35mm found footage | color & sound  | 2013 | 10 min.  

​

concept / montage          sound design       

Ralitsa Doncheva             Robin Pineda Gould

​

UNFORTUNATELY IT WAS PARADISE transforms found footage, taken from 1970s Ukrainian documentary and communist propaganda films. Working with formal, collage-like approaches and associative editing, the film strips the images away from their original contexts. Focusing on daily rituals and gestures, Unfortunately It Was Paradise creates a hypnotic, dreamlike visual experience. Short-lived, faded and pastel-coloured, a swirl of images play in slow motion. The film unfolds in circles without a linear sense of progression. It ends at the same place it begins, on a distance echo, in a field of grass, evoking a cycle of life.

​

​

 © 2021 / Ralitsa Doncheva