Film screening Wind From the Rapids

As part of the program running in parallel to the exhibition “The River Screamed Like a Wounded Beast”, a film screening and a discussion dedicated to Arnold Kordium’s Wind From the Rapids (1929; featured in the exhibition) will take place. The film will be introduced by Stanislav Bytiutskyi, film expert and exhibition co-curator. The construction of Dniprohes commenced in 1927. It involved the flooding of the Dnipro rapids, which was to forever change the age-old way of life of farmers from the riverside villages. Against this backdrop, the old river pilot Ostap Kovban is reluctant to embrace progress. However, his own flesh and blood – son Andrii – adopts an opposite stance. At first glance, Wind From the Rapids (also known by its alternative title, The Last River Pilot) is a typical propaganda film recounting the struggle between the new and the old and describing the triumphant march of Soviet industrialization. Yet Arnold Kordium, the film’s director, seems rather more interested in depicting the anti-humanist consequences of large-scale transformations than in the propaganda potential of the topic at hand.