Het ongelooflijke verhaal van een soldaat van Tataarse afkomst die in de Tweede Wereldoorlog gevangen werd genomen door de nazi’s. Nu probeert zijn dochter Sana, via zijn dagboeken en verschillende persoonlijke en openbare archieven en registers, het spoor van haar zwijgende vader terug te volgen.

Terwijl ze Sana op haar zoektocht vergezelt, spit regisseur Aliona van der Horst (Liefde is aardappelen) ook filmarchieven uit om sporen te vinden van de miljoenen Sovjetsoldaten die in de vuurlinie lagen van oorlogvoerende dictators; zij die erbij waren maar voor het gemak uit het verhaal over de mondiale oorlog werden weggelaten. Door met gemengde technieken als double-pass, inzoomen en inkleuren zich het archiefmateriaal opnieuw toe te eigenen, zoekt de filmmaker de ziel van het beeld – de kleine, subtiele overblijfselen van een omvangrijke, maar terloops uitgewiste menselijke tragedie. Voorzichtig maar vastberaden ontvouwt zich deze geschiedenis in een film die zestig jaar stilte doorbreekt.

Na afloop van deze film gaat programmamaker Veronica Baas in gesprek met regisseur Aliona van der Horst en slavist Marit de Roij.

The incredible story of a soldier of Tatar descent who was captured by the Nazis in World War II. Now his daughter Sana, through his diaries and various personal and public archives and registers, tries to trace back the trail of her silent father.

As she accompanies Sana on her quest, director Aliona van der Horst (Love is Potatoes) also digs out film archives to find traces of the millions of Soviet soldiers who lay in the line of fire of warring dictators; those who were there but were conveniently omitted from the story of the global war.

By reusing the archive material using mixed techniques such as double-pass, zooming in and colouring, the filmmaker seeks the soul of the image – the small, subtle remnants of an extensive, but casually erased human tragedy. Cautiously but determinedly, this history unfolds in a film that breaks sixty years of silence.

In 1961 maakt een groep onverschrokken wetenschappers een expeditie naar de ongerepte Italiaanse regio Calabrië. Verborgen in het Pollino-gebergte ligt een nog niet in kaart gebrachte grot. Voor het eerst verkennen zij de bodem van de maar liefst zevenhonderd meter diepe Abisso del Bifurto. Gadegeslagen door een oude schaapherder zakken de speleologen langzaam de donkerte in. Waar de herder de omgeving op zijn duimpje kent, tasten zij letterlijk in het duister. Door steentjes en brandend papier naar beneden te gooien, proberen ze te zien en horen hoe diep de afgrond is.

Met Il Buco herschept regisseur Michelangelo Frammartino (Le Quattro Volte) op meesterlijke wijze een expeditie naar het binnenste van de aarde waar de tijd stilstaat en mens en natuur samenvloeien. Het levert een unieke bioscoopervaring op, waarmee Frammartino een visuele hommage brengt aan het prachtige Calabrische landschap. Il Buco ging in première op het Filmfestival van Venetië, waar de mystieke schoonheid van de film bekroond werd met de Juryprijs.

De wetenschap laat er geen twijfel over bestaan: door de klimaatcrisis wordt de aarde steeds minder leefbaar. Dit zorgt voor gevoelens van angst, somberheid en boosheid bij jongeren, want het gaat om hún toekomst. In de film Klimaatrebellen volgen we enkele twintigers die niet meer passief toezien hoe hun toekomst om zeep wordt geholpen. Ze komen in opstand met klimaatactiegroep Extinction Rebellion en dat gaat er heftig aan toe.

De gevolgen van de klimaatcrisis worden steeds voelbaarder: hitterecords worden aan de lopende band gebroken, de biodiversiteit neemt drastisch af en de eerste eilanden komen onder water te staan. Steeds meer twintigers en dertigers realiseren zich dat hun toekomst op het spel staat. We moeten drastische stappen ondernemen. Dat pijnlijke besef leidt bij een toenemend aantal jongeren tot gevoelens van angst, verdriet, stress en wanhoop. Zo erg dat ze geen kinderen in een wereld als deze willen opvoeden.

Klimaatrebellen is een portret van een generatie die laveert tussen hoop en wanhoop, gerepresenteerd door Sebastiaan, Merijn, Sandra, David en Ayla. Ze hebben zich aangesloten bij klimaatactiegroep Extinction Rebellion en voeren actie om de klimaatcrisis te bestrijden.

De vijf klimaatrebellen rouwen om de alarmerende realiteit en komen in opstand voor maatregelen om het tij te keren. Wie heeft daarover meer recht van spreken dan jonge mensen die hun toekomst in het water zien lopen?

De actievoerders in Klimaatrebellen zijn allemaal tot dezelfde conclusie gekomen: je stem laten horen is het enige dat zin heeft. Er is dan ook weinig waarvoor ze terugschrikken in hun strijd: nachtelijke campagnes, acties op grote hoogte en zelfs gearresteerd worden en een strafblad krijgen. Ze geven hun hele hebben en houden voor een betere toekomst.

Nagesprek

Na de film gaat Jaap Tielbeke in conversatie met drie klimaatactivisten, klimaatpsycholoog Evanne Nowak en Ingeborg Jansen, de regisseur van de film. Het thema van het gesprek is de generatiekloof tussen de “boomers” en de jongeren van vandaag, waargenomen in een bredere context, maar met de nadruk op klimaatverandering.

In 1961, a group of fearless speleologists from Northern Italy embarks on an expedition to the pristine southern Italian region of Calabria, where an uncharted cave is to be found. For the first time in history, they expose the seven hundred meters deep Abisso del Bifurto and chart all its curves and corners. They are in turn exposed to the inquiring gaze of an old shepherd, sitting always in the same spot to oversee his livestock grazing. While the shepherd knows the area like the back of his hand, the speleologists are literally groping in the dark. By throwing burning paper and pebbles down the unperceivable abyss, they try to see and hear how deep it goes.

With his previous film Le Quattro Volte, Michelangelo Frammartino asserted himself as one of the living masters of cinema. Waiting for more than 10 years for his next feature turned out to be worth it, as Il Buco delivers an equally calming and immense cinematic experience. Frammartino captures the traditional and the transcendent with a simplicity and spirituality unique to his cinematic voice. The plot setup of this film is so simple that it at times masquerades as a contemporary, poetic documentary, even though it is set in the 60s.

The screening will be followed by a (pre-recorded) conversation where Stefan Malešević, our cinema curator, goes in conversation with Frammartino, trying to discover the intricacies of creating such a delicate and profound film.

Il Buco premiered at the Venice Film Festival, where the film’s mystical beauty won the Jury Prize.

About Michelangelo Frammartino

Michelangelo Frammartino was born in Milan in 1968. He studied Architecture at the Politecnico di Milano, where he developed a passion for the relationship between physical space and (moving) images.

Frammartino’s debut Il Dono (2003), a no-budget feature film, shot in his parents’ village in Calabria, premiered at the Locarno Film Festival. Frammartino’s second feature, Le Quattro Volte (2010) premiered in Directors’ Fortnight at Cannes Film Festival. The film won the Europa Cinemas “Best European Film” award in Cannes, and the main prize at CPH:DOX, and was the 2010 Directors’ Fortnight “Coup de coeur”.

Special screening of Artist of Perestroika by Masha Novikova. Have the years of Glasnost and Perestroika – and the unique freedom that Russian artists knew back then – been just a moment in history? With an introduction of Pauline Michgelsen (in Dutch) + Q&A.

Art, dance, music and theater know no boundaries and do not need any language other than the language of art. In times of Glasnost and Perestroika in Russia it went well in the field of cultural relations between the Netherlands and Russia. At the time, an intense collaboration developed between the Dutch and Russian artists, resulting in friendships that continue to this day.

Under Putin, another wall between Europe and Russia has emerged. What is it like for the new generation of artists to deal with censorship and possible repression? Is there still hope that Dutch and Russian artists can perform together?

Masha Novikova is Russian visual artist and filmmaker. Short before the fall of the Berlin Wall she came to the Netherlands, since then she has been living and working in Amsterdam. Her documentaries include Drie kameraden (2006), Brieven aan jezelf (2013), Daymohk, het land van de voorouders (2018), and Niet mijn Moskou (2022).

Pauline Michgelsen studied Russian language and culture in both Amsterdam and Moscow, organized exhibitions in Russia and runned an Amsterdam-based galery for artists from the former Soviet-Union. She now works as a translator.

100% of the ticket sales goes to the largest Ukrainian film archive – Dovzhenko Centre in Kyiv, that is struggling to keep its doors open during the invasion.

Each of the films represents an important cinematic work that also gives insight into the history of Ukraine and its people, either through the very subject of the film or through reflecting the times in which they were made.

All films have English subtitles and begin with a short introduction by our cinema editor, Stefan Malešević (De Balie). Tickets are available at standard price per screening, or at a discounted price of € 24,08 for all four screenings, in memory of the Ukrainian Declaration of Independence on 24th of August 1991.

Zvenigora

1928 | dir. Oleksandr Dovzhenko | 70 min

A Thousand years of Ukrainian history told through the surreal story of the mythical Grandfather who is guarding the treasures of Ukraine against the numerous invaders. With its unique dramaturgy and shooting style, Zvenigora was the first film that put the spotlight on Oleksandr Dovzhenko as he was paving his way to becoming one of the most influential filmmakers from Ukraine.

Shadows of Forgotten Ancestors (+Kyiv Frescoes)

1966 | dir. Sergey Parajanov | 15+100 min

Based on the eponymous novel by the famous Ukrainian writer Mykhailo Kotsiubynsky, Parajanov’s first work in his recognizable style delivers the tale of young lovers who find themselves on the opposing sides of a family blood feud. Heralded as the most important film in Ukrainian film history, this film takes the viewer on a psychedelic cinematic ride influenced by the rich folklore of Ukraine.

Before the screening, there is an equally experimental short Kyiv Frescoes, made from leftovers because his next project had to wait.

Asthenic Syndrome

1989 | dir. Kira Muratova | 153 min

The sixth feature film directed by Muratova is widely considered her most important piece. Known for its film-within-a-film narrative, where the first half of turns out to be just what the protagonist was watching in a cinema, Asthenic Syndrome follows the exhausted school teacher who falls asleep at the most inconvenient times. His struggles with the moral decadence around him were seen as a metaphor for the Soviet Union at the end of its existence. Critics call this film the ‘last Soviet and the first Post-Soviet film’.

Oxygen Starvation

1992 | dir. Andrii Donchyk | 100 min

Donchyk wrote this film together with Yurii Andrukhovych, based on their real-life experiences of abuse as recruits in the Soviet army. In one of the first non-state funded films of post-Soviet Ukraine, they explore the story of an intelligent Ukrainian recruit who resists attempts of his superiors to turn him into an obedient, mindless subject of the Soviet state.

Program

1st June Zvenigora
7th June Shadows of Forgotten
Ancestors + Kyiv Frescoes
14th June Asthenic Syndrome
21st June Oxygen Starvation

All screenings begin at 19:30.

Click on a film title for more information and separate tickets.

100% of the ticket sales are forwarded to the largest Ukrainian film archive – Dovzhenko Centre in Kyiv, that is struggling to keep its doors open during the invasion.

This film was conceived as plain revolutionary propaganda, with even the director himself calling it his “party membership card”. Around the film’s release, however, the Soviet newspapers started calling it out for being “bourgeois and nationalistic”, a label that has proven to be quite a good indicator of a film’s artistic merit.

The twelve intervowen episodes of Zvenigora, composed in a dream-like structure, take the viewer on an exciting, surreal thousand-year long ride – from the Cossacks’ confrontations with Poles to the industrialization following the October revolution.

Today, Zvenigora is venerated equally for its unique, avantgarde film language, its innovative storytelling devices, hybrid form and its vast, overwhelming view of Ukrainian history

“I am Zvenigora”, Dovzhenko wrote later, “so contrary, so visionary, often uncontrollable, pierced by an acute sense of conflict and the rhythm of all time”.

Full program

1st June Zvenigora
7th June Shadows of Forgotten
Ancestors + Kyiv Frescoes
14th June Asthenic Syndrome
21st June Oxygen Starvation

All screenings begin at 19:30.

Click on a film title for more information and separate tickets.

Click here for the description of the whole program and the discounted combi-ticket of 24,08€.

100% of the ticket sales are forwarded to the largest Ukrainian film archive – Dovzhenko Centre in Kyiv, that is struggling to keep its doors open during the invasion.

An Armenian director born in Georgia went Ukraine to shoot a film inspired by the folklore of Hutsuls – an ethnic minority in Ukraine. Sergei Parajanov was a paragon of diversity and cultural exchange inside the vast Soviet Union.

Made under the auspices of the Dovzhenko Film Studios, the film and its author received praise from the regime, for the poetic quality and philosophical depth Parajanov achieved. The immense strength of a wild, but consistent shooting style that turned a typical story of “Romeo and Juliet” into an epic visceral celebration of senses is still considered by many to be a pinnacle of filmmaking in its purest form.

A few years after this release, however, Parajanov became a victim of the dark side of the Soviet regime – enduring opression, censorship and incarceration based on false accusations. Parajanov spent years in prison for his alleged “homosexual activities”, which was illegal in Soviet Union at the time, and saw most of his films banned from distribution or production, despite constant cries for his release from fellow filmmakers such as Fellini, Coppola, Godard and Tarkovsky.

We open the evening with remnants of one such project – Kyiv Frescoes, which present a collage created from test shootings for a film dealing with the consequences of WWII in Kyiv. Kyiv Frescoes represents a radical shift in style and serves as a bridge between the Shadows and The Color of Pomegranates, his most widely celebrated film.

Full program

1st June Zvenigora
7th June Shadows of Forgotten
Ancestors + Kyiv Frescoes
14th June Asthenic Syndrome
21st June Oxygen Starvation

All screenings begin at 19:30.

Click on a film title for more information and separate tickets.

Click here for the description of the whole program and the discounted combi-ticket of 24,08€.

100% of the ticket sales are forwarded to the largest Ukrainian film archive – Dovzhenko Centre in Kyiv, that is struggling to keep its doors open during the invasion.

Asthenic Syndrome, named after the medical condition described as chronic lack of strength and decrease of vital power, earned Kira Muratova the Silver Bear award at Berlinale just a few months after the Berlin Wall collapsed.

This peculiar film cemented her position as one of the most important authors from Ukraine and remains her most praised work, despite the unusual story-telling devices, long running time and thematical complexity.

Using a post-modernist technique that would later become a staple in her work, Muratova opens this film with a black-and-white drama of a recently widowed woman. Forty minutes into this story, Asthenic Syndrome’s main plotline begins as we witness the main character waking up in the cinema where the black-and-white film screened. Subsequent color footage follows Nikolai, a secondary school teacher, who keeps falling asleep at most inappropriate moments, such as a bus ride or a parent-teacher meeting. His narcolepsy presents a defence-mechanism against the surroundings whose moral degradation has become unbearable.

Most critics saw this as a parable of the decaying Soviet society, that seemed to be entering a collective state of asthenia, but this cinematic gem that breaks all film conventions is much more than a plain political critique.

Full program

1st June Zvenigora
7th June Shadows of Forgotten
Ancestors + Kyiv Frescoes
14th June Asthenic Syndrome
21st June Oxygen Starvation

All screenings begin at 19:30.

Click on a film title for more information and separate tickets.

Click here for the description of the whole program and the discounted combi-ticket of 24,08€.