DocuDays UA: The Bears Inside Us
This is the statement of the festival in Kiev (25.3-1.4) linked to the logo chosen:
“The Olympic Mishka” (Olympic bear) is the mascot of 1980 Moscow Olympic Games, one of the happiest episodes in life of the Soviet Union. You can still see those “mishkas” all over Ukraine – on the driveway to Kyiv, in parks and on the streets.
These smiling bears are stuck in our heads as a coded illusion of welfare based on double standards.
These bears in everyone of us can easily do everything we’re trying to fight: they bribe, “sort things out” and praise the soviet regime that seems to have had stability and security in future.
These bears represent Ukrainian voters, soft and fluffy, who vote for their future and sell their votes on the way with guilty smiles. Or honestly vote for those who already fooled them many times.
We have chosen the “The Olympic Mishkas” as a Docudays UA 2016 symbol to help us get over the political hypnosis and illusions, over the belief that someone is going to solve our problems for us.
Our bears are empty inside; they should finally mean that we’re saying goodbye to the past that this agonising neighbour empire is trying to drag us into. We’re saying goodbye for the new responsibilities to come, new important work to fill our lives: creating our own symbols and codes, based on our values.
