Atomopolis. Assembling Utopia / Lviv Intervision (Filme & Gespräch)

University of Basel und Taras Shevchenko National University of Kyiv invite you to: Presentation and discussion by film co-director Anna Onufriienko and cultural historian Bohdan Shumylovych. Moderation: Oleksii Kuchanskyi, free admission.

ATOMOPOLIS. ASSEMBLING UTOPIA
Von Oleksandr Dovzhenko National Center/86 IFFU, 2016, 50 Minuten, OV/english subtitles
An audiovisual study of the utopian landscape found in Ukrainian atomic towns. The film compiles TV and film chronicles from 1970–86, shot in six such towns. Atomic towns—satellite communities built around nuclear power plants—began emerging in the USSR during the 1950s and in Ukraine in the 1970s. Their construction was driven by the fervor for an ‘eternal’ power conquest and a revival of Lenin’s utopian imagery. These towns came to embody the era’s foremost ideological, urban planning, ecological, and scientific aspirations. In the 1970s and 1980s, when the Soviet state was grappling with a social and ideological crisis, atomic towns became enclaves of Soviet utopia. This film examines how these contradictions between deepening crisis and enduring utopian mbitions were navigated through the symbolic image of an atomic town.

LVIV INTERVISION
Von Lviv Film Commission/Lviv City Council/Lviv Film Center/Center for Urban History of East-Central Europe, 2018, 14 Minuten, OV/english subtitles
This audio-visual research illuminates the first decades of the mass distribution of Ukrainian television. One of the centers of this expansion was Lviv, where a factory of television equipment was created in 1957, and the first Ukrainian television “Lviv” was released. Television brought the ceremony of military parades, the excitement of sports competitions, the cleverness of intellectual games, and the sublimity of cosmic spaces into each home. At the same time, the practice of television watching shaped a completely new type of individual: inspired, informed, but also passive, atrophied, and unable to articulate their own political position.