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US And Polish Diplomats Attend Film Screening About Kurapaty

US And Polish Diplomats Attend Film Screening About Kurapaty
PHOTO: REUTERS

Mikalai Statkevich and Paval Seviarynets spoke to those present.

The opening night of the film Yellow Sand, based on the work of Vasil Bykau, was held in the Minsk cinema Moscow. This is the first feature film, dedicated to executions in Kurapaty.

The director Aliaksei Turavich created the screen version for his own money. The film was shot in just five days in Ratamka, the actors of the Belarusian theaters performed the roles, Belsat reports. "The topic was Kurapaty, where innocent people were shot in huge numbers. So I decided to take up this topic and made a feature film," – the director said.

In the story Yellow Sand, a peasant, a poet, a communist, a criminal, a White Guard sit side by side in a car that takes them to the Kuropaty, where they are to be shot. Victims obediently go to their doom, even helping their executors to executioners commit the massacre. The director played the role of the chekist Survilla, who carried out the orders of the regime, and now he himself got between its millstones.

As Radio Svaboda reports, about half a thousand spectators gathered in the hall, designed for 700 seats, on September 16.

Representatives of Polish and US embassies, relatives of repressed people, politicians Mikalai Statkevich and Pavel Seviarynets, researchers and defenders of Kurapaty, artists and sculptors dedicating their works to the tragedy came to the premiere.

"The film mad strong impressions, if only Bykau was in Belarusian language, it would simply be a film that is part of the Belarusian classics," – the politician Pavel Seviarynets said after watching the film.

"We again encountered an attempt to create a national cinema without the national language. I have a question: why the film was shot in such a refined Russian language, when a peasant, a poet, a national democrat speak the same way as residents of Ryazan or Tambov region? That's why I have mixed impressions," – the writer Uladzimir Arlou added.

The director is now looking for money, so that the characters of the film could speak their native language.

There were only two film screenings in the capital, after which the tape will travel all over Belarus - residents of the Minsk region and Babruisk will be able to watch it in October. However, only high school students will be able to attend the screenings, since the age limit is 16 years.

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