The plot of a recent Russian road movie What men talk about is simple: four members of a Russian theatre “Quartet I” (two Russians, two Ukrainians) travel to Odessa for a gig by a classic Russian rock group.
This film was released in 2010. Today, after two years of violent conflict, the idea of making this kind of film in 2016 is laughable. Or does it only seem so? What do we — in Ukraine, Russia, Europe — really know about the interaction of these two cultures?
We know that cultural exchange between Ukraine and Russia, whether it’s pop music or independent theatre, has been intensive since 1991, when both countries gained independence. We know that when Crimea was annexed in 2014, several hundred Russian cultural figures publicly came out in support of Putin’s “Ukraine policy”, and a few dozen came out against. We know that, in the aftermath, Ukraine’s Ministry of Culture has published a list of Russian artists who are banned from entering Ukraine.
