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Tue22 Jul09:15am(15 mins)
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Where:
Room 15
Stream:
Presenter:
Presenter:
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Our presentation will examine two recent documentary films made by Ukrainian female filmmakers, The Earth Is Blue as an Orange (2020) directed and written by Iryna Tsilyk and A Bit of A Stranger (2023) - by Svitlana Lishchynska. Each film was made in a particular moment in the recent history of the Ukrainian-Russian conflict with the support of the international film festival circuit. Both Tsilyk and Lishchynska used the camera to capture everyday life of people experiencing the disruptive consequences of the war thus creating ways of understanding women’s subjectivity in the context of the war and aimed primarily at international film festival audiences. Particularly they were interested in exploring what impact the war had had on women’s lives and the relationships within their families, which resonated as not just politically topical but also universally understood and relevant themes.
Following the concept of women mobilizing memory introduced by Ayşe Gül Altınay, María José Contreras, Marianne Hirsch, Jean Howard, Banu Karaca, and Alisa Solomon (2019) in their book, Women Mobilizing Memory, these Ukrainian documentaries are going to be first analyzed in terms of traumatic experience of the disruptive time, that are mobilized by women for the creative ends and out of desire for self-expression. For these Ukrainian women filmmakers, filming is a gesture of empowerment and self-determination to face realities of the war, and to give voice to those whose stories/memories are often misrepresented or omitted in official narratives.
The analysis of both films will be accompanied by an exploration of the creative process underpinning their development and distribution. Particular attention will be paid to the role played by film festival funds, markets, and pitching forums, as well as the reception of the films on the international film festival circuit. The question will be raised about the extent to which the meaning of these films was reshaped because of the input from the international film festival practitioners at the stage of the films’ development.
