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

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​Unfortunately It Was Paradise utilizes archival footage taken from 1970s Ukrainian documentaries and communist propaganda films. Exploring collage-like approaches and associative editing, the film strips the images away from their original political contexts and meaning. Focusing on daily events, repetitive gestures and constantly shifting between stasis and motion, the film seeks to construct a hypnotic, dream-like experience. 

 

A swirl of images unfold in circles without a linear sense of progression. Ending at the same place it begins, on a distance echo, in a field of grass, evoking a cycle of life.

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concept / montage     

Ralitsa Doncheva 

 

sound design   

Robin Pineda Gould

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35mm film archives courtesy to Richard Kerr.

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