“Songs of slow burning earth”, interview with the director Olha Zhurba and the protagonist Ganna Vasyk

September 10, 2024

Interview with Olha Zhurba and Ganna Vasyk, director and protagonist of SONGS OF SLOW BURNING EARTH

"Songs of slow burning earth", interview with the director Olha Zhurba and the protagonist Ganna Vasyk Maria Bonsanti

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With the beginning of the full-scale invasion in 2022, Olha Zhurba started to film the war as archive footage. It was chaos, they were living apocalyptic times and nobody was thinking of the future.

After the Ukrainian troops liberated some of the regions and the Russians were blocked, Olha Zhurba tells that in a way, people started to adapt to the war, to continue living and resist. She also adapted: she continued to film but she started to think to what kind of film that materials could become. That’s when “Song of slow burning earth” become the idea of a film. Filming was for Olha also a way to continue to do something that was belonging to the previous life, to ground her and give a sense to daily life in times of war.

Anna, one of the main protagonists, did not hesitate to be part of the film. She trusted Olha, she felt they were the same. She says” You trust the person, and then you trust the process“.

Plot

Landscapes, occasional conversations and encounters, and sounds that weave in and out of the frame compose Pisni Zemli, Shcho Povilno Horyt’. Captured in varying proximities to the frontline over two years, the audiovisual diary of Ukraine’s immersion into the abyss of total war traces the subtle changes in Ukrainian society. The ragged chords of panic and horror of the first weeks of the Russian invasion slowly morph into the numb stillness of the acceptance of death and destruction, which eventually becomes the tragic normality for the local population, but just an afterthought for the rest of the world. Against the backdrop of the (meta)physical landscape of collective disaster, a new generation of Ukrainians aspires to imagine the future.

Written by: Maria Bonsanti

Guest

Ganna Vasyk Olha Zhurba

Film

Songs of slow burning earth

Festival

Mostra del Cinema di Venezia

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