The special film series Remembering Babyn Yar on Film has been curated for this year’s Ukrainian Film Festival Berlin as a joint project between UFFB and the University of Potsdam’s Institute of Jewish Studies and Religious Studies (Department of German-Jewish Literature).
The program comprises two films that represent the complex cinematic memory of Babyn Yar from different historical periods and contexts. Both address fundamental questions concerning the representability of the Holocaust and the role of testimony.
With Mark Donskoy’s feature film The Unvanquished, also known as The Taras Family (Нескорені / Die Unbesiegten, 1945, Ukrainian SSR, Kyiv Film Studios, 82 min.), the series returns to the beginnings of the Holocaust’s visual representation. Although this adaptation of Borys Horbatov’s novel foregrounds the Soviet propaganda narrative of the Second World War, it also explicitly addresses the fate of Jewish people during the Nazi occupation of Ukraine alongside the story of Taras Yatsenko’s family. The scene depicting the execution of Ukrainian Jews has often been interpreted as a clear reference to the Babyn Yar massacre. At the same time, it raises important questions about the cinematic treatment of the Holocaust.
Serhiy Bukovsky’s 2006 documentary Spell Your Name (Назви своє ім’я, 2006, Ukraine/USA, 90 min.) gives survivors of the Babyn Yar massacre an opportunity to speak as witnesses. The film’s experimental format skilfully combines testimonies recorded by the USC Shoah Foundation during the 1990s with Soviet footage from the Second World War and contemporary images, creating a multilayered narrative structure. With considerable artistic ambition, the film examines the role of archival material and explores the possibilities and forms of representing atrocities through cinema.
Both screenings will be accompanied by discussions with experts: Irine Beridze (University of Potsdam, literary and film scholar), Anna Onufriienko (a cultural studies researcher, film historian, and curator specializing in Soviet cinema, visual propaganda, and cinematic representations of the Donbas region), and Bozhena Kozakevych (Historian, research associate for the German-Polish House at the Foundation Memorial to the Murdered Jews of Europe).
Presented in cooperation between the Ukrainian Film Festival Berlin and the University of Potsdam’s Institute of Jewish Studies and Religious Studies (Department of German-Jewish Literature).
