“Revolutions on Granite” Ukraine Skate Documentary
Wednesday, August 2, 2023
7 pm
$10 General Admission
$8 JAC Members, Students, and Seniors
Runtime: 40 min.
About the Film:
Completed and initially premiered in September 2021, before the Russian invasion, the documentary film Revolutions on Granite explains the history of Ukrainian skateboarding, and its parallels and intersections with the region's eventful geopolitical turmoil of the last 40 years. These two seemingly disparate worlds found common ground in the heart of Kyiv at the Maidan Nezalezhnosti (Independence Square). This iconic public plaza hosted and fostered the invention and development of the country's own brand of skateboarding in the isolated Soviet society, largely devoid of Western culture, knowledge and product technology. This square also facilitated several important citizen-led revolutions against corrupt tyrannical regimes, leading up to the most recent, EuroMaidan, in 2014, in which many of skateboarding's pioneers participated. This revolution sparked an inevitable fire in the form of a Russian instigated "civil war" that has burned in the East of Ukraine for the last eight years, until eventually exploding into the full military invasion by Russia in February 2022.
The film highlights the indomitable spirit of the Ukrainian people, their humility, resilience, and ingenuity. Domestic and international political, societal and cultural issues juxtapose architectural discussions of aesthetics and utility in regards to the genius loci of Maidan Nezalezhnosti. Light-hearted anecdotes and observations of juvenile escapades contrast the grave and macabre descriptions and nature of revolution, violent government suppression and eventual war.