KINOTEATR RODINA

In the film factory of the former film city of Shostka in Ukraine, color films of the Soviet brand Svema were produced .With his audio album,Ukrainian artist Dima Levitskiy invitesvisitors to immerse themselves in the history of the city’s cinema. As a collage of text, image and audio fragments, his work paints a portrait of the building, its films, the cinema employees and the audience.

As in Wolfen, the audience in Schostka’s movie theater produced the film material on which the images flickered across the screen themselves. Every fourth inhabitant of the city worked in the film factory. In the post-war period, the building was called RODINA for a long time, which can be translated as both “family” [Ukrainian] and “motherland” [Russian]. Based on interviews with former employees – some of whom worked at the cinema for more than thirty years – theater director Dima Levitskyi traces the organization of film screenings, the technologies used, the logic of film selection and its intertwining with Soviet propaganda. The artist intersects the portraits of people associated with the cinema with excerpts from films shot on Svema material.

In cooperation with the Goethe-Institut Ukraine