What Shall We Do with These Buildings? (2022)

"What Shall We Do With These Buildings?" is a documentary-dance film which explores the legacy of Soviet architecture in Kharkiv, Ukraine. The film was shot in September 2021, at a time when the prospect of a full-scale invasion from Russia seemed remote, but the ghost of its former rule remained written in concrete across the cityscape. The film platforms a divisive and open conversation about the city's Soviet buildings: What should be done with them? Should they be preserved, destroyed, repurposed? What power do they hold over the way people think and interact with their environment? Interwoven within this patchwork of opinion is another kind of exploration. Dance runs through the film in playful counterpoint, providing another language to articulate the ways in which buildings move bodies. Since the invasion, the film serves as a time capsule - a snapshot of an independent, hopeful Ukraine trying to find its feet, at a time when that independence has never been more threatened. It captures tensions embodied in social space right before the city descended into war, providing an insight into how Kharkiv was before the invasion; how much it has lost and stands to lose.