VERDICT: An ostensibly simplistic documentary about a flat in Kyiv that uses incidental memories to paint a fleeting collective portrait of another time.
There is an irresistible power in the minimalism of Mariia Ponomarova’s Three Windows on South West.
Made up of a few different crops of a single static image and three very brief audio excerpts from conversations in which the filmmaker asks friends and family to recall living in a particular apartment in Kyiv, it feels as though it should be slight. However, this cleverly shaped 8-minute documentary in fact packs in impressive punch. It is a piece that is all the more effective because while the film’s destination quickly becomes evident, it does not in any way diminish the impact its conclusion has.
Ponomarova and her family moved into their new home on the 15th floor in February 2002. The filmmaker’s voice refers to it as “this apartment” because the audience can see it – a photograph takes up the whole screen. It shows one face (featuring three windows) of a nondescript tower block, mostly in shadow with another wall catching the glare of the sun. As she discusses their arrival at the flat with her mother, we observe it this moment of stasis, an instant captured in a single frame and a time, now recollected as if in amber. When the audio switches, to a different conversation between Ponomarova and two of her friends, the stories become slightly more informal and sillier. The image on the screen shifts, punching out, to reveal that the original shot was but the crop of a photograph. It immediately feels inevitable that the photograph will be far more contemporary than it initially seemed, that it will betray its origins as during the Russian invasion.
Ponomarova uses the edits between the audio as her cues to zoom ever so slightly further out, while the warmth and intimacy of the conversations travel in the opposite direction. The third conversation she has is with an old boyfriend, they recall the prospect of a teenage liaison on the building’s less-than-dreamy rooftop. Through ephemeral moments the building becomes inhabited, the unremarkable image of a tower block taking on its own romance conferred on it by recounted memories. “It’s good that the building is still intact,” say Ponomarova, like a jolt from the blue. The audio fades and we’re left with the full image – of the Kyiv skyline as smoke rises from a 2022 missile strike. The building may still stand, but with a startling force, Ponomarova’s slender work evokes the minor details of lives that have been forever lost.
Director, producer, editing, screenplay: Mariia Ponomarova Sound: Sergio González Cuervo
Distributor: ShortsFit (Argentina/Italy) Venue: DOK Leipzig (International Competition Documentary Film)
In Ukrainian, Russian
8 minutes
