Donbass (2018)

Thursday, February 28, 2019 @ 7:00 PM
Globe Cinema - 617 8th Ave SW, Calgary, AB
$12 General | $10 Members/Seniors/Students | $40 5-Pack Punch Pass | $99 Season Pass

Though born in Belarus (then part of the Soviet Union), Sergei Loznitsa has gone on to assume his position as the Ukraine’s preeminent filmmaker, internationally recognized as a crucial artistic voice and immensely controversial in his homeland. Loznitsa began as a documentarian, his stylistically radical work often presenting viewers with something like an otherworldly ethnography, and though continuing to work in the non-fiction field up to the present day, he has since My Joy in 2010 made waves internationally with a series of intense and timely narrative features. Donbass is the latest and perhaps most provocative; a highly episodic experiment set in Russian-occupied eastern Ukraine, merging unflinching social observation and dark absurdist humour. As regards to its episodic nature and its general irreverence, Loznitsa has spoken in interviews about the influence on the film of Luis Buñuel’s The Phantom of Liberty. Approaching its milieu from a multiplicity of angles, often employing long unbroken takes of tremendous technical virtuosity, Donbass exposes a split world riven by rage and compromised by the institutionalization of misinformation.

- Written by Jason Wierzba

CONTEMPORARY WORLD CINEMA

As we progress further into the 21st century, the global currents of ideas, influences, and images that inform the art house cinema have both widened and deepened. Digital technologies enable new voices from disparate places to assert themselves into the conversation. Global travel and finance stimulate new, unexpected collaborations, ideations, and co-productions; ever-globalizing telecommunications ensures that word of new discoveries and developing reputations circulates freely between Berlin and Busan, Cannes and Karlovy Vary, and most everywhere in between.

Despite all this, it is still rare to see these films in theatres, with other people, projected on a big screen. In our Contemporary World Cinema series, programmed on an ongoing basis, we present a selection of the most vital, challenging, and artistically cutting-edge films from around the world. Most importantly, these works of critical cinema will be presented in the cinema, as intended. Don’t miss these one-of-a-kind works, which likely will not return to theatres in Calgary. 

About Calgary Cinematheque

We are a non-profit film society dedicated to presenting significant, challenging, and essential works of cinema art in Calgary. During our season, which runs from October to April, we screen films weekly, in curated programs which situate each film in a thematic and historical context. We do this because we believe cinema is an essential form of artistic, social, and political expression. Audiences should be able to engage with a wide range of cinematic expression, not only with what is commercially viable. We believe in the power of sharing these experiences with other people in a theatrical setting and we strive to cultivate a community around that experience.  

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