Film Series: Babi Yar. Context
- Talks +More
Doors open: 6pm
Film Start: 6:30pm
Countless stories of armed conflict and the Holocaust have been told through film. Koffler Arts will present a series of four film screenings – including four documentaries and two films of choreographed dance performances – to complement the exhibition The Synagogue at Babyn Yar: Turning the Nightmare of Evil into a Shared Dream of Good. Each film dives deeply into the horrifying events at Babyn Yar, the broader context of the Holocaust, post-Holocaust renewal, or the current war of cultural genocide by Russia against Ukraine.
Babi Yar is the ravine at the edge of the Ukrainian capital Kiev where one of the largest mass executions in history took place. Sergei Loznitsa tells this documentary account in meticulous detail, building from the lead up to the aftermath of the two days in September 1941, when Nazis shot dead 33,771 Jews at this place. The mass execution forms the silent core of this film constructed entirely from archive footage, to which sound has been added in some cases. By precluding almost any form of interpretation, he ensures that the archive footage speaks for itself. And speak it does. It bears inescapable witness to not only the atrocities, but also the subsequent compliance of the city and its inhabitants.
dir. Sergei Loznitsa; 2021; 121 minutes; Russian and German with English subtitles
