Documentaries on Ukraine and Russia (with links)

[workerbee]

Winter on Fire: Ukraine’s Fight for Freedom (2015)
Director: Evgeny Afineevsky
Wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Winter_on_...or_Freedom
Rotten Tomatoes: https://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/winter_...or_freedom

Torrents:
* https://rarbg.to/torrent/t9cw36f (1080p) — soft subs
* https://thepiratebay.org/description.php?id=12860434 (720p) — hard subs

In the fall of 2013, after Ukrainian president Viktor Yanukovych failed to sign a promised agreement with the EU, opting instead for a closer alliance with Russia, a protest began in the streets of Kyiv. For 93 days, ordinary people — teachers, lawyers, doctors, students and little kids — battled the Berkut (the police riot squad) to bring about the promise of true democracy. The movement became known as the Revolution of Dignity.

Director Evgeny Afineevsky’s boots-on-the-ground film breaks down the action on a daily basis, with maps of Kyiv that details the main points of conflict. The government’s failure to bring the Ukraine closer to the EU was only part of what fuelled public outrage. There was a deeper and more fundamental cause was at stake, namely freedom from tyranny. When the Berkut attacked students at the outset of the protest, beating young men and women with steel batons, the number of people determined to fight back swelled exponentially. An encampment was set up and battle lines were drawn, as Maidan (Independence) Square became the site and birthplace of the revolution.

First-person interviews with Ukrainian citizens are interspersed with footage of clashes between protesters and police. It is here, in the heaving tidal flow of bodies, filmed on from on high, that the cost of struggle is rendered stark and clear. The beetle-black helmets and body armour of the Berkut stand in marked contrast to the raggedy DIY outfits of the protesters. They make for an arresting visual shorthand of the conflict.

After the government issued a law banning helmets because protesters had taken to wearing hardhats and bike helmets to protect themselves, people filled the streets wearing every conceivable type of headgear — including pots and pans on their heads. Footage, both amateur and professional, lends verité edge that is so raw it’s practically bleeding. In orange safety vests, motorcycle helmets and home-made shields, people are filmed, fighting and dying in the streets.

The thing that is most remarkable in a film that is packed to the hilt with drama is the courage of ordinary people. A young bellringer in St. Michael’s monastery alerts people to a Berkut attack by ringing every bell in the cathedral for the first time since the Mongol invasion in 1240. A 12-year-old kid who takes a slingshot to the police. More than 125 people were killed in a series of brutal street battles, although a true number of casualties is unclear as many people disappeared.

Although there are few cinematic tropes that feel imposed in the narrative, the strings-heavy soundtrack being the most overt, the sheer scope of events overwhelms any trifles. It is the unbelievable toughness and bravery of the Ukrainians that lingers the longest. Under fire from police, protesters dragged their fallen comrades to safety, with little more than a raw courage and a bike helmet to protect themselves. You do not fuck with these folks, as Russia is currently learning.

Maïdan (2014)
Director: Sergei Loznitsa
Wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Maidan_(2014_film)
Rotten Tomatoes: https://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/maidan

Torrents:
* https://rarbg.to/torrent/mtvlk4w (720p) — hard subs

Sergei Loznitsa’s film takes on the same territory as Winter on Fire, but in a more formally constructed way. Loznitsa uses his footage to fashion narratives that transcend the events on screen while somehow encompassing a deeper, older and more uneasy image of humanity. His film Blockade, which recreated the siege of Leningrad through archival materials, is one of the most devastating films I have ever seen.

Maïdan often captures the conflict in the streets from lofty vantage points that give an almost painterly aspect to the action. The Renaissance quality of surging bodies en masse is met and matched by more intimate scenes, where protesters are filmed going about the humble business of creating a revolution — making sandwiches, piling up bricks and other hand-held missiles to be thrown at police. It is here, in these smaller, more personal moments, that the real fight for liberation hits home. It is human, messy, chaotic and also ridiculously inspiring.

The Russian Woodpecker (2015)
Director: Chad Garcia
Wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Russian_Woodpecker
Rotten Tomatoes: https://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/the_russian_woodpecker

Torrents:
* https://rarbg.to/torrent/mx5wirg (1080p) — soft subs
* https://thepiratebay.org/description.php?id=15409533 (720p) — soft subs

Improved subs for both of the above torrents: https://www.opensubtitles.org/en/subtitl...dpecker-en

The April 1986 disaster at the Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plant is considered the worst nuclear accident of the 20th century. But what if it wasn’t an accident? This is the audacious premise of Chad Garcia’s documentary-cum-bizarro mystery tour.

A wild-haired Ukrainian artist by the name of Fedor Alexandrovich serves as a guide down the rabbit hole of Cold War malfeasance. The title of the film refers to a monstrous low-frequency radio transmitter built at the height of the Cold War, ostensibly deployed to disrupt western communications. The clicking/pecking noise that it produced gave rise to its nickname.

Although he might be charitably described as an unreliable narrator, Alexandrovich has serious gumption as he embarks on a series of interviews with ex-Soviet military men, scientists and party members seeking the truth behind the Chernobyl meltdown. The artist, the director and his fearless cameraman (who is later shot and almost killed in Maidan Square) set forth into the exclusion zone around Chernobyl to see what they can discover.

The tower, built at a cost of some $7 billion, was a resounding failure. In order to cover up this fact, the film makes the radical assertion that the Chernobyl accident was allowed to happen. Garcia’s film walks a fine line between conspiracy theory and possibly one of the strangest stories to emerge out of recent history, but it is eerily convincing.

The Russian invasion of the Ukraine might have seemed an unlikely occurrence when the film first screened, but Alexandrovich’s predictions in the film now appear prescient. This fact lends additional credence to the Russian Woodpecker’s central argument that the Russian forces have long viewed the Ukraine as expendable.

HyperNormalization (2016)
Director: Adam Curtis
Wikipedia: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HyperNormalisation
Rotten Tomatoes: https://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/hypernormalisation

YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=thLgkQBFTPw

Adam Curtis’s epic analysis contains one of the most curious takes on the Russian strategy of sowing chaos in order to cloud and confuse people’s sense of reality. The clip featured here provides a quick summation of the origins of this method with one Vladislav Surkov, an avant-garde artist and one of Putin’s closest advisors. Surkov proved that keeping people in a constant state of uncertainty, unable to discern what was real and what was fake, allowed the state to exert complete control behind the scenes. I cannot count the number of times I thought to myself when presented with another instance of warped and melting reality, “Curtis called it.”