Dana Kavelina
The Lemberg Machine (2023)

Video / Commissioned work

Dates
21.9.–15.10.2023

Location
Church of Ruined Modernity, Graz

Part of
Church of Ruined Modernity

Production specifics
Commissioned by steirischer herbst ʼ23
Produced by steirischer herbst ʼ23 and Dana Kavelina
With the kind support of ERSTE Foundation

Dana Kavelina’s newly commissioned film tackles a difficult and complex subject: the Lviv Pogroms of June and July 1941 and the subsequent unfolding of the Holocaust in the city—incited by the Nazi occupation. Kavelina’s film tackles it through animation, which she understands not only as a technique but as a figure for resurrection. A fictional setting, the laboratory of history, frames multiple voices speaking the many languages of the city. They tell a history rewritten from the perspective of the resurrected victims, based on eyewitness accounts of survivors.

Director of photography: Mikhail Chelnokov
Prop makers / decorators: Anna Nykytyuk, Olena Golubova, Dana Kavelina
Animators: Olena Golubova, Dana Kavelina
Music: Mikhail Lylov

Retrospective
Retrospective
Retrospective