For the Arte documentary "Culture War", Philipp Kohlhöfer visited Ukrainian artists at the front and in destroyed studios.
And shows how art works as a weapon.
You don't understand a word.
And yet understands everything.
When Andriy Khlyvnyuk sings the Ukrainian song "Oj, u lusi chervona kalyna", you can feel the pain that war inflicts on his people.
At the same time, "Kalyna" acts like an analgesic: this is not a sad piece, this is a musical declaration of war.
Written in 1914 by Stepan Tsharnetskyi, this old folk song became famous around the world a year ago.
Because said Andriy Khlyvnyuk, dressed in camouflage suit, sang it a cappella in Kiev, shared a video of it on Instagram - which became a hit.
Since then, thousands have sung it publicly, in football stadiums, at demonstrations, in air-raid shelters. The Ukrainian ice-skating couple Oleksandra Nasarova and Maksym Nikitin used it at their World Cup appearance in 2022. This "Kalyna" impressively tells of how powerful music can be.
3:
15 minutes as a rallying cry for the Ukrainians.
And a stirring example of how "art as a weapon" can be used.
This is also the subtitle of the documentary "Culture War", which Arte will show on February 22, 2023 at 10 p.m. and afterwards in the Arte media library.
Stealing a nation's culture destroys its identity
You can write a lot about the power of culture, but if you listen to Philipp Kohlhöfer's interlocutors and watch them make music in uniform, how they kiss the ruins healthy with street art, how they save pictures and sculptures from bombed museums, then you really get it: Whoever steals a nation's art and culture destroys its identity.
But not with Ukraine.
The tremendous fighting spirit with which the citizens have impressed the world since the beginning of the war is reflected in how they react artistically to the situation.
Russia's attempt to destroy Ukraine as an independent nation leads to the opposite: Ukrainians are rediscovering their roots, for example in old folk songs.
And if the power goes out, the choirs sing the sheet music by torchlight.
"A proverb says: When the guns speak, the muses are silent.
The creativity surge of the current war proves us wrong,” says First Lady Olena Selenska.
The propagandistic potential of images is left out
It is stirring when one sees the violinist Moisei Bondarenko playing the violin in front of heavy military equipment, mostly in cell phone recordings or captured by the film team.
And he says that in the middle of a battle he begins to rhythmically adapt to the artillery fire with his violin.
At the same time, Kohlhöfer's film is a tightrope walk.
Because the director leaves out the propagandistic potential of music, poems and images.
His film takes a consistently positive look at the struggling artists who now "carry machine guns instead of instruments".
One almost forgets what it means when a painter says that only Ukrainian songs can be heard on the radio - and because of them he became "more and more determined" to "go to war".
Show images of buried corpses, injured women, men, children, smashed houses,
The graphic artist Andriy Yermolenko produces picture after picture in order to collect as much money as possible for the army through the sales.
He hopes that better equipment can end the war more quickly.
Many of his relatives have fallen.
But: “They knew what they were dying for.
It's very hard to fight when you don't know what you're fighting for.” The film makes it clear that music and art remind the fighters why they are doing it.
Musician Khlyvnyuk sees it this way: “Text is much stronger than any rocket.
The rocket explodes and that's it.
Text will live on in people's hearts and in their minds for centuries.” His four-generation-old “Kalyna” has become a symbol of Ukraine's inflexibility.
Singer Taras Topolia is convinced
that this inflexibility is essentially supported by the great creative power of the Ukrainian artists.
“Through songs, for example, one understands our suffering on a sensual level.
In the whole world.
Because this cultural diplomacy was there from the start, we have already won the information war.”