The Damned and the Sacred (Jos de Putter, 2002) + talk with the director

Jos de Putter | 2002 | NL | 76’ | English subtitles

Grozny, the capital of Chechnya, is a devastated city after two wars of independence against Russia. Between the ruins, a group of children practise Caucasian dance steps. They are between six and sixteen of age and belong to a Chechen dance-group. The film follows them on their tour of Europe, where they dance in the theatres of Amsterdam, Krakow, Warsaw and London. Because filming was not allowed in Chechnya, filmmaker Jos de Putter used secret footage of dance rehearsals among the broken-down houses in Grozny.

For the dancers, their performance is more than a manifestation of Chechen self-confidence. It is a manifestation of their existence. When they dance they seem to be saying: Everything around us is in ruins, but we are dancing, we exist.

What begins as an apparent celebration turns out to be almost a compulsion to dance, to find a release for these children's over-loaded nervous systems, to keep from going mad. The group's dance turns into a metaphor for the horror of daily reality, in which these children could disappear from one moment to the next.

After the screening, there will be a brief conversation between the director, Jos de Putter, and filmmaker Vladlena Sandu, who lived in Grozny as a child during the war years.