The mini-series – Kitchen Conversations for Ukraine was created right after the beginning of Russia’s full-scale war against Ukraine in February 2022. In an attempt to give Ukrainian art a wider platform and exposure, the host Patrycja Rozwora invited her Ukrainian fellow artists to curate short podcast episodes and acknowledge aspects of their culture worth sharing with a broader, English-speaking audience.
Episode 1 was curated by painter and muralist, Tatyana Ostapenko, episode 2 by visual artist and photographer, Olga Permiakova, episode 3 included insight from the photographer, Alex Blanco, shared recommendations by artist, researcher and writer, Yuliia Elyas. Each chapter of the podcast gives listeners an opportunity to discover Ukrainian visual art, literature, film, music, organisations, fundraisers and so on.
A few weeks prior to the one-year-war commemoration hanging over Europe like a dark stormy cloud, Kitchen Conversations released yet another episode for Ukraine, this time exclusively dedicated to the cinema and the past, present, and future of the country. In the podcast Rozwora proposes three film recommendations that drew her attention through visual aspects as well as socio-political questions which they raise.
Her first suggestion is a short photomontage film titled The Fall of Lenin (2017) by Svitlana Shymko and the editor Viktor Onysko showing the destruction and collapse of Soviet monuments across Ukraine. Secondly, Rozwora recommends viewing The Hamlet Syndrome (2022) by Polish directors Elwira Niewiera and Piotr Rosolowski – an honest portrait of the country at war. Last but not least, she brings attention to a film by Oleksiy Radynski entitled Infinity according to Florian (2022) – a story of an elderly artist and architect, who shares a refreshing take on urban architecture and us, humans, in relation to our environment.
To find out more, listen to the podcast:
Proofreading: Aleksandra Janicka
Kitchen Conversations is an independent podcast platform produced by the artist Patrycja Rozwora (since May 2020). To support further development of the projects become a patron via patreon.com/kitchenconversations.
