Ukraine Guernica - Art Not War (SUFF) - Opening Night + Q&A

Opening Night + Q&A

Thursday, September 7 @ 7pm

Featuring a live & in-person Q&A with director George Gittoes and producer/ musician Hellen Rose will be in attendance with a very special Q&A after the film with Jaimie Leonarder from Mu-Meson Archives.

Join us at Dendy Cinemas for the Opening Night of the Sydney Underground Film Festival with the insightful documentary UKRAINE GUERNICA – ARTIST WAR. Make sure to stay after the movie for an exciting live & in-person Q&A!

A subversive, anti-war film in the tradition of Pablo Picasso’s Guernica and John Lennon and Yoko Ono’s ‘Happy Xmas (War Is Over)’, the candid and powerful Ukraine Guernica – Artist War takes us behind the battle lines and into the lives of the artists confronting Russia’s march on Ukraine. Australian Activists and Filmmakers George Gittoes and Hellen Rose travel to Ukraine in the first weeks of the war and from the ashes of unspeakable tragedy and destruction, new creative works are born, including projects completed at the former House of Culture in Irpin, Ukraine, and at the their Yellow House Art School in Jalalabad, Afghanistan.

Gittoes, a former recipient of the Sydney Peace Prize, has established himself as one of Australia’s most uncompromising artists, activists and documentary makers, with his earlier polemical films such as Soundtrack to War and other works addressing Life under the Taliban (Snow Monkey, SUFF 2015 and The Miscreants of Taliwood SUFF, 2008) and US gun violence (No Bad Guys, SUFF 2022). In this latest work, they brings a fearless, compassionate eye to a landscape devastated by ongoing atrocities, finding optimism in the process of creation – and in the hope that humanity might put an end to violent conflict.