Khayt

Three stories of interconnection and internegation between creativity and work in modern Ukraine.

In the spring of 2022, the Ukrainian city of Mariupol was surrounded by Russian troops. They were using the weapons of mass destruction against the civilian population every day. In mid-March volunteers started evacuating people from Mariupol to Zaporizhzhia. They gathered after each trip to exchange the information, support each other, and talk about their traumatic experiences.

Ajahi is the poorest district of Mariupol. An ideal place for meditations on poverty; a place where you won't see anything that is supposed to be shown; place, to share the void with a friend.

Far right radicalism cannot be innate, it is always a result of socio-economic frustrations. We asked our friends to try on the uniform of the National Corps and think about the far right political identity from inside.

A music film about Taras Fedirko, William Nought, heart, feet, skirt, and bagels. Impro vs impro, superimpo vs superimpo, oh-my-god vs aliens' idioms, sound propagating happiness vs a soldering iron in a demagog's arse.

The film consists of 14 fragments, which focus on intersections of dramatic events in the history of Ukraine in 2014-2016, and specifically in the history of the city of Mariupol, and personal experiences of the filmmaker. The beginning. Water. Music. Jokes. Monuments. Events. Buenos Aires. A tree. Talking to God. Film. A trap for nearly everyone. Walls of Joy. All I think is fire. The end.

Ihor works from home in a taxi answering service. He seems to be imprisoned in his room in a depressing apartment block opposite the pompous Orthodox cathedral. To escape the hopelessness, Ihor tries to interpret his precarious daily life as creatively as possible. Growing sunflowers on his balcony and creating rotoscoping animation on an out-of-date black&white printer become important rituals of resistance.

The second film, "Artels of Fintiktikova's Followers," 2006-2009.

The film is based on Riasni Drova’s interpretation of John Jacob Niles’ Child Ballad #95.

The first film, "Artels of Fintiktikova's Followers," 2006-2007.

Life of Mariupol vandals in 29 arborglyphs (graffiti on the bark of the trees).

A story about getting lost in Albanian countryside. What is otherness? Do we need foreign lands, foreign languages to experience it? Is it a problem or a liberation?

An abandoned house on the seacoast near Mariupol, an overcast sky and a camera shared by three friends.

A day in the life of a working man. Gathering the wires for scrap. Feeding the stray dogs. Chopping wood and lighting a furnace. Opening the gate for more important people. Channel zapping and simple food.

The film crew of the Creative East project is travelling around the Eastern Ukrainian cities researching abandoned areas and buildings. The people they meet offer different perspectives on the problem. Apart from revitalizing abandoned buildings (skate-park Druzhba in Lysychansk), you can also use them for temporarty art interventions (rave parties in the former industrial park in Kostyantynivka) or just leave them as they are (Soviet summer camps on the Azov coast).

An auto-fictional essay about a gay community that makes use of a communication network consisting of amateur radio and grassroot hook-up apps. While the air is constantly interrupted by homophobic messages made of the intercepted military ciphers used by the Russian army, networks of love, empathy, and support become ever stronger. Produced as a close observation of everyday media practices and the social life of love relations, “The Film of Sand“ takes a close look at the interrelations of war and intimacy, threat and empathy, fiction and documentation.