Atomopolis. Assembling Utopia
Atomopolis. Assembling Utopia
2016; SD-video; 49:30
Directors: Stanislav Menzelevskyi, Anna Onufriienko, Elias Parvulesco (as Oleksandr Teliuk)Music: Nisantashi Primary School Narrator: Yurii MakarovProduced by Oleksandr Dovzhenko National Center, 86 IFFU
An audiovisual study on the utopian territory of the Ukrainian nuclear cities. The film is made of TV and film chronicles of 1970-86, filmed in six Ukrainian nuclear cities. The construction of nuclear cities, the nuclear power plants satellite towns, has started in the USSR in 1950s, in Ukraine in 1970s. The building of these new type cities was accompanied by the hype of the ‘eternal’ kind of power conquest and recreation of the utopian Lenin’s images. The nuclear cities embodied the leading ideological, city planning, ecological, and scientific ambitions. In 1970-80, when the Soviet state was going through the social and ideological crisis, the nuclear cities were the reservations of the Soviet utopia. This is a film about overcoming the contradictions of the final USSR years, based on the image of a utopian nuclear city.
Public screenings:11.05.2016 at International Festival of Film and Urbanism «86», Slavutych, Ukraine24.10.2016 at Molodist Kyiv International Film Festival, Kyiv, Ukraine 24.10.2016 at 2nd NordicUkrainianFilm Festival, Gothenburg Sweden 23.04.2017 at International Documentary Film Festival «Delai Film», Moscow, Russia 30.09.2018 at Grazhdanskoe kino (screening at barber-loft), Krasnoiarsk, Russia 18.05.2019 at the Klub Kino Kub, FreeDom, Enerhodar, Ukraine 25.09.2022 at the Vilnius Documentary Film Festival, Vilnius, Lithuania25.01.2023 at the Cinémathèque du documentaire at the Bibliothèque publique d'information du Centre Pompidou, Paris, France29.09.2023 at the Ivano-Frankivsk International Short Film Festival 4:3, Pototskyn Palace, Ivano-Frankivsk, Ukraine