'Grozny: Nine Cities' by Maria Morina, Olga Kravets and Oksana Yushko

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About this video:

This is a long-term documentary project, inspired by a Thornton Wilder book, Theophilus North, centers on the idea of nine cities being hidden in one. It gives three photographers, Olga Kravets, Maria Morina, and Oksana Yushko, working together on pictures, sound and video, a baseline to explore specific aspects of the aftermath of two Chechen wars considering them 'cities' hidden within Grozny.

The pledge by Hannah Charlton:

In 2003, the Chechen capital of Grozny was described by the UN to be the most destroyed city on earth. In this short portrait of this Caucasus society, caught between traditional tribal and Muslim values and globalisation, three photographers seek to find multiple levels of existence in the city now. It is an extraordinary piece of documentary exploration: images of women alone or together, reflecting, remembering and grieving, sudden bursts of exuberant street dancing, or small signs of symbolic renewal, interspersed with the reminder of a military presence. What makes this video remarkable is the highly considered and delicate use of the different media - a sequence of dance stills, film of birds flying or a soldier’s boots and gun as he walks, all serving to convey the sense of a city and society struggling, in conflicting tempos, to find the route towards a new normal after two wars.

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