Take two slogans. One says, “we are no longer just a vote, a number, or a thing. We are young, the future is ours.” The other goes, “why does the government not judge its own crimes?” It may seem as though both these statements belong to the crisis that has been unfolding over the past fortnight in India. But while the first is from a banner held at a march in support of Jawaharlal Nehru University students, the second is a desperate plea by a Ukrainian citizen who was part of the 2014 Ukrainian Revolution, as chronicled in this year’s Oscar-nominated Netflix documentary, Winter on Fire: Ukraine’s Fight for Freedom.
Filmmaker Evgeny Afineevsky covered the formation of a new civil rights movement in Ukraine across 93 wintry days in 2013 and 2014. He came to the central square or the Maidan of Kiev to document the Revolution of Dignity, which began as a peaceful student protest against the country’s President Viktor Yanukovych’s stealthy decision of not joining the European Union and coalescing with Russia instead. Aided by his crew, largely made up of citizens shooting with cell phones and home cameras, Evgeny spontaneously captured history as it unfolded before their eyes.
Power of the youthMany global uprisings have been the handiwork of the young and quite a few recent films from across the world have depicted the transformative power of the youth. Jehane Noujaim’s critically acclaimed Egyptian-American film The Square (2013) transports you to Tahrir Square in Egypt where activists battled the regime to build a new society of consciousness. On the other hand, Olivier Assayas’s French film Something in the Air (2012) portrays how revolutionary fervour simmers down and naive idealism gives way to practical ambitions. In Kyle Patrick Alvarez’s The Stanford Prison Experiment (2015), based on a real study, a group of students are split into two groups — guards and prisoners. During the experiment, prisoners become passive and the guards display authority, reflecting the power dynamics of the rulers and the ruled.
In Winter on Fire, most of the students igniting the revolution belong to the 1990s. They have tasted freedom, having been born in an independent Ukraine after the abolition of the Soviet dominion. It begins as a peaceful student protest. As word spreads via Facebook, millions of citizens from different walks of life join them. The documentary shows us dissent expressed with grace and a protest more like a festival with people singing and dancing. In response, the government unleashes the Berkut police force, part of an elite, barbaric riot police force, and the titushki, the paramilitary thugs. Most of the documentary comprises visceral, on-the-ground footage of protesters being assaulted, even as they chant “police with the people”, “serve the nation, not the government”. The visuals of bleeding protesters speaking while receiving medical care, sniper attacks, and improvised medical centres being destroyed lend the documentary a rare urgency.
While the protesters organise themselves and learn self-defence tactics from retired military personnel, the government passes a slew of dictatorial laws, one of which prohibits wearing of helmets and hard hats. The protesters tackle this tyranny with humour and irony and wear pots and anything else that manages to cover their heads.
The documentary emphasises on the diversity of people at the Maidan. The St. Michael’s Golden-Domed Monastery turns into their refuge. The rebellion ends in the ouster of the President and the adoption of the EU agreement by the new government. Though the state of affairs in Ukraine today doesn’t suggest a happily-ever-after narrative, the documentary doesn’t involve itself with political analysis. Instead, it shows how people, spurred by the desire for chang, put up a fight against government authoritarianism.
(Dipti Kharude is a freelance writer and tweets at @kuhukuro)
