Ukraine
Hugh Barnes
François Truffaut said that there is no such thing as an anti-war film because cinema inevitably glorifies the horror of conflict. The premise was robustly challenged over the weekend at the Ukrainian Institute London’s fourth annual film festival, Side By Side, which screened a handful of films, documentary and narrative, feature-length and short, that compelled the audience to reflect deeply on war’s horrific nature.A recurring festival theme was a sense of filmmaking itself being overtaken by events in the wake of last year’s Russian invasion of Ukraine. In I Did Not Want to Make a War Read more ...
graham.rickson
Describe The English Surgeon as the story of a plucky doctor attempting to defeat a brain tumour and you’d incur the wrath of its protagonist Henry Marsh, who, in a recent interview included here as an extra, moans that he hates seeing surgeons portrayed as heroes, as, in his words, “patients are more heroic.”Marsh, a pleasingly self-deprecating neurosurgeon, can’t help saying something profound every time he opens his mouth, and you can see why documentary-maker Geoffrey Smith was drawn to him. An awful lot has changed since the film was made in 2007 and shown in BBC Four’s Read more ...
Tim Cumming
Music from the Temple of Light has for its cover image a minimalist 17th century representation of Tantra. In this instance, a deep blue field bordering on black, scored by a golden yellow square, an arrow hanging down from the square’s centre, and a break in that arrow opening up near its tip.It’s an absorbent and contemplative representation of forces rarely seen and beyond our control, and there’s a strong golden thread of the contemplative and of forces from beyond embedded in the album’s music, and its sacred edge.Peter Culshaw is one of the founders of this website, and a veteran and Read more ...
Hugh Barnes
The great Russian novelists of the 19th century wrote what Henry James called "large, loose, baggy monsters" out of belief that "truth" was more important than artistic form. The 20th-century Russian-Ukrainian writer A. Anatoli, who renounced his Soviet identity (and surname Kuznetsov) after defecting to England in 1969, was unquestionably an artist.Yet he chose to subtitle Babi Yar, his classic non-fiction account of Ukraine's holocaust, "a document in the form of a novel". The book, first published in a heavily censored xxx in 1966, poses the question: why and how did the unprecedented Read more ...
Hugh Barnes
It's fair to say that Pamfir, Ukrainian director Dmytro Sukholytkyy-Sobchuk's first feature, has been slightly overtaken by events.Set in the Carpathian mountains, on Ukraine's border with Romania, and filmed in the days and weeks leading up to the Russian invasion, this stylish movie captures the parochialism of life in the far west of the country, a thousand miles from the war, in a territory called Bukovina that was part of Hungary until World War II. Strangely enough, I watched Pamfir last week only hours after travelling through Bukovina, on the way out of Ukraine, and was struck by the Read more ...
Kevin Sullivan
The Khanenko Museum stands opposite the Taras Shevchenko Park in central Kyiv, a popular green oasis next to the University. One of the 83 Russian missiles fired into Ukrainian cities on Monday this week landed at an intersection on the edge of the park, killing several commuters. Just a few days earlier, on 1 and 2 October, the Khanenko was the venue for a remarkable new opera by the Ukrainian composers Roman Grygoriv and Illia Razumeiko – a work of art that eloquently testifies to the value of human experience and will continue to do so long after the present assault on Ukraine’s civilian Read more ...
Guy Oddy
If anyone was going to produce a raucous musical response to Vladimir Putin’s invasion of Ukraine, it was always likely to be Gogol Bordello. After all, the band has both Ukrainian and Russian members (among other nationalities), they have a tendency to champion the underdog and aren’t timid about flagging up injustice.New album, Solidaritine is indeed Eugene Hutz and his gang’s take on the things that are presently taking place in Eastern Europe. However, while it’s clear where Gogol Bordello’s sympathies lie, they don’t resort to sloganeering or explicitly calling out the Butcher of Moscow Read more ...
Hugh Barnes
Stanislav Aseyev is a Ukrainian writer who came in from the cold. Until the spring of 2014, he was an aspiring poet and novelist based in the eastern Donbas region: when, however, its main city and surrounding area fell under the control of pro-Russian militants, he began to document the alternative reality of life in the so-called Donetsk People’s Republic (DPR).Now collected and translated into English by Lidia Wolandskyji, his dispatches (written for the Mirror Weekly newspaper under the pen name Stanislav Vasin) provide a fascinating insight into the culture war at the heart of the fight Read more ...
Valeriy Sokolov
A fortnight ago I performed Tchaikovsky's Violin Concerto with the Aurora Orchestra, joining them and their Principal Conductor Nicholas Collon in Cologne. Tonight we shall present the same programme at the Royal Festival Hall. These are my first appearances with Aurora and as a Ukrainian, I feel so grateful that even during a terrible time like this, I can continue making music. The situation in my homeland feels so overwhelming that getting on with music right now is the best thing to do for now, at least mentally.I was born in Ukraine but grew up and studied in England so I have strong Read more ...
Sebastian Scotney
Odesa (Sunnyside) is a deeply-felt and wonderfully played solo piano album with a massive emotional and stylistic compass. New York-based composer/pianist Vadim Neselovskyi has made a strong statement in homage to the city by the Black Sea where he was born, and to its unique cultural and musical heritage.Neselovskyi is one of those musicians whose astonishing potential – above all as composer – was spotted ridiculously early. He entered a newly-formed elite composition class in his home city at the age of just eight. By 14 his compositions were being presented abroad by Ukrainian cultural Read more ...
Peter Culshaw
The latest edition of Peter Culshaw’s occasional global radio shows focuses totally on Ukraine, looking at music, art, culture and resistance.Culshaw has reported over the years on the Odessa Film and Jazz festivals for theartsdesk, and written for the Odessa Review, Songlines and the Guardian on Ukrainian music and film. He argues that Ukraine was becoming too attractive, democratic, hip and culturally and technologically innovative – and that such a flowering had to be stamped out by Russia before it spread. We also discuss whether World War 3 has actually started.His co-pilot for the whole Read more ...
Jenny Gilbert
What do top ballet dancers keep permanently in their back pocket? Answer: a fully rehearsed, ready-to-go gala item, to judge by a one-off fundraising event mounted in double-quick time at the Coliseum last month and now available to stream, raising more funds for the DEC Ukraine Humanitarian Appeal. The initiative came from Alina Cojocaru, Romanian by birth, and Ivan Putrov, a Ukrainian, both former principals of The Royal Ballet who trained together as 10-year-olds in Kyiv.As soon as the horror in Ukraine hit home the pair pooled their work contacts, inviting top-ranking Read more ...