Berlin
Zvizdal

What if we decide after the apocalypse that it’s not all over? For their theatrical video documentary, over five years the Berlin group followed the couple who never left their village near Chernobyl.

Nadia and Pétro Opanassovitch Lubenoc lived in the Ukrainian village of Zvizdal for more than eighty years. Even the nuclear disaster in the nearby power plant couldn’t change that. Their village was declared uninhabitable and evacuated. While all of their neighbours left the village, Nadia and Pétro stayed. “If you are born somewhere you should continue to live in your natural environment”, says Pétro. “If I were to move to another area, I would die.”

For thirty years, the two lived in self-elected solitude. With no running water, electricity or telephone. Amidst looted houses and surrounded by nature that is reconquering the once inhabited terrain unhindered by the invisible, but omnipresent radioactive radiation. A situation between standstill and decay.

Over a period of five years, the artist group Berlin visited and filmed the couple several times a year together with the journalist Cathy Blisson. In the performances, the documentary footage is edited in with live images from a miniature model of Pétro and Nadia’s little biotope through the changing seasons. A project about loneliness, survival, hope, love, and the stubbornness of two people who acted against all prescribed reason – and about art, that accompanied these people, equally irrationally and bravely, with great staying power.

Mitwirkende / Mitwirkender: Nadia Opanassovitch Lubenoc
Mitwirkende / Mitwirkender: Pétro Opanassovitch Lubenoc
Konzept / Idee: Bart Baele
Konzept / Idee: Yves Degryse
Konzept / Idee: Cathy Blisson
Bühnenbild, Ausstattung, Raumgestaltung: Manu Siebens
Bühnenbild, Ausstattung, Raumgestaltung: Ina Peeters
Bühnenbild, Ausstattung, Raumgestaltung: Berlin
Mitwirkende / Mitwirkender: Bart Baele
Mitwirkende / Mitwirkender: Geert De Vleesschauwer
Tondesign / Sound: Toon Meuris
Tondesign / Sound: Bas de Caluwé
Tondesign / Sound: Manu Siebens
Tondesign / Sound: Karel Verstreken
Übersetzung: Olga Mitronina
Tondesign / Sound: Peter Van Laerhoven
Mitwirkende / Mitwirkender: Manu Siebens
Mitwirkende / Mitwirkender: Klaartje Vermeulen
Mitwirkende / Mitwirkender: Dirk Stevens
Mitwirkende / Mitwirkender: Kasper Siebens
Mitwirkende / Mitwirkender: Kopspel
Mitwirkende / Mitwirkender: Rex Tee
Technik: Joris Festjens
Technik: Dirk Lauwers
Mitwirkende / Mitwirkender: Jelle Verryckt
Mitwirkende / Mitwirkender: Stijn Bonjean
Produktion: Laura Fierens
Mitwirkende / Mitwirkender: Kurt Lannoye
Mitwirkende / Mitwirkender: Jane Seynaeve