Goethe @ JP Public Library
Post-Screening Q&A with Dr. Oleh Kotsyuba, Director of Publications at the Harvard Ukrainian Research Institute (in Person)
The small town of Marinka lies in the Ukrainian Donetsk Oblast. Almost 10,000 people lived there, even though the town was under constant attack by pro-Russian separatists since 2014. When the war escalated in the spring of 2022, however, Marinka came under heavy artillery fire and practically all residents had to leave the town by September. The local police helped get them out. One of the policemen is Vasyl, the protagonist of this film. In a white van, soon christened the “white angel” by the population, he and his colleagues pull civilians out of the line of fire, recover the wounded and the dead. Vasyl’s helmet camera records the dramatic events of their missions: evacuating scared people from their cellars, first aid for the seriously injured, the hasty gathering of personal belongings, the painful and permanent partings.
Six months after the end of Marinka, the Leipzig-based investigative journalist Arndt Ginzel and his crew return to eastern Ukraine. They find the survivors, rescued persons and rescuers, and let them comment the action cam images. They speak of losses, of pain and grief, but also of hopes and dreams. “White Angel – The End of Marinka” is more than a film about war. It is a document of humanity and the longing for peace.
Germany, 2023, 103 minutes
Directed by Arndt Ginzel
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Oleh Kotsyuba is the director of publications and director of the Ukraïnica project in digital humanities at the Ukrainian Research Institute, Harvard University, as well as chief online editor at Krytyka, a leading Ukrainian intellectual journal. As a scholar of literature and culture, he studies the ways in which writers who live in oppressive societies interact with the political regimes that seek to use their work in order to advance their ideological agendas.
In cooperation with the Jamaica Plain Public Library.
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