Ukraine fundraiser, plus Q&A with filmmaker Antony Butts
DIY Country
The film follows pro Russian Ukrainians as they attempt to grab a slice of power and achieve social justice. This is a special fundraiser screening for Ukraine, including a Q&A with the film's director.
Director: Antony Butts
Cast includes: N/A
Ukraine fundraiser - plus Q&A with director, Antony Butts
80 mins/ 2016 / France / UK / Ukraine
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In spring 2014, following the annexation of the Crimea by Russia, groups of armed pro-Russian rebels in the eastern Ukraine city of Donetsk seized local administrative building, expelled Ukrainian officials and raised their own flag, called for a referendum and eventually declared independence from Kiev.
Antony Butts first came to Donetsk in April 2014 and met people who became the work-a-day rebels at the barricades while building a new country. As they gradually let him into their lives, he began working on an extensive record of what has been happening in the region - chaos, adventure, geopolitics, opportunism, heroism, and broken lives, revealing the psychology and motivations of these men and women creating a "new country".
Over a two-year period, "DIY Country" captures the origins and evolution of the Donetsk People's Republic in East Ukraine from hopeful and naive beginnings, to hate, destruction and infighting. In the first part we follow the sinister and at times comical mechanics of how our heroes make a Revolution that will immediately eat them up. In the second part we will see them trying to find a role to play in the new State, as power is once again taken away from the people.
All ticket money to go to the Disasters Emergency Committee Ukraine Appeal.
Ukraine fundraiser film series - April and May 2022
This film is the third in a series of three fundraising screenings to raise money for the people of Ukraine.
Find out more about the series >>
About Antony Butts:
Antony is a Russian-speaking documentary maker and video journalist. He is passionate about films featuring characters with both good and bad qualities, who struggle in a complex world that is often politically entrenched. The results are films that are often full of absurdity and unintentional comedy, and challenge the viewer to engage with both sides of a highly contentious issue, yet avoid being divisively polemical. Antony worked on the Oscar long-listed “Pussy Riot: A Punk Prayer” as a cameraman, and won an Amnesty International Award for filming in the North Caucasus.
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