Songs of Slow Burning Earth (2024, Olha Zhurba) | A film screening and discussion

Kino Nights is a new curated series of themed monthly screenings and conversations hosted by the Melikian Center for Russian, East European and Eurasian Studies. The series features present-day groundbreaking documentary and narrative cinema from Central, Eastern and Southeastern Europe, the Caucasus and Central Asia, contextualized in timely conversations with scholars and artists. The screenings and conversations are free and open to all to attend.

Songs of Slow Burning Earth
"Captured in varying proximities to the frontline over two years, the audiovisual diary of Ukraine’s immersion into the abyss of total war traces the subtle changes in Ukrainian society. The ragged chords of panic and horror of the first weeks of the Russian invasion slowly morph into the numb stillness of the acceptance of death and destruction, which eventually becomes the tragic normality for the local population, but just an afterthought for the rest of the world. 

Against the backdrop of the (meta)physical landscape of collective disaster, a new generation of Ukrainians aspires to imagine the future."
https://filmotor.com/slow-burning-earth/ 

Click here to view the trailer for Songs of Slow Burning Earth. 

The screening will be followed by a conversation featuring: director Olha Zhurba (remotely); Olena Tanchyk, PhD, Global Launch ASU; and Oli M Nevinska, Arizona Advocacy Delegation Leader, American Coalition for Ukraine; Anna Holian, Associate Professor, School of Historical, Philosophical and Religious Studies and Ana Hedberg Olenina, Associate Professor, School of International Letters and Cultures.

The discussion will be facilitated by Melikian Center affiliates Luiza Parvu, Assistant Professor, and Toma Peiu, Faculty Associate in the Poitier Film School.

Olha Zhurba is a Ukrainian film director, editor and screenwriter. Her short fiction film Dad's Sneakers (2021) premiered at the Locarno FF and later won awards at many international festivals. Dad's Sneakers was a candidate for a nomination at the European Film Awards 2022. Outside (2022), her debut documentary, followed Roma, a 13-year-old street kid neglected by his family and the state, who became a poster boy for the Ukrainian Revolution in 2014. The film premiered at CPH:DOX and HOT DOCS and won the Willy Brandt award at the Human Rights Film Festival Berlin and later the Japan Prize Award of Honor. She was also the editor of the festival hits and award-winning documentary films This Rain Will Never Stop (2021) and Home Games (2018). Her second feature documentary film Songs of Slow Burning Earth premiered at the Venice Film Festival in 2024, and went on to win the Best Feature Film Award at Riga International Film Festival; the Doc Future Award at Verzio IDFF Hungary; and the Best Film at Tertio Millennio Film Fest and the Special Jury Award at Rome Documentary FF.

***

In 2025, Kino Nights features bold films that address personal and collective trauma. Our line-up includes documentary and fiction films that touch on historical events that have left scars in the consciousness of the filmmakers, and their audiences. The works we present go beyond the descriptive to evoke the unthinkable and process the shock and horror without exploiting it, by using a distinct cinematic language. They create sensory experiences, spaces of shared imagination and affect that put audiences in fellowship with people, places and events of rupture, punctuated by violence, genocide, or catastrophe that reverberate long after they have unfolded.