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Kiev (after Lumière)

Kiev (after Lumière)
/6
    • Kiev (after Lumière)
  • 2021
  • video, color, sound
  • 4min, 36sec
Anna Jermolaewa filmed "Kiev (after Lumière)" at a double-track rail line in Kiev flanked by a flea market on both sides. The atmosphere seems relaxed, with some people even sitting on the rails, until a signal sounds out: everyone jumps up, immediately after which a seemingly endless 68-car freight train of military appearance and commensurate power thunders right through the flea market with an ear-splitting clangor. Hardly has it disappeared than everybody returns serenely to their places, and the market carries on. (With her reference to the Lumière brothers, Jermolaewa alludes to one of their initial films whose locomotive arriving at the station elicited shock amongst the audience at its première.) Since the beginning of Russia’s war of aggression on Ukraine, this train thundering through a peaceful gathering has become something of a metaphor for the terror of the destructive machinery of war that has been let loose upon this country. S.E.