San Jose Jazz Presents
Winter Fest: Counterpoint With Ukraine
In collaboration with San Jose Jazz, 3Below Theaters and San Jose Playhouse are proud to present seven events at 3Below as part of San Jose Jazz’s Winter Fest.
Having lost his elder son in the war, Mustafa needs to transfer his dead body to the homeland–Crimea. During this long and challenging trip, Mustafa tries to solve the innumerable problems and to find a common language with his younger son. On the way back home, the youngster becomes a man, finds his inner core and understands who he is. At the same time, the father learns to admit his mistakes and apologize for them. Having lost the one they both loved, the father and the son grow genuinely close to each other.
Vodurudu (meaning: Will, Thought, Movement, Spirit) is a folk-improvisational film-ballet, the origins of which are environment and time. This film is an act of revival of national culture, through the expressiveness of such independent elements of folk art as music and dance, displayed in the frame of the film, that transforms their action into a dynamic picture that will be tested only by faith and time.
Roses. Film-Cabaret is a documentary cinéma vérité, following the Dakh Daughters–an intellectual freak cabaret band created by seven actresses under the roof of Kyiv experimental contemporary theater, Dakh. The video diary spans almost five years, following Dakh Daughters from their first show titled Roses – after their first popular song ‘Rozy / Donbas’, written long before Donbas region became the war-torn zone of the so called “Russian Spring.” Roses. Film-Cabaret is about being an artist under extreme conditions of the pain and loss, realizing that during the war a natural self-defense would be creation–in art as well as in terms of motherhood.
Featuring:
A Study in Choreography for Camera (1945), Silent, B/W, 2 min 30
Ritual in Transfigured Time (1945-46), Silent, B/W, 16 min
Meditation on Violence (1948), B/W, 13 min, with Ch’ao Li Chi. Chinese flute and Haitian drum arranged by Maya Deren
The Very Eye of Night ( 1952-55), B/W, 15 min, Choreography by Anthony Tudor, with students of Metropolitan Opera Ballet School. Music by Teiji Ito
For this special event, we present four short experimental films, all of which will be accompanied live by vocalist and multi-instrumentalist Olesya Zdorovetska.
An introverted high-school girl Masha sees herself as an outsider except when she is hanging around with Yana and Senia who share her non-conformist status. While she is trying to navigate through an intense time of the pre-graduation year, Masha falls in love, forcing her to leave her comfort zone. From a Ukrainian first-time director Kateryna Gornostai, a deeply personal story about self-discovery and the patience it requires.
To cope with the daily trauma of living in a war zone, Anna and her children are making a film together about their life in the most surreal surroundings.