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“НАШЕ ЖИТТЯ”, ЧЕРВЕНЬ 2015 WWW.UNWLA.ORG 17 most of her energy to helping soldiers as well as kids and refugees from Eastern Ukraine. Serhiy Nigoyan was a very special person for us—we interviewed him just one day before a sniper killed him. Although he was from a family of Armenian refugees who settled in the Dnipropet- rovsk region, he spoke Ukrainian fluently and was quoting Shevchenko on the Maidan. An Armenian who gave his life for Ukraine... We went to his fu- neral and met his family. It is a terrible tragedy when people flee from one kind of bloodshed and they lose their son in another... Vadym Vasyl’chuk, leader of the Spas Cos- sack Brotherhood, is another character of our film. Vadym was cultivating Ukrainian martial arts when the Revolution of Dignity began. After the first assault on the protesters, he decided to form one of the units of Self-Defense—to protect peace- ful protesters from the police. It was striking to us because Vadym has a wife and a small son; he was risking not only his life but also the life of his fami- ly because at the time the police were after the ac- tivists, threatening and arresting people... Just re- cently his wife gave birth to beautiful twin daugh- ters... Our other characters are Ivan Lenyo from the Kozak System band and Bohdana Babych, who organized online television Spilnobachennia, which was streaming events from the Maidan around the clock. Each of them represents a pro- fession that proved to be indispensable on the Maidan. Rock musicians inspired people with their songs—Kozak System’s song “Brother for Brother” was almost the anthem of the revolution. Rock mu- sicians also went on tours, for example in Poland, to promote Ukrainian democracy and to find in- ternational supporters. And media people— journalists, filmmakers—were part of the reason, I think, why on February 18th the authorities did not destroy the Maidan: people like Bohdana were streaming and the whole world was watching. These are amazing people and amazing stories and they truly inspire me. Were you there on the day when Yanuko- vych unleashed snipers on the protesters? We were on the Mariyinska Square on Feb- ruary 18th, when the snipers already started shoot- ing from the roofs. This was a beginning of the massacre. That day many people, including our crew, were surrounded by riot police; they started assaulting people, throwing grenades and shooting at protesters. I got separated from my co-director Ruslan and from our sound person Mykhailo, so I was in Mariinskyi Park completely alone when Berkut started attacking. However, thanks to our character Vadym, we were able to leave the area before the riot police lines closed. Afterwards, we interviewed several eyewitnesses, who were trapped. Our interviewees stated that they saw many people on the ground. I was asking how many they thought were dead, and they said “about 100 or 150...” The reason why it is so hard to say with certainty what happened there is because this place was fully surrounded by police forces and “titushkas” and the democratic forces had no ac- cess to it. There were rumors that the bodies of those who were killed were being destroyed in Ky- iv’s morgues. All of this is really hard to prove, but this is what we heard from eyewitnesses. Then on the 20th we were not in the epi- center of where the killings took place, but we were close. And in the days following, we were there to film the funerals... These were probably the most tragic days of our lives and the most terrifying ones, too, because we did experience what it meant to be surrounded and to be on the very edge of sur- vival. And I cannot even talk about how we lived through the funerals of all these men and young boys who were near us on the Maidan just a few days earlier. Now your crew is continuing to film in the so-called “ATO zone” in Ukraine’s east. How is this experience different from film- ing on the Maidan? I do not know how much I can talk about it, because we are still shooting. Our crew was trained by professionals from the British company BRITDOC to perform in hostile environment zones. Shooting at war is very different from work in a crowd when police is assaulting you. Both situ- ations are very dangerous, but at war the crew can be easily exposed to artillery fire and then there is nowhere to hide. Our crew is doing its best to be very careful. Our main task is to capture the emo- tional experience of the people at war. Some of them are fighting and some volunteering. Since you have been to places where lots of other filmmakers or even journalists have not gone—simply because it is too danger- ous—can you give us some insight into what exactly is happening in the east? Because the war is still ongoing, it is still early to draw conclusions. Everything there feels existential and chaotic. It is somewhat different from what the Ukrainian press writes and certainly different from what the Russian press writes. It is not black-and-white; there is no neat division into pro-Western west and center and pro-Russian east. There are many people in the east who sup- port the Ukrainian army and want to be part of
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