A QUEST FOR THE PUBLIC SPHERE: UKRAINIAN DOCUMENTARY CINEMA AND MATERIAL CULTURES OF SOLIDARITY.

This paper examines representations of Ukraine's civil society and community building in artistic documentaries, released in the wake of the post-EuroMaidan national revival, before the full-scale Russian invasion. Drawing on interviews with filmmakers, the paper analyzes the themes and style of Nadia Parfan's cine-symphony Heat Singers (2019) about an amateur folk choir at a municipal heating plant; Oksana Karpovych's atmospheric ethnography of regional commuter trains in Don't Worry, the Doors Will Open (2019); and Oleksiy Radynski's reflections on cultural spaces in Landslide (2016), a portrait of a bohemian art collective, and Infinity According to Florian (2022)--a film about the architecture of the Soviet space age threatened by realty developers. A running thread uniting these films is a quest for a communal public sphere, as well as a reckoning with the legacy of Soviet cultural institutions and material infrastructures. Sensitive to the inequalities and injustices of Ukraine's neoliberal present, these films show what it means to have a community and to build horizontal relationships between generations and diverse social strata. In contextualizing these themes, the paper points to Ukraine's efforts in rediscovering the forgotten and suppressed pages of the past and promoting the country's rich cultural traditions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]