Unfortunately It Was Paradise

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

concept / montage

Ralitsa Doncheva

sound design

Robin Pineda Gould

Unfortunately It Was Paradise works with images taken from 1970s Ukrainian documentary and communist propaganda films. Playing with formal, collage-like approaches and associative editing, the film strips the images away from their original political contexts and creates a hypnotic viewing experience.

A swirl of images unfold 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.