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How To Save a Dead Friend, 2022, Marusya Syroechkovskaya

How To Save a Dead Friend (2022) is a recollection of home footage shot by director Marusya Syroechkovskaya from her early teenage years until her adult life, covering over a decade of memories. This low budget film won over 7 prizes in multiple film festivals.  

This touching personal documentary depicts her life and the environment she grew up in Russia, persuaded that she is bound to die young, as her close friends seem to pass away one by one, either from suicide or drug overdoses, gradually becoming her reality. 

Through her lens, she’s able to capture the complexity of substance abuses and the matter of suicide, the tension and condition of living in her country as well as the profound love she develops for her significant other, Kimi Morev, the friend she could not save. 

10/1 Bogdan Gîrbovan

Bogdan Gîrbovan (b. 1981) is a Bucharest-based photographer whose work primarily explores personal narratives and the relationship between nature and humanity.

His most renowned series, 10/1, examines the interiors of all ten apartments in the building where he lived — and will be the focus of this issue.

Created in 2008, the idea for the series originated in Gîrbovan’s own apartment, located in a building constructed in 1966 during Romania’s communist era. Each flat consisted of a single room with an identical layout, a design concept intended to suppress individual expression.

In response and critique to this uniformity, Gîrbovan photographed each resident inside their flat, using the same camera angle for every shot. These sociological portraits reveal how we shape our living spaces, and how factors like age, social class, and personal background influence our unconscious design choices.

Click on the image to find out more.

Watching the Pain of Others, Lého Galibert-Laîné, 2019

Watching the Pain of Others is a 2019 desktop documentary using only screen recordings for its footage such as video calls, emails and internet research. 

It may appear as an easy means of making a film, but as filmmaking becomes more and more accessible to anyone, creatives become obliged to find new ways of doing so, and this method particularly requires coordination, practice and especially allows a deep dive into one’s privacy as we now tend to keep all our deepest personal informations on digital devices. 

Directed by French video essayist and researcher Lého Galibert-Laîné finds her starting point for this moving image piece from her fascination for The Pain of Others (2018) directed by Penny Lane, a compilation of people suffering from this mysterious disease called “morgellons”. 

This non-traditional documentary explores communities believing in conspiracies and the disturbing content one can easily find on Youtube, but Galibert-Laîné chooses the approach of getting in touch with them in order to understand them.

Click on the image to watch the film

SK8 Liborius - Liborius Urban Art Studios

SK8 Liborius is a collective effort dedicated to the conservation and preservation of the historic St. Liborius Church and Rectory.

This church was abandoned and closed in 1992 due to a lack of funding and active members. A year later, its furnishings, decorative elements, and most remaining items were sold at auction, before the property was purchased by Hogan Street Partners LLC. Several years later, an incredible preservation project was launched, transforming the nearly abandoned landmark into the Liborius Urban Art Studios (LUAS).

The interior was repurposed into a skate park and a versatile community space hosting concerts, art exhibits, and educational initiatives — breathing new life into the historic site.Sadly, on June 29, 2023, the entire space was destroyed by a fire.

However, the tragedy has not stopped the positive momentum to unite and support the community. A GoFundMe campaign was launched, and many have donated to support the rebuilding efforts. So far, $88,000 has been raised — about 18% of the total amount needed.

Click on the image to find out more.