On Crimea: Theodosia Screening and Discussion, ICA

Truly innovative cinema doesn’t have to have a multi-million dollar budget, or Weinstein production. Currently, there's a contingent of film-makers who stride between the traditional and the commercial art worlds: Steve McQueen’s meteoric rise to fame, from Turner Prize-winner to Oscar-winner, demonstrates that the boundaries between ‘art house’, ‘documentary’ and ‘feature’ are more blurred than ever. 

On Tuesday 18 March, we suggest you pay a visit to the Institute of Contemporary Arts to catch a special showing of a film that illustrates precisely this movement, whilst also providing its viewers with a new and welcome perspective on the Crimean crisis. Ruth Maclennan’s, 20-minute-long Theodosia , shot in Crimea in 2012, explores the area’s complex history.

The film is a be a foil to the heavy-handed and dogmatic news reports that we have seen on our televisions. By reframing Crimea as a place of inspiration, vitality and historical interest, the film asks what it is that is being fought over, and why that fight is so passionate so unique. 

Unlike most new release films the showing will be followed by a panel discussion, in which the director will speak with the author and Guardian journalist Neal Ascherson and artist Margarita Gluzberg. Ascherson’s critically acclaimed Black Sea  explored the birth of barbarism and in particular its effect on Crimea: his understanding will offer a different perspective on the political situation to those of the two artists, all in the convenient location of a cinema in London. 

Crimea is an area that has such a complex history, that we often end up focussing only on specific people and time frames within its remit. This evening will broaden and sharpen your understanding of Crimean politics, as well as the various cultural shifts that inform them.

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