Screening of a short film PRELUDE + Q&A with the director

While roaming through the streets of wartime Kyiv, Anna discreetly films men passing by. Her search for a one-night stand ends in an unexpected meeting with a soldier. Distant observation leads her into the unsettling collision with reality.

Three episodes and an epilogue. Anna films men she meets in Kyiv, whether by accident or intention. She seeks partners open to one-night encounters. With her camera, she caresses their faces, shoulders, pelvises and smiles. Anna collects their phone numbers, documents and savours the closeness. She spends a night with a soldier, going through her private archive together and confronting a reality and intimacy she had previously turned her back on.

Accompanied by Barbie-pink opening credits and set to English Baroque composer Henry Purcell’s What Power Art Thou, the hidden Ukraine unfolds through the eyes of the protagonist. It is not quite a diary of a call girl; however, as director Panasenko notes, the short film presents an unusual encounter between “us” and “them” by employing the conventions of the erotic drama subgenre. The filmmaker also effectively reflects on the objectification of the army, the archetypal masculinity underpinning the military and its way of life, and the (im)possibility of intimacy during war, occasionally alluding to David Wark Griffith’s Intolerance (1916).

The whole event is part of Christmas Artmarket FaVU.

Free entry