UKRAINISTAN ARTIST WAR 1st September 2023

 

This is the latest in George Gittoes' award-winning documentaries about war and the human stories of hope and redemption (Soundtrack to War, 2005 and Love City, Jalalabad, 2013). Ukrainistan Artist War continues this vital focus, showing the wars raged by artists against invasion. It is an urgent and essential film that delivers an outcry of optimism that humanity can end violent conflict and embrace peace through creativity.

Ukrainistan Artist War is an anti-war film in the tradition of Picasso’s Guernica. Gittoes and partner, producer/musician Hellen Rose, go beyond the headlines and behind battle lines of Ukraine and Afghanistan to candidly capture the tragedy of those now displaced and separated by the Russian-Ukrainian war.

This screening will be a very special event as the documentary makers (local residents of Gerringong area) will be with us to talk about their work, their art and to answer questions.

Independent Sydney curator Reverend Rod Pattenden, who has written extensively about Gittoes, says the artist has been a leading international “artist/activist” for 30 years with an accumulated level of on-the-ground experience that allows him to survive in perilous situations.

“I don’t like describing him as a war artist because that makes him out to be an adventurer, or hungry for the heightened danger and drama,” Pattenden says. Rather, Gittoes has sought to find human stories of hope and redemption, he says.