The Behind Blue Eyes team released short films made by children from Vysunsk, Pavlivka and Lupareve in the Mykolaiv region at the ‘Blyshchyk’ festival. These films are their reflections on friendship, dreams and surrounding beauty
Children aged 10-14 worked on them under the mentorship of directors such as Glib Feldman, Lada Sabova and Mykyta Kvasnikov.
‘I am convinced that creativity for children is a tool that allows them to see the world through a wider lens; to mess around, to create something cool; to reflect on what they’re going through right now, growing up in war. These little films are their search for their own creative spark. We don’t know if any of them will work in the film industry, but in any case, this experience and vivid memory will remain with them forever’, Artem Skorokhodko, co-founder of the project, comments.
More about each film
The title of the film, ‘How Birds See the Ground From the Sky’, refers to the words of one of the participants. In it, children from Lupareve reflect on what they would like to do and what superpowers they would like to have:
‘Some of them dream of stopping being afraid of cameras and becoming an actress, some of them want the village to have more entertainment for teenagers’.
In ‘Friendship and the Hundred’ the boys from Vysunsk set out to find the money that the narrator’s friend was supposed to return to him as a child, but he lost it. This is an adult’s reflections and memories of childhood and home.
‘Beauty’ features shots of the Ukrainian South, ‘with boundless steppe, wildflowers and a calm estuary’, during which children from Pavlivka share reflections on the form and meaning of beauty for them. ‘Beauty is something in people’, one of the film’s participants shares.
About the documentary
The documentary ‘BLYSHCHYK. The South’ about the creation of festivals is also published on the Behind Blue Eyes YouTube channel.
In addition to footage of the preparation, the road movie includes ‘Blyshchyk’ festivals backstage, interviews with each member of the team, photos taken on film cameras, design sketches and tracks created by children at the festivals.
More about ‘Blyshchyk’
The idea for the festivals came to the project team during their travels and communication with children. They understood one of the problems of de-occupied and frontline villages — the lack of workshops, places or spaces for children’s socialization and leisure.
‘We really wanted to try to change that in some way, to come up with a format that would allow us to create a space where kids could learn something new, try a variety of creative formats, and just have a cool time together’, Skorokhodko explains.
The locations for the ‘Blyshchyk’ festivals were chosen based on the directions of the previous Behind Blue Eyes expeditions — in 2024 they visited nine villages in three regions of southern Ukraine. The project team wanted to return to familiar children and places, and to show that creativity can be practiced anywhere and in any conditions.
Each creative direction of ‘Blyshchyk’ festivals was supervised by mentors: RE:Ukraine Villages and balbek bureau teams told about architectural model making, Kostiantyn Omelia from OMELIA brand told about upcycling, and Dmytro Kotliar and Masha Reva conducted workshops on art.
As part of field recording and sound production workshops, children worked with such mentors as Kseniia Shcherbakova (Vixiii), Bohdan Kyrychenko (KBT) and Artem Ilin (Tofudj), as well as recorded tracks based on the sounds of their villages.
Especially for the ‘Blyshchyk’ festivals, Behind Blue Eyes also released a collaboration with the GUD brand — a bag that became a welcome pack for kids.
Read more about the festival in our article.
