Screenings of Documentaries by Belarusian Film Director Viktor Dashuk, April 6-7

NGO New Way for Belarus is pleased to invite you to the film screenings of well-known Belarusian documentary filmmaker Viktor Dashuk at Tallinn Cinema House (Uus Str 3) on 6 and 7 April at 7 PM.  The documentaries are in Russian with English subtitles. After the screenings everyone has the opportunity to discuss the films and the current situation in Belarus with the director himself! The event is free of charge for everyone.

The Eastern Partnership of the European Union with its financial means now also includes Belarus. Most of the decision-makers and experts concur that for Belarus’s continued development and EU’s interests, it is beneficial to include rather than isolate the country in question. Perhaps it is appropriate to ask before the EU Eastern Partnership Summit in Prague on May 7 whether our conscience and the value-based politics rhetoric often emphasized by politicians do in fact let us shake the hand of the President of Belarus.

Before that decision one should definitely view the following films!

April 6 at 7PM, Face and Mask (duration 1h 10 min)

The gorgeous Miss Belarus dreams of happiness and affluence she hopes is waiting for her in the West. In hopes of becoming a model, the young woman travels to Europe. Through her fate, the author looks at her contemporaries in general.  The generation, already being called, the lost generation is facing the fact that in their home country it is impossible to fulfill their dreams, unfortunately elsewhere it is difficult to become successful with the education and experiences gained in Belarus.  

April 7, at 7 PM, Femida (duration 1h 20 min)

"I survived scoundrels like Stalin and Hitler, but I have never seen fascism like Lukashenko’s." The desperate man’s words have no visible effect on the uniformed policeman. In the next image we see Alexander Lukashenko, the president of Belarus, making a TV speech threatening to arrest all who dare to defy him. Since coming to power nearly 15 years ago, Lukashenko has dissolved the parliament, re-written the constitution, and postponed elections—which he has then won with astounding margins. Journalists and opponents have been arrested, kidnapped, and murdered.

In Femida the documentary filmmaker Viktor Dashuk compares the current regime’s patterns of behavior to the twisted logic of a psychopathic murderer – they both write their own laws and only act according to their own interests. Time and time again we see how the president’s special police break the law, how every protest is met with hard-boiled smiles only to be beaten down with raging violence. But the film also shows at close range people in whom fury over these injustices is always bubbling just under the surface, in whom the will to change and improve overcomes the fear of unreasonable violence.
 

Viktor Dashuk is one of the most acknowledged Belarus filmmakers whose documentaries are allegorical, criticizing the local dictatorship. Since 1997 he has been under the keen surveillance of the Belarus government and subject to continued harassment by the authorities.  The 2006 Black Nights Film Festival in Tallinn screened one of his best known films, The Belarusian Decameron, which depicts the sad realities of authoritarian regime through 4 tragic characters.

The screenings are financed by the Fund for Non-Governmental Organisations, the institutional development of NGO New Way for Belarus is supproted by the Open Estonia Foundation.