Tags
  • Arts and Humanities
  • Kenneth P. Dietrich School of Arts and Sciences
Announcements and Updates

Watch rarely screened Ukrainian films at Pitt

Black and white image of several people reaching up for large ball

Take a deep dive into nearly 100 years of Ukrainian film history May 12-15 during Pitt’s New East Cinema Symposium screenings, held in the Cathedral of Learning and Frick Fine Arts Building. The first film, “Ivin A,” screens Thursday at 2 p.m.

This year’s symposium theme, “Archives as New Artifacts: Ukraine Screens Its Own Cinema (1929-2020),” challenges attendees to consider the impact of political repression on Ukraine’s film legacy.

“We’re talking about film as a media presence,” said Nancy Condee, the symposium’s co-organizer and director of the Center for Russian, East European and Eurasian Studies, told the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette. “It’s an artifact and a really fragile artifact. … For me, it’s a media archaeological and preservation project.”

The three-day event features two rarely seen films produced in 1929, “Bread,” a story of a generational conflict between a Red Army veteran and his father, and “In Spring,” an avant-garde experimental documentary.

This year's screenings will be introduced by two distinguished guests from the Oleksandr Dovzhenko National Center: former director Ivan Kozlenko and current head of research and programming Stanislav Menzelevskyi.

The New East Cinema Symposium is free to attend, but pre-registration is required.

The symposium is supported by the University of Pittsburgh’s Office of the Dean of the Kenneth P. Dietrich School of Arts and Sciences; the University Center for International Studies; the Center for Russian and East European Studies; the Department of Slavic Languages and Literatures; and the Pittsburgh Foundation.