Immediately after the premiere of When spring came to Bucha, something remarkable happened. The filmmakers came to the stage as well-deserved applause filled the theater. And since this was at the International Documentary Festival Amsterdam (IDFA), they had brought one of their protagonists with them: Taras Vyazovchenko. We had just seen him on screen: for many months he had worked inside refrigerators with bodies of killed Ukrainian civilians, identifying them, registering their wounds and the causes of death, trying to prepare them for a proper burial. When he came to the stage, IDFA’s moderator for the premiere suddenly fell into Vyazovchenko’s arms, crying and hugging him. She was shaking. The filmmakers stood by, a bit uncertain.
An iron curtain makes a powerful canvas. Images from Sven Johne & Falk Haberkorn’s Aus Sicht des Archivs, documenting life in the former East Germany in the 1990s.
On Natalia Ginzburg’s Valentino, newly translated: a Q&A with Alexander Chee.
From the office of the future to the office of the past. What endures?