sun 03/12/2023

Ukraine

theartsdesk in Ukraine - Stankovych's 'Psalms of War' at the Lviv National Opera

Yevhen Stankovych is Ukraine’s most important living composer and – after decades of writing music that seems to grow from this country’s rich black earth, tribulations, literature and folklore – he now contributes, with his latest piece, the most...

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20 Days in Mariupol review - carnage in a dying Ukrainian city

Mstyslav Chernov’s 20 Days in Mariupol, which won the World Cinema Documentary Competition at Sundance this year, is an emotionally devastating account of the inhumanity of war.The Ukrainian videographer and his team – stills photographer...

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Side By Side Ukrainian Film Festival, Curzon Soho - cameras of courage and resistance

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,...

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Blu-ray: The English Surgeon

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...

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Album: Peter Culshaw - Music from the Temple of Light

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...

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A. Anatoli: Babi Yar - The Story of Ukraine's Holocaust review - a masterpiece uncensored

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...

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Pamfir review - a retired Ukrainian smuggler is forced to do one last job

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...

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theartsdesk in Kyiv - defiant new operatic epic in an empty gallery

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...

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Album: Gogol Bordello - Solidaritine

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...

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Stanislav Aseyev: In Isolation - Dispatches from Occupied Donbas review - journeys through space and time in Ukraine

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-...

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First person: Ukrainian violinist Valeriy Sokolov on performing while his homeland is destroyed

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...

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Album: Vadim Neselovskyi - Odesa: A Musical Walk Through a Legendary City

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...

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