Film Screening & Discussion. “The Cacophony of Donbas”

The Ukrainian Film Club of Columbia University will open its new season with the feature documentary The Cacophony of Donbas, 2018. Yuri Shevchuk will introduce the program and lead the post-screening discussion.

This revealing and skillfully executed documentary explores the Soviet myth of the Donbas, the part of Ukraine that includes the administrative provinces of Luhansk and Donetsk. The film has two clashing narrative planes. One shows life in this region through the lens of Soviet propaganda that portrayed Donbas as a workers’ paradise. The other is about the objective reality of miners’ lives and their dangerous, backbreaking work.

The myth of Donbas is on a par with other components of the Russian mythic consciousness such as the so-called Great Patriotic War or Russian messianism and victimhood. Together they feed the massive support that the current Russian aggression against Ukraine enjoys among the populace of Russia.