Themes by tag: culture

Destroyed buildings, ammunition fragments, shelled cars, and even love at the front line: photographer spouses from Odesa now take photos of the war. They used to shoot love stories for couples in love. Now, they are documenting events taking place in Ukrainian cities to demonstrate the truth to the world. They visited, for instance, Mykolaiv, Kharkiv, Bucha, Irpin, Sievierodonetsk, and Lysychansk. They visited some cities twice and even came under fire. Today, they are visiting Mykolaiv again, a city heavily shelled by the invaders.

• culture
• russian crimes

About a hundred works of the legendary Ukrainian artist Maria Prymachenko are exhibited in Andrey Sheptytsky National Museum in Lviv. The opportunity to see these paintings exists thanks to an art critic and an academician from Kyiv, Eduard Dymshits, who has collected the artist’s works for 30 years.

For reference: Maria Prymachenko is a Ukrainian folk artist who worked in the genre of naïve art.

At the beginning of russia’s full-scale invasion, a shell of the invaders hit a museum in Kyiv region, where a part of her paintings was kept. Local residents, risking their own lives, rescued the pieces of art from the burning building.

• culture
• russian crimes
• Lviv

Children who survived the occupation in Bucha are shooting a short film together with Ukrainian filmmakers. Together with teachers, children are writing scripts, selecting locations and props, looking for costumes and acting as directors. Filming takes place in two cities — Kyiv and Bucha. The theme of the short film is childhood and the bright future for children in Ukraine.

The project called “Film Holidays” is organized by Ukrainian Film School. The premiere of the film will take place on July 28 in Bucha.

• children
• culture
• occupation
• Kyiv

Luhansk Regional Academic Ukrainian Music and Drama Theater will operate in the city of Sumy. Theater performances can be attended at the Sumy National Academic Theater of Drama and Musical Comedy named after M.S. Schepkin.

Earlier, due to the occupation, the Luhansk Regional Academic Ukrainian Music and Drama Theater moved from Luhansk to Severodonetsk. They worked there for 8 years. During russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine, the building used by Luhansk residents was destroyed by the russian troops.

• casualties
• culture
• Sumy

The premiere of the play “Cry of the Nation” by Donetsk Academic Regional Drama Theater from Mariupol took place in Uzhhorod. The troupe of the theater was provided a place to work from on the stage of Zakarpattia Regional Music and Drama Theater. The first performance at the new venue was a story about the life of the Ukrainian poet Vasyl Stus. The premiere took place on July 16 — exactly four months after the russians destroyed the oldest theater in Mariupol with an airstrike, burying hundreds of civilians under the debris.

• culture
• Mariupol
• Uzhhorod

The grand opening of the exhibition of Pavlo Ponomarenko’s paintings and graphics will take place in HotArtHall gallery on July 14 at 6:00 PM. He lived and painted in Mariupol till March 2022. The artist had to leave his native city due to the war.

His exhibition titled Reflections offers an artist’s glance at the events in his native city, country, and the world as a whole. Using a limited range of geometrical shapes and a contained range of colors, the artist offers an opportunity to look into feelings and situations that he and his loved ones had faced.

• culture
• occupation
• Lviv

Nariman Aliev is a Ukrainian movie director of Crimean Tatar origin. He is the author of Dodomu (Getting Back Home), a film about the russo-Ukrainian war and the return to Crimea, which is famous in Ukraine. The author auctioned off the script for his motion picture that had never been published before to raise money for Ukraine’s Armed Forces. The auction ended on July 11 by selling the script for UAH 90,000.

• culture
• volunteers

In Ukraine, “Letters of Love” project was launched to support people in the temporarily occupied territories. The goal of the project is to make sure that relatives who remained in the occupation remain in contact with their kin, or to support ordinary people. The plan is to collect about 10,000 letters during the rally. Letters can be written at the project website. The organizers promise to print out the letters and send them to the addressees.

• culture

Borscht is now inscribed in UNESCO’s Intangible Cultural Heritage List. So now, the Ukrainian borscht is officially protected by UNESCO. Yevhen Klopotenko, a chef who worked on popularizing Ukrainian cuisine worldwide, played a big role in achieving this. For instance, he authored a book, Borscht and With Borscht, containing many different recipes for this traditional Ukrainian food.

By way of background information: russia attempted to present borscht as its own national food. For this reason, Ukraine officially applied for inscribing borscht on the UNESCO heritage list in March 2021.

• culture
• food

Before the war, Vyacheslav Khabarov was a virtuoso guitar player who played with rock legends, such as John Lawton (Uriah Heep), Graham Bonnet (Rainbow), Dan McCafferty (Nazareth), and Tim “Ripper” Owens (Judas Priest). After russia’s invasion, Slava Khabarov joined the army, where he got the callsign “Maestro.” Unfortunately, the musician was wounded; a serious injury to his left hand can put an end to the career of a top-grade musician. However, Slava remains calm, keeps rehabilitating and rehearsing, and even restringed his guitar to play with his healthy hand.

• casualties
• culture
• military