Existence is Resistance

On June 28th 1996, Ukraine adopted its first post-Soviet Constitution. It was a moment of transition, of promise—a country stepping away from the shadow of the Soviet Union and toward a future shaped by its own hands. That same year, the Panasonic M-40 VHS camera was released, capturing the world as it was: raw, imperfect, and immediate. Thirty years later, that same camera returns to Ukraine, documenting a moment of crisis—this time, the threat to the very sovereignty that the constitution sought to protect.

Lviv unfolds in its frame, not as a war-torn city, but as a place of small, everyday rituals. In the mornings, we eat at Om Nom Nom, a vegan café tucked between narrow streets, before walking to Vynnykivskyi market where we buy buckets of babushka’s blackberries, still damp with morning dew. The hum of life carries on here, as it does anywhere—until it doesn’t. When the sirens rise, so does the static, the color draining from the streets, the familiar turning unfamiliar, a city cast in grayscale.

Through the lens of 1996, we document the streets of Lviv, interviewing artists, activists, and curators, their words captured with the grain and hiss of a VHS tape. Katya Hrytseva speaks of her hometown, Mariupol—the shelling. Of her art school in Kharkiv—the shelling. Now, she finds herself in Lviv, as air raids echo close in the distance . And at Radio Garage, Andrii Linik recalls songs from another war, now appropriated by the present, resonating the House of Sound with new urgency.

But this film is not just about documenting war; it is about documenting life within war—existence and resistance. The footage, imperfect and immediate, is not just a record of what is happening now, but a reflection of a city caught in the cycles of its own history—Lviv as it was in 1996, as it is in 2024.

In choosing VHS, we document not only the city but the passage of time itself. The same camera that might have captured Ukraine’s first steps toward independence now bears witness to its potential unraveling, a reminder that history is fragile, and so is culture. Lviv could be anywhere in Europe. But it isn’t. It is here, now. And the threat it faces is not just to its buildings or its people, but to the very idea of what it means to exist.