This project, developed through the research in various film archives in Ukraine, uncovers overlooked radical visions of the future based on the fusion of artistic, technological, and political imaginaries. Kinotron is named after an unrealized project by film director Felix Sobolev, who founded The Kyiv School of Scientific Film back in the 1960s. In a series of recently discovered documents, Felix Sobolev describes Kinotron as a means to accelerate creative thinking and artistic production by way of conceiving autonomous creative blocks, capable of dealing with any kind of problems, even the most complicated ones. Sobolev’s vision was formulated in a series of proposals to the management of the Soviet film industry that were left unrealized – just like many of his film projects, which were not previously known to the public. This presentation is based on the Kinotron exhibition that took place at Visual Culture Research Center in Kyiv in late 2016 (in collaboration with National Oleksandr Dovzhenko Film Centre). The exhibition represented the archives of The Kyiv School of Scientific Film by juxtaposing utopian impulses with bureaucratic procedures, progressive ideas with reactionary practices, the drive to the future with the trap of ‘the end of history.’
Oleksiy Radynski is a filmmaker and writer based in Kyiv. He is a participant of the Visual Culture Research Center, an initiative for art, knowledge, and politics founded in Kyiv in 2008. His films were recently screened at Oberhausen and Leipzig Doc international film festivals, among other venues. His texts have recently been published in e-flux journal, Regarding Spectatorship, Raznoglasiya and other publications.
All panels, talks, and presentations in English language.
