much of burden is to have such grandparents. And again, that's why maybe I'm very
00:57:51
Speaker
Very much, I don't know, obliged or feel an urgency to clarify what I'm standing for now, because it's very unclear. Or at least my father and my aunt, the children of this grandparents, they themselves don't really know what to tell me about the job that my grandfather did, because I don't know. How was your relationship with your grandmother?
00:58:21
Speaker
I tackled it a bit in the film because she was this tiger mom. It was kind of not really up to negotiations if I'm going to the cemetery on my birthday. It's like, this is what we do. And the initiative came always from her. So and also, you know, she was this classic
00:58:46
Speaker
in privileged class Russian woman living in Ukraine. She was working also with Red Cross. She had great friends. She was friends with Amosov, who was the surgeon who did the operation in the heart. She was in a very privileged position.
00:59:10
Speaker
Like she always told me in my childhood about this all pieces of furniture that they got from Yugoslavia or from Hungary or like, you know, that she could travel a bit. They lived with my grandfather in Hungary for a couple of years when my father was small. And all the stories were like coming out of perspective of like, yes, we had access.
00:59:34
Speaker
We had access to these things and I felt like, ooh, cool. My grandparents were cool, you know, that someone couldn't do it and my grandparents couldn't and it was fine. And then I actually always, like after she passed away, I was actually having this strange feeling that maybe it's good that she haven't seen Maidan because we would definitely be in a deep fight with her.
01:00:00
Speaker
Because it was a big uprising of national identity. And for me, it's important to stress that it's normal that after so many years of repression, national identity uprising happens. And people confuse it with nationalism. And this is very odd to me. It's like, yeah, you have something suppressed.
01:00:24
Speaker
Again, I make parallels with feminism because it's the easiest for me because I, as a feminist, I read a bit more on this. That it's, of course, easy to blame women who got rights that they all of a sudden are, again, hysterical or they want too much. Yeah, they got too little. So of course they want too much.
01:00:44
Speaker
No, they want just their fair share. They want too much. That's how I understand it at least. And I think that's how it should be. And for too much time, that wasn't the case. And it still isn't the case. So obviously, this is an ongoing struggle. And just to go because certain things I've improved that now all is good and fine is a kind of reactionary stance in my opinion.
01:01:09
Speaker
Absolutely. And I think that the fair share now also belongs to Ukrainians on the cultural field. Yes. Because I again, there was also there was a big discussion was about this like quotas for female directors. Quotas for all this ideas of like, yeah, but if the film is good, this kind of all meritocracy talk. Yes.
01:01:34
Speaker
It's like, yeah, should we show Ukrainian films that were never been to Cannes or we're going to show a Russian film that has this stamp of approval from Cannes? And I'm like, again, in order to get to Cannes.
01:01:47
Speaker
How many stabs do you need to... Yeah. Meritocracy is based on the idea that everybody has the same opportunities. Exactly. And that's not the case. And that's not the case. So that's why meritocracy is an illusion and is usually used by the ones that have the resources and the time and the money to justify that they are in that position. In my opinion, again, anybody can... I agree. I want to...
01:02:23
Speaker
Because every I do I dare do it now nonetheless because I think it's it's it's just to quickly Have a quick breath after all this interesting conversation and so that people also get an idea of who I'm talking with because you have so much to say and then we dive actually right into May 9th again because a ninth may because there's also a couple of things in there that I really absolutely love So let me just quickly read your CV and then we dive right back in so
01:02:42
Speaker
I want to... I'm thinking if I should still read you a CV now because...
01:02:52
Speaker
Maria Ponomarova, born 1991 in Kiev, is a film director, screenwriter, and creative producer based in the Netherlands, in Amsterdam, to be exact. Maria studied film director and screenwriting at Karpenko Kari, Kiev, National University of Theatre, Cinema and Television in Ukraine, graduating cum laude in 2013. Focusing on character development in film during her course, Maria graduated from the Master of Film Artistic Research Program in 2016 at the Netherlands Film Academy, and is now still currently living in Amsterdam.
01:03:21
Speaker
Short fiction and documentary films written and directed by Maria were screened at such festivals as Sarajevo, F.F., Vancouver, I.F., V.I.S., Jena Shorts, Netherlands, F.F., Odessa, I.F., Cenadoc, Tbilisi, Go Short, I.S.F.F., ArtDoc Fest, Molodist, E.F.F., and others. Maria's first producers documentary project, Fragile Memory. Here we go again with memory. You see, it is an ongoing theme that even I can pick up on.
01:03:48
Speaker
were screened at such festivals as... No, sorry. Fragile Memory was a part of the Ex-Oriental Film Workshop and received pitching prizes at Odessa i.e. Film industry total of 2018 and 2019 and e-stock platform 2019.
01:04:02
Speaker
Maria's directing debut documentary feature, Nice Ladies, received the B2B Dog Piving Award at Producers Meet Producers. Pitching. Pitching. I was like, I've never seen that word, but I'll just pretend I will just leisurely move across it and pretend that I have. Maria's works capture the rich cultural heritage of Ukraine and like a sculptor chipping away at a block of marble, she reveals the essence of Ukrainian identity always present but invisible to the untrained eye.
01:04:32
Speaker
She lives and works in Amsterdam, visiting Ukraine for film projects on a regular basis. And today she's with us in the yellow van and I couldn't be more grateful. So this was obviously something that was planned right in the beginning, but like I said, the conversation galloped away, but I thought it was just due diligence to at least do that now. I want to talk about again, the 9th of May. There's a line in there that I think is absolutely fantastic. It stuck with me. Life has an end, memory doesn't.
01:04:58
Speaker
And this kind of also goes into what we said, like knowing the future by understanding the past and knowing the past. And I think your work focuses on that a lot. Also, Fragile Memory, which is a trailer that I've seen, which deals with a cameraman, a DOP, that discovers a stock of old film, like a huge film archive.
01:05:21
Speaker
shot by his grandfather, who was also a DOP and working for the Soviet film industry. And he's kind of reconstructing that life of his grandfather while dementia is making his grandfather's memory ever so fragile.
01:05:40
Speaker
And so this tension between these two is amazing. And also the confrontation between the all black and white images and the color images, this confrontation, this tension, how it's brought across is absolutely wonderful. And I can't wait to see the finished film.
01:05:57
Speaker
Well, you can. All of a sudden, that's exactly the film that I was talking about that is going to be premiering very soon. Nice. Yeah, we can already say publicly it's going to be premiered in Freckle Film Festival, end of May.
01:06:13
Speaker
All right. So there are going to be more screenings that we cannot talk about yet, but yeah, we hope that the film will get a good festival run and I contributed to it as a creative producer and co-writer. So it was my creative producing debut.
01:06:32
Speaker
Amazing. I've seen the trailer. It's three and a half minutes long. It looks like I really just want to see it right away. I watched it yesterday. It's a wonderful trailer and it's very intriguing. I'd love to see it. So why is that you have focused or you focus so much of your filmmaking energy on memory?
01:06:55
Speaker
I think for now, memory is kind of this thing that I come back to sometimes, because I think there are two major things that I work with. I work with pressure and need to perform under pressure or abide to societal expectations. And that's what my latest short film Good Boy is about.
01:07:27
Speaker
And also I'm writing a feature film, fiction feature film about it. And I think it's all related for me to kind of a question, where do we come from? Where do we go?
01:07:40
Speaker
So this whole lingering towards where do we come from is with May 9th and with Fragile Memory and where do we go and how do we go and how do you actually, how can you even go somewhere if there is so much on your shoulders? If there is so much expectation about you and that's what also is, I'm trying to tackle in my feature documentary debut called Nice Ladies, which now is in production.
01:08:07
Speaker
It's a film about elderly cheerleaders. And again, how do you go about your own self-representation and your own, yeah, image as a woman after you turn 50 when everyone is already like, oh, yeah, you're sort of expired. And that's, of course, where my feministic perspective comes in.
01:08:31
Speaker
that I am just shit scared to be also seen as expired or less cool or whatever by others because we are all like social animals and it's harder again, it's harder because you lose your access to things, you lose your privileges and you lose your position because you're all of a sudden deemed to be a forever guardian of your grandchildren.
01:08:59
Speaker
if you ever actually have your own children. So it's just more of this usual tracks that people expect you to follow. Where do those expectations come from, right? Exactly. This is a very important question because we all feel expectations to some degree or another. And to understand where they come from also means that you can emancipate yourself from them.
01:09:21
Speaker
Exactly. So I think for me this whole like, wait a second, was it this way or that way? This whole doubt, I think it's quite central to my work.
01:09:31
Speaker
by, would it be something that was in the past? Or like, wait a second, going to cemetery every morning of her birthday might be not that normal. And then like, wait a second, there is this, yeah, the collectivor of elderly cheerleaders in Ukraine, or like, elderlies, even, like, I'm trying to even stop using that word, like, aging cheerleaders.
01:09:55
Speaker
that are doing what they want to do in Ukraine. And it's not and it's not that easy. Because wait a second, cheerleading is over sexualized. And wait a second. They're from Eastern Europe, where you don't have so many financial resources. And you are not this like, Western European pensioner who can travel everywhere just because they Yeah, there's also social security is not shit. Like, like it is in Ukraine. So
01:10:25
Speaker
I mean... Memory is an act of emancipation, basically. Could you say that? No, I would say checking like normality, like doubting normality as an act of emancipation, I would say. Or doubting something that was normalized and became like a revision. I think the whole revision, would it be a revision of memory or a revision of the contemporary status quo?
01:10:55
Speaker
Yes. It's kind of this constant challenge of like, is it this way or that way? Or actually which way? So you have to be willing to challenge your current beliefs also, basically, at all times, which is difficult, but it's also very rewarding at the same time, because you really become charged. It allows you to be in charge of yourself more.
01:11:18
Speaker
Yeah, and that's why I'm often present in my works. I'm present there personally, or I work with people who have a massive urge to make this story, because I also produced a short fiction film that I did as a creative producer, where I felt the massive urge of the director to make this story. Because it got inspired, it's called The Diaper Cake, and it's also going to be screened around the globe now. It's going in its festival run.
01:11:47
Speaker
Great. Congratulations. Thank you. It was recently in Canada. And again, it was selected to a good festival that I'm not allowed to disclose for now. But please feel free to follow the Diaper Cake on Instagram.
01:12:03
Speaker
We passed all the film updates there and I felt that, yeah, it's not the film that I wrote, it's not the film that I'm going to direct, but I know that the director wants to revision the status quo of things. And by doing her film, she raises important questions of, she looks at this so-called normality that close, that we stop thinking that it's normal anymore.
01:12:31
Speaker
that and she's being honest with her interests, because that's something again comes from documentary observation that she did first. And that documentary observation was peculiar to her and then she wanted to make a fiction out of it. So I think for me, it is important to
01:12:49
Speaker
also come from not didactic perspective of like, oh, I'm going to make it sensational. It was this way and I'm going to enlighten you that it's not this way. And it's another way. No, I think it's
01:13:03
Speaker
I mean, at least some people, again, and it's hard because I now live in a Western European country where individuality is a big value, that if you come from your own perspective, it's always valid. But I grew up with the collectivistic approach of that collective is always bigger than you. And if you're speaking from your own perspective, is it like narcissism?
01:13:29
Speaker
You know, so it's, it always was undermining, at least in the years when I was growing up, that you on your own is less than the group. And you should be humble and respect the needs of the group first. And you need to serve that in a way. So that's why also, like we were taught in a film school in Kiev that voiceover driven documentaries, it's, it's like, terrible, because you didn't manage to tell it with images.
01:13:59
Speaker
And for me, I think that I work with voiceover or with author's commentary, let's call it this way. Because I believe that at least this way, I'm actually staying humble and I'm not teaching people that this is what it is. I'm being very obviously there and saying, this is who I am. This is what I think. You can agree or disagree, but I'm not trying to make it universal or in any way objective.
01:14:27
Speaker
This is where I come from. And this is what I try to look at together with you in a way. So I'm trying to be transparent in my process. And that's why I think it's, yeah, it's important to not self-sensor yourself by saying like, yeah, but maybe no one wants to know my story, who I am, and maybe not that interesting. I am probably not that interesting. But I live through certain things that I believe that can
01:14:57
Speaker
have, like, I can have certain entry to some topics that people can discover through stories that I see. And I, again, I want to have this balance of humble approach, but also firm approach that this is what is my thinking about, like, this is what I think about, and this is what my thinking is. And then at least you don't think that I'm hiding any other agenda.
01:15:25
Speaker
I personally believe everybody is interesting and everybody has a story to tell. You just need to find the right way to tell the story. I really believe that. So that's already humbling because if you feel that everybody has something to offer, then you realize you have something to offer, but it doesn't take anything away from the fruits of other trees, if you will.
01:15:45
Speaker
Right. So so this is this is this is at least how I see it. And I want to ask you now that we are talking about memory as well. We are seeing now a conflict, a war that is the best documented any war has ever been. And we see images of it every single day, whether we want to or not. Sometimes we don't even have a choice as long as soon as we switch on the television or we are on social media, it is almost inescapable.
01:16:14
Speaker
Now, my question to you is, we've established that memory is very important because it defines who we are also in the future. But how do you think about the representation of war, like looking at these images day in, day out? Does it serve the purpose?
01:16:32
Speaker
of memorizing or creating a public memory of what happened? Or is it also maybe doing the opposite and dulling our senses and making us turn away? What is the right measure in this according to you? It's a good question. I think that Susan Sontag in her book on photography argued a lot about that. Yes. And it was 70s, you know, it was even pre-social media.
01:17:03
Speaker
Great book. Yeah, it's a great book and I think I would not try to reinvent what she said. I think that I would just try to agree with her on that it's of course numbing.
01:17:16
Speaker
It's numbing when we see that much images, but we don't have any other choice. I mean, Ukrainians see it with their own eyes, even not on television, not on social media. And it's painful reality that you cannot switch off. Yes. You cannot mute it. You cannot stop it. You cannot wake up from it fresh from a bad dream.
01:17:42
Speaker
This is painful, but this is the pain that is so unstoppable in a way that with this whole images of war, I think it's important that we not, they would not try to sedate ourselves or pretend that this is too hard. It's again like, oh yeah, we're losing our privilege of living in a peaceful world because we already lost it.
01:18:10
Speaker
There is no discussion. I mean, I'm likely not under the shellings and I'm not running to the bomb shelter, but overwhelming majority of my social circle and my family are doing that. I'm checking the sirens every day as many other Ukrainians who are living abroad. And I cannot compare my experience with people who lived through it, but I can be respectful to their experience.
01:18:37
Speaker
I cannot unlearn that they live through it. So I think that at least the images of war, and that's also something that maybe we can put in the footnotes of the podcast, is at least try to find something that's more than sensational.
01:19:00
Speaker
Because that's exactly, in my opinion, and I would again just agree with Susan Sontag, who is on photography, that it's important, I guess it was in that book, it's important for us to remember that it's not some people, that it's very dehumanizing when the war becomes a war.
01:19:25
Speaker
And that's why I would probably suggest everyone who listens to this podcast to check out documentary films and documentary videos of Babylon 13.
01:19:35
Speaker
That's the collective with whom I'm associated since 2013. We shaped as a collective. I played a little role there, but still I played a bit of the role. We shaped into 2013 because of the events of Maidan Revolution. And then the collective kept on functioning because the war broke out.
01:20:01
Speaker
in the East of Ukraine and the Crimea was annexed and then this collective got like massive reunion on 24th or actually 25th of February 2022 because we already knew each other and it's a documentary filmmakers collective so if people who are filmmakers first and foremost they're not doing journalistic assignments
01:20:31
Speaker
They're not having any sort of editorial agenda more than their manifest of the organization that's publicly available. There is always attention to human stories and something that comes from Ukrainian perspective. So it's Ukrainians filming Ukrainians, which is also very important from their representation standpoint. And its imagery of war
01:21:00
Speaker
that is also reflected upon, because I believe that's exactly the dimension that separates journalism that needs to stay objective with filmmaking that's always subjective. So that's why I think, yeah, watching images of war, you cannot switch it off, but at least you can also curate it and watch those images of war.
01:21:26
Speaker
That's actually, that I have as a note here for me, exactly that. Art serves as a curation of the information. That's exactly, wow, yes. And that's where its importance comes in in memory as well. It's amazing that you are thinking exactly the same there, actually, yes. That's what struck me as well.
01:21:46
Speaker
So that's why I would just suggest following Babylon 13 and make sure that you remember that it's not some vague Ukrainians.
Cultural Decolonization and Imperial Structures
01:21:55
Speaker
There's very particular Ukrainians who are living and suffering through this.
01:22:01
Speaker
It's important that you see details, that you see smaller snippets in a way, that you know that you could have seen the pictures of Ukrainian sculptures and monuments being protected, like with big sandbags. And there is, for example, like a short documentary on this, like simple observation.
01:22:26
Speaker
But because it was thought through by the director who did this, it stops being just an action or an event of local Ukrainians protect their monuments.
01:22:39
Speaker
It's a reflection on how it feels to have your monuments in danger. And instead of thinking of, you know, people probably could also think that, yeah, your survival mechanisms, like make you think just about if you're safe or not, but people still find certain energy to protect what's so important to them, the cultural elements around them.
01:23:08
Speaker
just the monuments. I think it's beautiful when highlights stop being just the sensational flashes that they become stories. It can even become as terrible as it is. It can even become clickbait, just these images. What is more dehumanizing than that in the end? Exactly. That's where art and culture is
01:23:31
Speaker
is leaping that gap and making it, humanizing it again, in that sense. Exactly. And I think that just the whole, these talks about dehumanization, and after that, when we agree on that, then decolonization and all this overthrowing this imperialist structures, that is so important because
01:24:00
Speaker
Again, the whole war and actual battlefield is in Ukraine, but cultural battlefield is so much broader. Yeah. And that's why it's also so much harder to fight it because it's less visible. And that's why also, of course, our casualties in Ukraine are terrible. It's horrible. It's absolutely insane what's going on. Yes.
01:24:27
Speaker
And we need to also minimize them by stopping not just, of course, we should stop buying, like Western countries should stop buying Russian gas and oil, but also we should make sure that for people who keep on believing that it's fine to keep on buying Russian gas, that they would not go to watch Russian ballet just because they would think that they're separate things.
01:24:56
Speaker
that, you know, that art is above politics. That's the most insane and horrible thing that I've heard. That like, I mean, it's just people who say that I'm just like, so shocked. And that's why I also I'm so happy that I did my master program in Amsterdam, because before the studies, I would probably also probably think the same.
01:25:19
Speaker
It's here in the Film Academy here, that's where I've heard that like, well, wait a second, art is political. Everything is political, language is political. How do you spell Kyiv is political? It's important. So yeah, I think it's not easy. But we need to help Ukrainian army.
01:25:41
Speaker
on the ground with all our efforts that we are capable of from our places where we are.
01:25:51
Speaker
That's very, very well said. And to be honest with you, until a few weeks ago, I would have probably disagreed with you strongly about art being political. But I'm still very much under the influence of what is happening as well. And I am now agreeing with you. And I see myself questioning a lot of things that I had until the 24th of February taken for granted.
01:26:16
Speaker
no armament, no weapons. And now I'm like, yes, Ukraine needs weapons. Positions that I thought were set in stone for me have crumbled away. And it's unbelievable to see that and to go through that process myself. Not wanting to sound like a victim here in any way, right? Not at all. I'm just reflecting how much influence outside circumstances can have on your own perception, your own life and your own opinions.
01:26:46
Speaker
It's like someone said, and I just saw it on someone's Twitter, that one euro not spent on ammunition for Ukraine results in tons of euros or dozens of euros for humanitarian help. It's simple math. We should stop thinking that we can stay pacifists too late.
01:27:15
Speaker
Yes, unfortunately, I think that is something that a lot of people realize though as well. I hear that from a lot of people right now that these fundamental beliefs have been shattered and maybe that's
01:27:30
Speaker
I don't know if it's a good or bad thing. You don't always have to have a binary view of the world. If it's good or it's bad, it's just how it is. It's a realization that needs to set it sooner or later. I want to ask you, do you still have a bit of time, Maria? I'm sorry. I know we are- Yes, no problem. No, I still have a bit of time. I said an hour and I'm like-
01:27:51
Speaker
No, it's going interesting. I agree. I agree. So I would like to just keep this going a little longer because I would also like to know how all of this affects your filmmaking itself. Because you said, for instance, Nice Ladies, a great trailer as well that I can link to with your permission, of course, about the cheerleaders. That I cannot allow yet. Then I would just have to talk about it.
01:28:13
Speaker
You can link the production company website so people can see them at least. Whatever you can grant me, I am gladly accepting and grateful to them. They are like beautiful stills on the production website. Perfect.
01:28:29
Speaker
Perfect. That's enough, I think, for now. Then I will link to that. Otherwise, I can also just describe it in shiny colors. Actually, you have already done that anyway. But this film, for instance, is set in Kharkiv, right? Yeah. And now, just for my understanding, are you still, because I saw the trailer, is it already finished or is it still in production, the film?
01:28:49
Speaker
It's in production. How does this affect your filmmaking process now? Because Kharkiv is pretty close to the Russian border. It is one of the cities that has been attacked mercilessly. How does this affect your filmmaking process in this film and maybe other projects as well?
01:29:10
Speaker
To be really frank, I was shit scared for my characters. And I'm still shit scared for my characters who stayed. Do you hear from them? Are you in contact with them? Yeah. So in the beginning, like actually,
01:29:25
Speaker
couple of weeks before the invasion started, we spoke with one of my characters and she was saying that it's really, really scary for them because they're so close. And then when the invasion started, she heard the explosions and they are people without many connections abroad or anything. And most of them, they either have
01:29:47
Speaker
their partners with them who are under 60, just like my dad, because my dad cannot leave the country because he's not 60 yet.
Human Stories Amidst Conflict
01:29:56
Speaker
So he evacuated to Western Ukraine. But even like- Just for everybody who doesn't know, men under 60 may not evacuate Ukraine because they are called upon to fight, or possibly. Possibly. Yeah, possibly. That's true. As reserved, or whatever. Yeah, from 18 till 60.
01:30:14
Speaker
So in some cases that it's just too, it's very hard to make a decision to leave your home. It's a tough decision. So even though I convinced my own parents, and again, my parents were traveling abroad a lot, they've been to Amsterdam many times, they're very like, I don't have any siblings, I don't have a large
01:30:41
Speaker
large family, let's say it this way. So they were more and more mobile. And they also had friends in different regions of Ukraine. So it was it was slightly easier to convince them to to get out of the city. And again, it's Kiev. So my parents are like, I'm from Kiev and my parents lived in Kiev and they live in Kiev. So it's just temporary. They're not there. But for for Harkiv, again, it's a team. It's a team of
01:31:09
Speaker
For now they're like 17, 50 plus year old ladies. They were abroad with the team competitions together as a group.
01:31:22
Speaker
But again, it's not that they have this big network of acquaintances on whom they can rely on. And most of them also just felt that they are needed there and that they will stay. And then it's easier. And also the older you are, it's also harder for you to leave your home.
01:31:45
Speaker
I have to tell you, the trailer that I've seen, the characters are so endearing. They're so wonderful. I enjoyed seeing them immensely, the joy that they have, and especially this one scene where you ask, I don't know her name, but one of the dancers, a blonde woman,
01:32:03
Speaker
um who says you ask her whether she thinks she's beautiful and then she's like she's like no no and then like when you dance and she's like ah yes yes yes i'm i'm beautiful and then i think it was you i don't know maybe it was somebody else yeah it was me it was me it was you but then you're like why did you first say no and then she's like well i i'm not beautiful i don't think i'm beautiful but when i dance i i am beautiful
01:32:25
Speaker
And then you show her how she is with her pom poms and her cheerleader outfit and she's dancing and you see the glow on her face and and it is it is.
01:32:35
Speaker
making this so much more human for me, this abstract idea of, you know, you hear of Kharkiv being shelled, being bombed every day. For me, being far away, having the comfort to see this from my own home. And earlier I was talking about my fundamental beliefs and how they're all in disarray. But, you know, fuck that, quite frankly. I mean, it's nothing compared to this little discomfort there. But now to have characters that inhabit the city that I hear of, that are so endearing, that I care for,
01:33:05
Speaker
also makes me care for the city of Kharkiv even more. And this is exactly the power that art has in this. It humanizes it, it creates a story around it that you can relate to and therefore makes it more important to you and it makes it more
01:33:22
Speaker
eminent to take action also in one way or another. Because what it is about in the end is to protect humanity, nothing else. And that concerns yourself as well, at least to me. So along that trailer of the film was incredibly powerful for me. And can't wait to see the whole film one day when it's done. Yeah, I'm really, really now focusing
Filmmaking Joy and Pain
01:33:45
Speaker
on it. And I'm
01:33:47
Speaker
I'm also hoping that the joy that was, of course, always there in the film, even though it's overshadowed by pain that entered the scene and that, yeah, it was not supposed to be there. It was not supposed to be a film with so much pain now. But I do believe that it's also a challenge to the filmmaking community because it's so much easier to sell a happy film.
01:34:16
Speaker
Because people are tired, they like Netflix, they like sitting on the couch, and I'm guilty of the same. Of course we all need entertaining stuff. And I know that it was always easier to pitch this project as something entertaining.
01:34:32
Speaker
because there is this inspiring women there is a cheerleading yes of course there is some questioning about like how come cheerleading is so like not in a place for aging women and why it's outraging in people's minds or why it's so all of a sudden different.
01:34:53
Speaker
But again, I'm just happy that at least now, in this whole darkness, there is something that they can cling to. They're clinging to it as something that also, like many athletes do, that's something that enables your body also together with your mind to be present and to know that you are strong, not just because you're cheerful and lovely,
01:35:24
Speaker
That's why I mean like... Which are all just outside qualities. All just outside qualities. Exactly. And that's why I mean, I... Even quality, sorry. I'm not even sure that's a quality. It's just outside impression, sorry. Yes. Exactly. It's an outside impression and I always wanted to make sure that this film does justice.
01:35:43
Speaker
that they are so much more than this outside impression, that they're like, it's a Klondike. It's just, yeah, they're so rich. They're so beautiful in the biggest scope of this world. And that they cannot be just applauded for being outstanding, just because people didn't expect them to be who they are. It's about actually
Ukraine's Nation-Building and European Support
01:36:08
Speaker
problem with people's expectations, not with them.
01:36:11
Speaker
Yes, absolutely. It was a big drive for me to work on it and still it's a big drive for me to keep on going because it is hard to be inside the whole traumatic experience yourself and keep on reflecting.
01:36:28
Speaker
According to me, Ukraine is an amazing nation-building project right in the heart of Europe. We know far too little about it in the rest of Europe because of things that we have already discussed and about cultural appropriation and so on. Also, mistakes have been made in
01:36:48
Speaker
this perception. According to you, what can Europe do better to support the nation-building of Ukraine now and also when the war is over at some point it will be?
01:37:03
Speaker
I think that there can be done big steps and small steps. I think small steps would be to be mindful of your language because language is political. I know that it sometimes happens that we keep on calling it conflict, but to be mindful and to specifically keep on calling it war.
01:37:24
Speaker
because this is how we shape what it is and it's a Russian attack on Ukraine. We need to keep on making sure that Russians are accountable for this, that it's not something that happened to Ukraine, you know, that's like victim blaming, that there is a very clear perpetrator in this case.
01:37:46
Speaker
So that would be one. And then another thing is to spell Ukrainian cities in Ukrainian manner. It's a big struggle for me in the Netherlands because Dutch newspapers keep on calling Kharkiv Kharkov.
01:38:04
Speaker
which is which is again a struggle because then it's harder for me to pitch this documentary because they don't understand where Harkiv is. I mean, probably they do depending on how involved they are.
01:38:18
Speaker
But for me, it seems small, but it's so big, because it shapes again what it is that is now going on and where it's going on. So the language steps, I think, are good as small steps. I think it's important to revision things that you get used to, to check on your borscht.
01:38:46
Speaker
to keep on checking if there is no West explaining in things because they're more comfortable to you, because someone came and chewed it to you in your own way or made it simpler. I don't say more accessible. Accessibility is important as well.
01:39:13
Speaker
is to put some effort to recognize that effort was not done and it's hard to make an effort to do it. But also things that are kind of already catered to you by Ukrainians, like the project called Ukraine.
01:39:27
Speaker
For example, it's a great internet project that also they published a book on Ukraine that is already there. They're all these materials on Ukraine. They're all these materials to learn more about culture, to see it, to bite it, to get sense of it, to get connections.
01:39:49
Speaker
And yeah, watch Ukrainian films. Watch things that are done by Ukrainians because of course it's so much easier to go and watch something on Netflix. It's something that we all do. There is another great Ukrainian film called Home Games on Netflix.
01:40:09
Speaker
It's
Changing European Perceptions
01:40:10
Speaker
not about war, but it's done by a great Ukrainian filmmaker, Alyssa Kovalenko. If you're not stepping out, if you're in Netflix reality, but go to tactics.com. Sorry, I'm not sure if it's .com. I should know. I was there the other day.
01:40:31
Speaker
I talked about Olexi, about the importance of this platform to make this available also for Ukrainian culture to be more proliferated. Yes, a great website visited. So just like step a bit out of what is comfortable to you, but even if you don't want to step out of your comfort zone.
01:40:49
Speaker
search there for things that are not just like done by some, I don't know, Dutch journalists who've never been to Ukraine before, but they've been to other wars, and it's one more war to them. You know, so it's important to make sure that it's
01:41:10
Speaker
It's our time. This is exactly the platform that people seek for, our time distribution, what type of narrative that we spend our time on. This is how people in Europe can help. And again, it's also important to clarify that for many people, since Ukraine is not part of European Union,
01:41:34
Speaker
they somehow think that it's not part of Europe. And then I'm like, yeah, so part of what it is, like all of a sudden in Africa. So, I mean, it's tough. And if you watch films, like I have now, like I said in the beginning, you realize that so much more, also because like I said, like musically, also emotionally, some of the settings, I recognize them so much from, you know,
01:42:01
Speaker
Not to say that it's the same, don't get me wrong. This is not another form of appropriation, but I feel there are similarities that I really pick up on, like Balkan life, for instance, this emotional density, also some of the cultural elements, some of the music. When I see it now,
01:42:17
Speaker
It is very European to me when I watch Ukrainian culture. And this is the thing that I think can help us understand what is going on a lot better and what you just tied into. And I think I just want to add to that. Instead of, and I think this is still going on a lot, we're still trying to understand this war from a Russian perspective. If you go through the media, through everything, everybody's like, what is going on through Putin's head? Why is he doing that? What's going on in Russia? How can we make this stop? It's understandable.
01:42:44
Speaker
And I'm not saying we should stop thinking in any kind of direction, but I believe it is overwhelmingly the case that we do that. And we should move more into a position where we start and try to understand this war out of the Ukrainian perspective. And this, I think, hasn't happened enough. And I think this is what we can spend a lot more time on doing and sharpening our senses exactly to that perspective. And that's essentially also what you're saying.
01:43:14
Speaker
Yeah, and also I think that just to just I mean, absolutely just echoing your words. It's important to know that of course, in the situation of victim and perpetrator, people are sometimes downplaying the victim in a way. But in our case, I strongly believe in Ukrainian victory. I strongly believe in Ukrainian army. I strongly believe in the power of Ukrainian people. I strongly believe in
Future Hope for Ukraine
01:43:37
Speaker
in the importance of existence of Ukrainian narratives.
01:43:41
Speaker
This is something that is not just like, oh, please help for Ukraine.
01:43:47
Speaker
It's help you strong Ukraine to withstand. So I think the position of strength is very, very important. And that's what also people who perceive this war through Russian lands should also understand that they're not pitying us. We don't need a pity. We need a fair, as you said, fair share. A fair share of recognition and fair share of power.
01:44:11
Speaker
And that can only come from a position of strength, and that's what you just said. Everything else is victimization. And I'm sorry, this is maybe not the best example, but I watched an episode of Family Guy yesterday. Family Guy is the most politically incorrect TV show you can imagine, right? They make jokes about everything.
01:44:31
Speaker
But it works, according to me at least, because all these jokes are presented from a position of strength. All the characters have strength inside, are portrayed as strong. You know, like Joe that is sitting in a wheelchair and is being mocked for that in a way. But he's an incredibly strong character, right? And that's why you can do that. And the parallel here is the same also to Ukraine. If we perceive it from a position of weakness,
01:44:57
Speaker
that is fighting against the overlord Russia, we will victimize Ukraine and our perception right from the start. So if we turn it all around, and this is what you're saying, we ascribe the strength to Ukraine that is also currently displaying in an incredible way, then we will actually help perceive Ukraine in the right way and give it the place that it deserves in the European makeup, I believe.
01:45:23
Speaker
I think it's kind of a beautiful conclusion then. I think so too. I didn't want to have the last word actually. That's why I actually want to ask you just one more thing. What is your hope for the future of Ukraine?
01:45:40
Speaker
I hope that our future will be blossoming because we were already blossoming and that just people would stop intervening with our blossoming and will help us blossoming.
01:45:58
Speaker
Because we have a strength to blossom ourselves. We have beautiful bases. We have beautiful people. We have talented creators. We have people who are ready to take ownership. That's beautiful. And that's something that is already a point of no return.
01:46:15
Speaker
There are a lot of problems, still a lot of problems in Ukraine, a lot. But at least we started tackling them. We started looking at them. We started discussing them. And I think my big hope for the future is that we'll start rebuilding very soon.
01:46:37
Speaker
Great.
Support for Ukrainian Filmmakers
01:46:40
Speaker
That's one thing I ask everybody. It's not like a question. It's more like an interest and also for everybody who's interested in helping or supporting Ukraine. Do you have any organization, anything where you say people can donate to? It's a cause worth supporting. I think there's many, but it's always nice to have a bit of a personal recommendation as well.
01:47:00
Speaker
Yeah, I think that I would suggest donating to an organization called DocuHelp. It's funded by an organization that's initiated by the festival called Docudaze UA. So it's one of the biggest documentaries from festivals in Ukraine. It's actually the biggest and the oldest. It's existing for 19 years and it's based in Kiev.
01:47:31
Speaker
Addition was supposed to be end of March, beginning of April, but now, of course, it's postponed, but you can help their organization called DocuHelp.
01:47:43
Speaker
And I think you can also pass the link to it. Because it's a direct support to filmmakers in Ukraine. So this way you can make sure that there is enough supplies, there is like covered cost of fuel, medicine. They're also publishing their reports regularly.
01:48:04
Speaker
you can do it by bank transfer using transfer buys or even like cryptocurrencies or just simply via like credit cards. So it's all enabled and it's important that it's very, you know, it's quickly distributed. So it's much faster than bigger organizations. So that's one.
01:48:30
Speaker
And then, I think, I mean, no, let's actually focus on this one because there are many more and I probably don't want to, because again, if I start naming them now, it will be...
01:48:47
Speaker
Yeah, I will definitely forget something. There'll be many. And I'll feel all people ashamed. Let's go with your initial instinct. And if you in the next days think of anything else, I'll link to some other things as well. No problem.
01:49:02
Speaker
I will just say that I really know closely people from Doki Days and Doki Help because I was also helping to moderate in the festival before. And I think it's people who are also very mindful of the cultural front that we were talking about today in this podcast. So I think that's also a cheer up to people who fight for it.
01:49:27
Speaker
And I think we've established today how important it is culture and art in this time. It's not a luxury that you have to be able to afford. It is a basic necessity in order to draw the right conclusions from what's happening. So that's why this is a very good cause to support. Maria, it has been an absolutely, a roller coaster with you of the most pleasant kind. It was a wonderful conversation. Thank you so, so much for your time today.
01:49:53
Speaker
You're welcome. It was my pleasure and I hope that even if there were certain things that were very bold and maybe triggering or something that you're like, no, but maybe she's not right. It's great that we have a discussion. Exactly. It's a dialogue. It's not a dialogue if everybody agrees on everything and I think now is the time to
01:50:18
Speaker
exactly grow together with also sometimes maybe contrasting views. Someone said that filmmakers are not the cure, filmmakers are the pain.
01:50:30
Speaker
Well, I strongly disagree with that, though. I strongly disagree with that. I mean, I have to. I mean, maybe let me rephrase it. It's like filmmakers duty is to highlight, is not to be a soothing, nice people who are just doing something that is comfortable.
01:50:50
Speaker
I think the meaning of the phrase was morally, I mean, it's good that you disagree, that you made me rephrase because I didn't put it well. Yeah, that we have to highlight things that are sometimes quite uncomfortable. But if we don't again, check the normality and de-normalize certain things, they will keep on happening.
01:51:16
Speaker
Challenge normality. That is, I think, something very good to close on. It sums it up what we have been discussing. Maria, thank you very, very much. It was an absolute
Open Call and Conclusion
01:51:26
Speaker
pleasure having you on the yellow van with us today. And all the best for you in the future. Thank you. Thank you for you too.
01:51:34
Speaker
And with this, we're at the end of this week's journey in the Yellow Van. Thank you very much for coming along today. We hope you had a good, but not too comfortable ride. Thank you, Maria, for your trust in me and the work we do here at Mind the Bump Productions. It means a lot to us. You'll find all links in the show notes, including the recommended initiatives and organizations to donate to, if you can.
01:52:03
Speaker
If you are Ukrainian and would like to come on the show or if you know someone who should, please don't hesitate to contact us. We are happy and grateful for anyone reaching out to us on www.yellowvanstories.com where you can also leave us your general feedback or ideas for improvements.
01:52:22
Speaker
We hope to welcome you back next week for a brand new episode. Until then, keep loving in the face of fear and stand with Ukraine. Take it away, Jim.
01:52:57
Speaker
Can you find your place with a lot of skulls? I break a shape. There's a dream I breathe. Gone loving man and those in need. And I know my attitude disturbs you and so I should. And I know my better scenes are travelling to those like you.
01:53:31
Speaker
My message is clear Keep living in the face of fear Keep shouting that you are here Talking about bills and deals
01:54:06
Speaker
It's the fact of your life. It's the fact of your life.
01:54:56
Speaker
You're standing for the rest