Mourning and beauty in Kyiv

The full-length non-action drama All Things Ablaze (co-directed by Oleksandr Techynsky, Oleksii Solodunov, and Dmytro Stoikov) has won the prize as the best East European documentary at the largest festival for documentary and animated films DOK Leipzig. Finally after the premiere at the Kyiv festival Docudays UA it has become available for the Ukrainian audience – the screenings, though limited to only a few halls (like “Cinema City” and “Kyiv”), started recently.

The film All Things Ablaze is dedicated to the revolutionary events, however it completely falls out of the list of the documentary films about Maidan – because of a different meaning angle and because of the visual approach of the authors.

Already at the beginning of the film the movements of the demonstrators and the police look like taking the positions before an appointed battle. Directors record the violence and hostility on both sides, but, when it is needed, they stop the camera on the details. These details are enough to bring the stylistics of the film beyond the framework of a documentary. Whereas epic generalization is typical of Serhii Loznytsia’s sensational Maidan, and the film by the Babylon’13 group Stronger Than Arms is an example of a dramatic chronicle, All Things Ablaze show the dangerous beauty of revolution brewed on fire, blood, and nonstop movement, which is its integral part. But this is not aestheticization for its own sake.

Directors do not support any of the sides, neither do they investigate into the reasons of the clashes, they don’t take commentaries. They almost completely leave the leisure of the revolutionaries out of the scene, showing only a few songs, music, dances, and short moments of rest in a church and in the city administration. They show a rather different level of conflicts, preparation for the clashes, or their consequences. When the street seized by the clashes merges with the fuss in the premises of the temporary hospital in a brilliantly edited episode (the editing in All Things Ablaze is worth of a separate analysis), this means among other things that privacy has been abolished, that no walls can hide or protect anyone, and in this general disturbed space there are no people who are completely right. So, the details are left: the beauty of the snow on the branches of a bush and the helmet of a special operations officer under it, a phantasmal skull that is glimmering in the light of the fire already on the hard hat of a rebel, the play of fire, shadows and light, the choreography of people’s movement in the troubled city. Everyone has here his own part of beauty, his inspiration, and losses: one of the central parts is the piercing scene which shows an old Communist standing with his face stoned because of grief as he is embracing the Lenin monument that has been demolished and he is not aware of the fact that time has changed irreversibly and mercilessly.

All Things Ablaze tells about the Maidan as an irrational act, which makes it even more dramatic. This irrationality however acts both in good and in evil – not accidentally the film ends with the words from the prayer “forgive everyone who is indebted to us.” The scene of this moment opens and for the first time the sky is shown, it is full of sunshine spreading above the panorama of the mourning square. It can be said that Techynsky, Solodunov, and Stoikov picture the revolution as a classical canvas, where it is not important anymore whose fault it is, as the picture of the great collision, a great tragedy we have all faced.

Before the beginning of the screening we offer to the readers of The Day to read an interview with its directors. All three have worked as photo journalists. Oleksandr Techynsky debuted as a director in 2013 with a witty short film Sirs and Misters (cameraman: Oleksii Solodunov), dedicated to the Uman residents who earn money during the pilgrimage of Hasidim on the holiday of Rosh Hashanah.

 “AS LONG AS YOU HAVE PEOPLE EAGER TO HELP YOU, EVERYTHING WILL BE OKAY”

THE WAY IT WAS DONE

How did you come up with the idea to shoot the film All Things Ablaze?

Oleksandr TECHYNSKY: “When everything began, we received an offer from our old friend and colleague, a journalist at the newspaper Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung Konrad Schuller [a correspondent of the newspaper in Ukraine and Poland, German journalist and writer. – Author] to shoot short documentary sketches for their website. We started to shoot what was going on here every day, edit and upload the videos to the website. Namely during the Hrushevskoho Street events we came up with an idea that there may be somewhat more to it.”

Judging by the footage on the website and the film you went to the very epicenter. Have you gotten to any dangerous situations?

O.T.: “Regularly. But years of trainings helped me.”

How did you managed to remain safe?

Oleksii SOLODUNOV: “Everything was accidental. I simply stood between the protesters and the police. And when the police started to attack, I kept standing. When they retreated, I retreated with them. Then I was standing next to them, talking, some of them asked to record them on camera, showed shields with holes, which were made by bullets according to them. They said, ‘Record how they are throwing stones at us.’ They brought their wounded. Some of them behaved aggressively, buy I explained that I needed to shoot them as well. More intelligent of them understood. Later, when they were attacking, they didn’t understand clearly what they were doing: they were shooting, throwing stones, beating people, they were doing this very rudely, but they didn’t notice me because of the general chaos. I was not wearing any bright safety equipment, just an armored vest with ‘the press’ sign, a black hard hat, and I followed them calmly.”

Haven’t you ever found yourself in trouble?

O.S.: “At some point of time when they were beating a person and I was recording, one of them approached me and broke with a metal tube my camera and my finger. Other photographers were less lucky – someone’s equipment was broken or taken away. But when you are staying close to these people, you need to talk to them, find contact, to be on their side to some extent: you are now with them, you must film them.”

When did you understand how the film had to look like?

O.T.: “I think that after I watched The Great Beauty by Paolo Sorrentino, went out of the hall, I knew what I was going to do. In fact I cannot say. It happened so. We edited the film together. At first Oleksii and I recorded a video which was 3.5 hours long and then I cut parts from it.”

O.S.: “When we were shooting for the newspaper, we looked through all the material and edited it.”

O.T.: “Yes, because we worked with the material every day, we knew it very well and saw which fragments were important.”

The fact that you are at an equal distance from the sides of the conflict is striking. How did you cope with keeping to this position?

O.T.: “I think it is in the blood, because we have spent many years in journalism. It’s like a conflict for example between Vasyl and Mykola. You ask Vasyl for commentary, and he calls Mykola a bastard, then you ask Mykola for commentary, and he is of the same opinion about Vasyl. Then you ask three independent experts. One supports Vasyl more, another one supports Mykola more, and the third one says they both are bastards. Your task is to present facts, and the reader will understand. You don’t need to interpret everything for him. We had the same approach here.”

Dmytro STOIKOV: “If I knew everything, all the reasons, all answers to all actions, I would have acted differently. And now I know as much as the rest of people. So, I must show everything as it is.”

O.T.: “We have spent so many years in journalism, and it is important for us to be above all this. If producer Yulia called and said, ‘Ours are attacking,’ I immediately started to think ‘what ours.’ There can be no ours for a journalist.”

In the films about Maidan I have seen the directors have a different stand. Maybe they could afford to be biased?

O.T.: “I think that is a thing that cannot be afforded. What happened is what happened, nothing cannot be done about that. If the policemen were killed, we must tell about this. If protesters were killed, we killed them too. We, the Ukrainians, this is all going on in our country.”

EXPERIENCE

How has your experience helped you during the shooting?

O.S.: “For example, to learn where you should go, and where you shouldn’t go. Not to take unjustified risk.”

D.S.: “The instinct that has developed over these years works 100 percent. Visually, in particular. You don’t especially think what to shoot, what to turn. When you work in daily periodicals, you have a tight schedule, great physical load, you go from shooting to shooting, you must quickly shoot and send the material, and you don’t think about any buttons, you think instinctively.”

O.T.: “I think we made this film because we had been ready for it. Dmytro is right when he says that journalistic experience includes both physical and moral loads, and, what’s the most important, the ability to get to the scene. I have a good story about experience. One filmmaker found himself on February 18 in the same place as we. When the crowd rushed along Instytutska Street, somebody stepped on his shoes and he was left barefoot, lost pace, and as a result the police crushed his camera, microphone, and beat him heavily. Everything happened because he didn’t know where he was going, what could happen, didn’t prepare properly. Because shoes are the most important thing for a photo journalist, even more important than the camera. Like they say, simple things save life. Namely owing to this we could get close and build a scene.”

O.S.: “When you’re in the middle of a chaos, you must stop very calmly, not be shooting everything randomly, but look for some views and follow them very carefully and slowly, although you are in the middle of a madhouse.”

O.T.: “Like a surfer, you must catch the wave and follow it. If you lose it, you must stop, think where it went and come back to it. We were successful because of many factors.”

Another moment that cannot but be distinguished is your culture of making scenes. Some episodes look like finished miniatures. How did you manage to achieve this visual quality?

O.T.: “In my youth I have worked for many years to achieve this. Later I developed this skill, and now I don’t have to think: I take the camera, put a cigarette between my teeth – and this is satisfaction, not just work.”

BEHIND THE SCENE

O.S.: “Plus many years that we have been without work, when you can watch many films nonstop, like two or three films a day.”

O.T.: “Sometimes we go too far with this aesthetics. The House of Trade Unions is on fire, and at some point you stop and simply stand amazed. You catch yourself thinking that you feast your eyes on this hell, and stop yourself. But this is enchanting, it possesses some power, it is trying to draw you into something it needs.”

If we have talked about this, what cinema do you like?

O.T.: “At the moment I like German Sr., I watch again his My friend Ivan Lapshin. And the influence of such films as Apocalypse Now and The Thin Red Line cannot be underestimated in this case.”

D.S.: “My idol is Wim Wenders, Everything. Especially his old works.”

O.S.: “I watch many different things, in particular stupid and funny ones. I like Emir Kusturica, I like funny films. Not long ago I have discovered the documentary Workingman’s Death by Austrian director Michael Glawogger [partially shot in the Donbas. – Author].”

O.T.: “Yes, the film is impressive.”

O.S.: “On the whole, all films by Glawogger are very interesting, with good cameraman work.”

O.T.: “In 2009 Dmytro showed me Workingman’s Death, and I understood that I would quit my job for the newspaper Kommersant, and would work in the documentary cinema.”

NEXT

What will go next?

O.T.: “We are working on the film about the residents of Vylkove in the delta of the Danube. It is called Delta. Hopefully, we will finish the work this or next winter. And before that time we will see where the curved line will bring us.”

O.S.: “I am really interested by stories of ordinary people. Therefore Sirs and Misters and Delta are close to me in spirit. I travel a lot by motorbike across Europe and meet many amazing characters, and it is very interesting for me to look at them and shoot some notes on the go.”

O.T.: “I am very concerned about what is going on in the east. The information I receive does not satisfy my interest. However, I have been regularly visiting it for the past year, but it would be interesting to look at everything through my camera.”

Generally, how do you see your future in cinema?

O.S.: “As long as there are good people who are ready to help you, everything will be okay. Like it was with both of our films. In Sirs and Misters we all were working for food. Now we could even shoot on mobile phones – that would still be history.”

O.T.: “I’ve met a Dutch who shoots films about wild boars in the Netherlands. This is ‘Twin Peaks’: a film about boars without boars. He said, ‘We don’t have wildlife, so I decided to shoot a film about it. And in Ukraine no matter where you put a camera, it will be a ready documentary film. Beautiful!’