To understand why Flora Reznik’s first film is called like a remote Ukrainian city and not Kibbutz Metzer – the Israeli commune located 2500 kilometers from Pervomaisk, where the film takes place almost in its entirety – one needs to arrive to the final ten minutes. To “arrive” and not to “await”, because what makes Pervomaisk a precise and potent symbol of so many things is being deciphered on the way towards there (and, in a sense, it is the way). There are lives, as much as there are places, in which History seems to inscribe with traces stronger than usual: many of the dilemmas, tensions and contradictions of the 20th Century are clearly readable in the parable of the kibbutz founded by Pesaj Zaskin, a wrecked utopia that Reznik does not send off with laments, but with the glorious rebellion of a techno song.
Film followed by Q&A with the director!
This is a free event but we will be taking donations for Common House. All welcome.