The festival team continues to introduce our special projects. From March 21 to April 5, Docudays UA is featuring the exhibition of multimedia project Grozny: 9 Cities. Yuliya Serdyukova, the coordinator of the festival’s photo exhibitions, argues that Chechnya may be closer than we think.

I was 13 years old when the First Chechen war broke out. I did not want to go into scary news that was shown on TV. All I wanted to do was dancing and kissing. A year later, I kissed for the first time in a Crimean summer youth camp, it was a boy who was a few years older than me. His name was Andrey, and he arrived from Moscow with a group of other children. A group from Grozny was expected to arrive a little later after the official opening of the camp. The adults were trying to prepare us for this, hinting that the Chechen guests should be welcomed warmly, because they have already experienced enough fear and grief. Andrey and other Russian boys were sincerely concerned, trying to convince their girlfriends to stay away from the Chechens and arguing that all of them are just “rapists and beasts”. However, our youth and curiosity were stronger, and one warm July evening all of us were dancing in a circle, accompanied with handclaps.

A week after, our large international “band” escaped to the seashore at night to celebrate my birthday. 18 years old Ayun was in charge of this operation. He commanded us to split into groups and to assemble on the seashore when he cries like an owl (he imitated the cry skillfully). We spent almost the whole night at the beach, under the starlight: swimming, drinking cheap wine, eating chocolate, and singing songs in three languages. Ayun was the oldest of us, and there was something heavy and very adult in his eyes. Most of the time, he was just sitting aside from us, enjoying the sound of waves. Finally, someone dared to ask whether he ever had to shoot. Ayun did not answer and said that he does not want to talk about war. And after several weeks, he and Andrey were saying goodbye to each other, as if feeling that with these restrained male hugs, they were saying goodbye to the childhood.

Many years have passed, and this story was almost erased from my memory, just like the first kisses. I remembered it when I watched the video interview with Johar Dudayev, which was made in 1995 and was widely reposted in Ukrainian internet in the spring of 2014, after the annexation of Crimea. Suddenly, Dudayev’s words about that war sounded to us with a new and painful relevance. For the first time, a thought occurred to me: what if Andrey and Ayun have met again, under different circumstances…

All this cycle, from childhood memories to the new found Dudayev’s interview, has made remote Chechnya close and almost touchable. That is why, when the question on yearly photo exhibitions at Docudays UA was raised, I instantly thought about the multimedia project Grozny: 9 Cities. It is hard to imagine a more timely moment for its exhibition in Kyiv.

Grozny: 9 Cities has united the views of three different photographers – Olga Kravets, Maria Morina, and Oksana Yushko, – on the postwar situation in Chechnya. According to the authors’ text, this is “a story about the cities hidden in one”. This is how the authors describe the city: “Grozny, Chechnya, which in 2003 was named the most destructed city on Earth, was rebuilt and is towering over Russia like a huge totalitarian mosque. Layer after layer, the curtain is being raised to reveal what is going on in the new city. While some are celebrating the fragile peace, others are being kidnapped and tortured”.

The project is too intense and full of forms and contents to describe all of its aspects in a short announcement. That is why, instead of description, I am telling my personal story and invite you to see the exhibition, which is filled with similar personal stories, with your own eyes. This might ensure you that geographically, culturally, and religiously remote Chechnya is much closer than it seems. All in all, one of the 9 Cities is a city of ordinary people, who, “exhausted with more than 15 years of struggle and self-destruction, are covering the floors of their new brick houses with colorful carpets, organize feasts and dance to full exhaustion at the weddings, dressed in their best clothes and grabbing the opportunity to enjoy their moments of happiness, until some new disaster has not yet come to their city”.

Exhibition Grozny: 9 Cities consists of sixty photographs, three-screen video projection of a 20’ documentary film, and a web documentary, is displayed from March 21 to April 5 at Visual Culture Research Centre (vul. Hlybochytska, 44).

Opening hours: every day except Monday, from 1 p.m. to 7 p.m.

Exhibition opens on March 21, 5.30 p.m. Maria Morina, Oksana Yushko, and the project curator Anna Shpakova, will be present at the opening.

On the next day, March 22, at 12 p.m., Maria, Oksana and Anna will hold a meeting with the audience of DOCU/CLASS on “Group Project ‘Grozny: 9 Cities’ – how to create and to present a critical project on the events in your country”. Additionally, at 6 p.m., the authors will conduct an excursion through the exhibition.  

Yuliya Serdyukova, coordinator of photo exhibitions and DOCU/CLASS