On March 28, 2024, at 7:00 PM, Yevhenia Podobna will discuss the use of testimonies from the Russian-Ukrainian war in public history during the seminar.
Our war is the most documented in world history. However, what should we do with the thousands of testimonies and memories we have collected? How can we ensure they are heard and influence the future? What tools and formats can make the experiences of war witnesses visible to the so-called “general public”? Where can existing testimonies be effectively used, and what should be prioritized when working on new projects? Yevhenia Podobna will explore these questions and more.
YEVHENIA PODOBNA is a Ukrainian journalist, documentary filmmaker, writer, and researcher, holding a Candidate of Sciences degree in social communications. In addition to her journalistic work, she has been involved in collecting testimonies from survivors of historical tragedies. In different years, she worked on documenting the memories of former prisoners of Nazi concentration camps (Auschwitz and Dachau, 2012), witnesses of the Chernobyl nuclear power plant disaster, and displaced persons from the exclusion zone (2016–2018, 2021). Since 2014, she has focused on the war in Ukraine, serving as a war correspondent on the front lines from 2015 to 2018. Since 2019, she has also been engaged in documentary filmmaking. Yevhenia Podobna is the author of six books and eight documentaries. Her books include Girls Cut Their Braids (2018, a collection of stories by female soldiers), Ferocious February 2022 (a collection of testimonies about the first days of the full-scale invasion), Cities of the Living, Cities of the Dead (2022, testimonies and reports from the war in Bucha and Irpin), Outpost Okhtyrka (2023, a mosaic of stories about the defense of a city in Sumy region), and Her War (2023, a collection of stories about women in the war).
Following the full-scale invasion, she has focused on recording stories, memories, and testimonies, working on a memorial site-archive dedicated to the war in Bucha and Irpin, and continuing to publish books about the Russian-Ukrainian war based on eyewitness accounts. In 2023, she directed two documentaries: Visible Enemy (about the Russian occupation of the Chernobyl Exclusion Zone) and Hostomel. The First Battle (about the failed Russian assault on Antonov airfield in Hostomel on February 24, 2022, which thwarted Russia’s plan to capture Kyiv).
Event Details
Date: March 28, 2024
Time: 19:00 (Kyiv time)
Language: Ukrainian
You can watch the recording of the seminar here