In association with the Bartlett School of Architecture, UCL and the Lithuanian Cultural Institute. Supported by the Lithuanian Embassy in London and King's Arts and Humanities Faculty.

Roundtable on Women, Cinema, and the City in Ukraine and Eastern Europe.“

Through the Female Lens” is the subtitle for this years King's Films for Ukraine screening series. With this closing roundtable, we open a space for reflection on gender in Ukraine and Eastern Europe in wartime. Each of our speakers will introduce their work as women filmmakers and urban researchers in Ukraine and Eastern Europe, before we open up for general discussion.

The Speakers:

Dounia Sichov, editor of Mariupolis 2. Actor, producer and editor Sichov has appeared in films directed by Catherine Breillat, Mikhaël Hers, Denis Côté, and Abel Ferrara, and produced films by the latter two. She edited Mariupolis as well as Mariupolis 2. She is currently directing a documentary on transgender identity.

Ievgeniia Gubkina is an architectural historian and filmmaker, currently based in UCL’s Bartlett School of Architecture as a visiting researcher. Her work specialises in architecture and urban planning of the 20th century in Ukraine, and a multidisciplinary approach to heritage studies. She is the author of the books Slavutych: Architectural Guide (2015) and Soviet Modernism. Brutalism. Post-Modernism. Buildings and Structures in Ukraine 1955–1991 (2019). In 2020–2021 she curated the Encyclopedia of Ukrainian Architecture, a multimedia online project that worked with architecture, history, criticism, cinema, and visual arts.

Giedrė Žickytė produced of Irina Tsilyk’s The Earth Is as Blue as an Orange, which won the Best Directing award at Sundance in 2020. It follows a woman and her children trying to survive in the Eastern Ukraine warzone, and her daughter’s determination to become a cinematographer. Trained at the European Film Academy, Žickytė established her company Moonmakers in 2014. Her own documentary, The Jump, traces the defection of a Lithuanian radio operator from a Soviet ship in 1970, and has won multiple awards.

Dr. Lina Kaminskaitė-Jančorienė is the Head of the Art History and Theory Department at the Lithuanian Academy of Music and Theatre (LMTA). She has been conducting research on the professional experiences of women in the Lithuanian film industry in the post-Soviet era.

Hanna Bilobrova, is the winner of the Free Press Awards Most Resilient Journalist 2022 and co-director of the documentary Mariupolis 2.
The co-author of the article Eternal Ceasefire: Performing
War and Everyday Life in Eastern Ukraine* published in the Journal of Conflict and Integration in 2019. Hanna Bilobrova holds a master's degree from the University of Kharkiv Aviation Institute in "Social and behavioural science" and a master's degree in "Software engineering".

Hanna has worked as an executive producer, sound engineer, project coordinator, art department, and actress.

She is currently investigating the murder of her husband, Mantas Kvedaravicius, who was captured and killed in Mariupol while collecting civilians. Hanna Bilobrova was seeking Mantas for five days, found his body smuggled along with film footage they filmed, escaped from Mariupol through several countries, including Russia to Lithuania, started an investigation and finished their film, the award-winning documentary Mariupolis 2.

Uljana Kim - Studio Uljana Kim is a leading company in Lithuania for producing full length features.Since its foundation in 1997 thirty one feature and documentary films have been produced by the company.Most of them were premiered at the most important international film festivals and others were successful at the domestic box office.

Charity Donations

One of King's Films for Ukraine’s key aims is to collect funds for charities. Donations for this event will be divided equally between ArmWomenNow and Blue/Yellow

ArmWomenNow is a social initiative providing women defenders of Ukraine with army uniforms by means of donations and funds gathered by charity auctions and lotteries.

For further information, see: https://armwomennow.com/en/

Based in Lithuania, Blue/Yellow is an NGO that has been supporting Ukraine’s armed resistance since 2014. They provide Ukrainian soldiers and volunteers with non-lethal supplies to help them battle Russian aggression.

For further information, see: https://blue-yellow.lt/en#about-us

Suggested Minimum Donation: £5