Maidan

EN

“What’s remarkable about Loznitsa’s films is that they retain this passive dissent even when the footage is original and contemporary. For 2014’s Maidan, about the Euromaidan uprising in Kyiv’s Independence Square, Loznitsa was embedded with the protesters for several months. His footage includes durational shots from the rooftops of municipal buildings and hotels that must have been dangerous to access, given that the area at the time resembled an active war zone, with hundreds of protesters wounded or killed. Static shots of crowd movement are buoyed by a subtly expanded soundscape that includes loudspeaker announcements, poetry readings, drumbeats, and chanting. Ukraine’s masses are seen fighting for their rights and asserting their national character with affecting patriotism. Occasionally, they look at the lens of Loznitsa’s camera, and much like their Soviet predecessors, it is obvious that they are unsure if this witness is a friend or foe. [...]

For Loznitsa, whose predilection for crowds is not a negation of individuality but an embrace of collective action, hope comes directly from the masses, in those tenuous moments when they allow themselves to break away from the subjugation of a parasitic regime. The people of Ukraine are engaged in such a mission right now. Loznista’s films are replete with images of Ukrainians staring back at the camera, and any support for them today must first involve meeting their gaze.”

Nolan Kelly1

• 1Nolan Kelly, “The Returned Gaze: Ukraine in the Documentaries of Sergei Loznitsa,” Film Quarterly, 7 October 2022.