The Middletown Press (Middletown, CT)
Wesleyan to host free film screening, theater on conflict in Ukraine
Wesleyan University will present a movie screening and theater performance as the Russian invasion of Ukraine enters a second year.
The free film showing, “A Rising Fury,” will take place Thursday at 7 p.m. in the Powell Family Cinema at the Jeanine Basinger Center for Film Studies, 301 Washington Terrace.
This 2022 documentary film, which premiered at the Tribeca Film Festival, tracks the evolution of the conflict in Ukraine, according to a press release.
Filmed over the course of eight years, it follows two hopeful Ukrainian idealists from the peaceful protest of the 2013 Maidan Revolution in Kyiv, and the 2014 Russian invasion of Crimea and Donbas to the full-scale Russian invasion of Ukraine in February 2022, it continued.
A question-and-answer session with the codirector, screenwriter, and producers Lesya Kalynska and TJ Collins will follow.
It will be hosted by Wesleyan Professor of Government and Russian, East European, and Eurasian Studies, Co-chairperson of the College of Social Studies, and Colin and Nancy Campbell Professor in Global Issues and Democratic Thought Peter Rutland.
It will be moderated by University of New Haven Adjunct Professor of National Security Olena Lennon.
Any donations will go to provide humanitarian aid: housing and shelter in Ukraine for some of the millions of families displaced by the war in their country, the news release said.
For information, visit wesleyan.edu.
A second event, excerpts from “The Clear Blue Skies: Diaries from Ukraine,” will take place Monday at 7 p.m. at the Cross Street Dance Studio, 160 Cross St., Middletown. This is also free.
Actors Kyle Cameron, Raquel Chavez, and Alexandra Templer will workshop excerpts from the new theater project, “The Clear Blue Skies: Diaries from Ukraine” created by Scott Illingworth and Oleksandra Oliinyk, the statement said.
“Within days of the start of the war in 2022, a group of Ukrainian children and teenagers began recording interviews and audio diaries in English to share their stories with the world,” Wesleyan said. “They have become a remarkable chronicle of young people plunged into war and crisis — from becoming refugees across Europe to living under Russian occupation and recording from behind enemy lines.”
The show uses excerpts from these “gripping” recordings, listened to live by actors on stage, and performed using a realtime “in-ear verbatim technique.”
“The result is an urgent and intimate transmission about the trauma of war, and the resilience and humor of young people in the digital age facing an unknown future for their country,” Wesleyan said.
The evening will include a performance of extended excerpts from the project, along with a discussion of the process of building the performance while the interview subjects remain in the midst of an active war.
For information, go to wesleyan.edu.