Ukrainian Benefit - Curtis' Traumazone + Stone's Ukraine on Fire

In our ongoing collaboration with our fave non-profit Humanity Now, benefiting international war refugees, here's a program of mostly docs on Ukraine and Russia. Featured is the new and utterly astonishing TraumaZone (Ep.7) by UK comp-doc master Adam Curtis! The last of his 7 hours on the “Fall of Democracy” in Russia contextualizes Putin's rise and posits Ukraine as a casualty of the Old Empire's political and economic implosion. The first hour of our program is constituted by hefty excerpts from a pair of provocative histories of the past decade of Ukrainian upheaval: Eugeny Afineevsky's Winter on Fire and Oliver Stone's (!) Ukraine on Fire, the latter offering a little-seen perspective on Ukrainian antisemitism and that nationalism for which the Kremlin reserves the word “Nazism”. Comparing Stone's lighting-fast editing style to the decidedly elliptical leaps of Curtis proves a special treat, especially with our added exemplar of Dziga Vertov, whose Enthusiasm pops up. AND the downright jaw dropping Playing Apocalypse, by UCB grad Aleksandra Simonova (in person), which parlays her documentation of Odessa's historical role-players in scary Cold War tunnels into a larger allegory on dystopian subcultures in the beleaguered country. *$8-$100