RUINS IN REVERSE
filmessay, 25 min., 2020, Ukrainian (de/en subs)

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Shot in the steppe-like landscape of southern Ukraine, the short film follows the transformation process of a vacant Soviet residential building. Built according to a standardized Soviet master plan, its layout is slowly being dismantled by individuals, who create new architectures from the extracted modules. Thus, the traces of private biographies and vestiges of past ideologies inscribed into the physical remnants, continue to circulate in the community and find their ways into new constructions.
Ruins in Reverse addresses this process of appropriation and utilization as a form of material engagement with the past as well as an act of self-empowerment. Considering on the one hand, the Soviet infrastructures and belief systems which continue to affect the everyday life; on the other hand, the massive political upheavals and privatization processes at the beginning of the 90s, the film raises questions on how individuals as well as communities deal with such asynchronicities, how they navigate between the socialist and capitalist ruins and which forms of reflection and interaction emerge.

Read more about Ruins in Reverse on Politkrytyka (Ukrainian).