While making his award-winning film FRAGILE MEMORY, Ukrainian filmmaker Igor Ivanko discovered and restored piles of old negatives at the dacha belonging to his grandfather, Leonid Burlaka, a successful cameraman in the glorious days of Soviet cinema. Igor also engaged in researching about Odessa Film Studio, a major producer in Soviet times. But while the private memories of his grandfather are doomed to be lost due to his Alzheimer’s disease, large portions of the archives documenting the former film industry are endangered for political and economic reasons. 

In his talk, Igor Ivanko will show how the usage of different archives shaped the form of his film and helped to unveil the stories that otherwise couldn’t be told. To Igor, the available archive material seemed endless, in sharp contrast to the budget. But the archives allowed him to find various forms of expression, from simple illustration to artistic metaphors, and to enrich the visual style of his film. By sharing his personal experience and also showing excerpts that weren’t included in the final cut, the author will reveal how to avoid mistakes in planning and editing archive-based films both from the artistic and production side. 

For more information about FRAGILE MEMORY, please refer to the website of the film: https://burlakafilms.com/fragilememory

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> Igor Ivanko