While researching family heritage in her grandmother’s Ukrainian village, Australian-born filmmaker Kitty Green stumbled upon a flyer. It was an advertisement for a protest by feminist organisation Femen, a group of young activists notorious for protesting by painting barbed assaults on the patriarchy across their bare chests. Kitty decided to attend.
She captured the chaotic energy of their demonstration on film, and was “instantly hooked” on the fearless spectacle, the reactionary violence, the stunned spectators. Kitty approached the group with the footage – they liked it, so she was invited back to shoot another protest, and then another, and then another. Before long, Kitty was living with six of the girls in a two-bedroom apartment, while slowly forming the narrative for a documentary film on the movement.
The result is Ukraine is Not a Brothel, which recently screened across New Zealand as part of New Zealand’s International Film Festival. “In film school, I’d always made narrative films about gender and sexuality,” Green says. “So this movement sort of fit into everything I’d been working on.”
A riveting and complex portrait of activism, Ukraine is Not a Brothel seems to be as equally swept up in the bold vigor of the Femen movement as it is frank and open about the contradictions it’s tangled up in. Green attributes this clarity to her wholehearted immersion in the group’s ethos. “They’re so bold and courageous – I was inspired by them. I was in it as long as they were.”
She followed the women of Femen for 14 months, shooting countless demonstrations whilst observing the tolls and complications of their commitment. It was paramount to her that her relationship with them was not defined by one of filmmaker-subject. “Immediately I was their friend and almost part of the family,” she says. “I was the videographer for the group.” It was this rapport on both sides that inevitably proved most integral to Green’s process. “They trusted me and I think that’s how we got the story – that bond and that friendship.”
I was arrested frequently. I was abducted by the KGB during one incident… That could have gone very badly
But while thoroughly caught up in the “bold, beautiful, crazy” spirit of Femen, Green was aware of the dangers of such a commitment. “It was terrifying,” she admits. “I was arrested frequently. I was abducted by the KGB during one incident… That could have gone very badly”.
Yet there’s a certain nonchalance in her tone as she rattles off such alarming confrontations, and she suggests that such conflict was actually pretty common for the group. “At the end of the day, you know there’s not much they can really do,” she says with a shrug. “I’m an Australian citizen. If anything happens to me, the Australian government have to get involved somehow. I wasn’t ever in that much danger.”
Ever since the world became aware of Femen, there’s been much critical discussion about whether or not their defining philosophy is paradoxical. “A lot of people accuse them of not being feminist,” Green says. “I feel like feminism is anybody who is willing to stand up for the rights of women, or is trying to aid women in succeeding in some way, or overcome some kind of gender inequality… That’s their objective.”
Yet while Green’s film is quick to contextualize and clarify their central intention, it isn’t long before it runs into some more deeply embedded contradictions.
The film completely shifts gears upon the reveal that this feminist movement, formed to rally against the patriarchy, actually has a patriarch of its own – a manipulative, egomaniacal leader named Victor Svyatski. Green was entirely unaware of his role going in. “I’d seen him around speaking Russian to the girls, but I was mainly in contact with them, so I didn’t know exactly who he was or what his role was.”
But as Green’s grasp on the Russian language began to broaden, she started to understand the power he had accrued. “As I got closer to the organization – in the belly of the beast, so to speak – I really got to see just how tyrannical he was becoming with them. He had taken the reins and was quite abusive.”
Photo: Ukraine is not a brothel
You can imagine another filmmaker viciously tugging at these damning loose threads to unravel the entire movement, but Green’s relationship with these women meant she was more invested. For her, it was as much about preserving the essence of Femen as it was about confronting these hypocrisies. “I thought I had a film, but all of a sudden, I had a real story,” Green says. “I knew there was a chance I could hurt the organization by telling that story, but I also knew there was a way we could do it where the girls could move forward. I could see they were ready.”
On top of interrogating Svyatski and dissecting his influence within the organization, Green also tackles Femen’s early attitudes toward appearance. In one of the film’s most affecting scenes, one member of Femen speaks out about the way her larger figure was only ever used as a punch-line in demonstrations, with other women of similar sizes being barred from involvement in the group altogether. This was another aspect Green took issue with. “It was very upsetting for me as a Westerner,” she says. “I saw that a lot of women were being turned away or discouraged from protesting because they didn’t have the right figure or look.”
But Green believes that forcing Femen to acknowledge these inherent flaws was an important step. “It’s a tough film for them. It’s got their deepest, darkest secrets in it… But they never gave up. It was just about trying to find a way forward where they could take control of their organization again.”
Inna Shevchenko, who has since taken over as the leader of Femen, has proven much more committed to broadening the movement into a stronger collective and Green seems extremely proud of the progress they’ve made. “Femen has since changed and it involves everyone. Now any woman, of all shapes and sizes, can be involved.”
As for Kitty Green, she’s going back to Ukraine, having received a grant to document human stories amidst the conflict. “Ukraine needs storytellers,” she says. “There’s a lot of propaganda on both sides – Ukrainian and Russian. The truth is often hard to come across in the press. It’s [about] finding human faces and human stories so we can get an insight into what is going on.”
She has no illusions about the challenges she’s about to face. “It’s tough,” she says. “It’s traumatic there at the moment. The future is very uncertain. But people are still living there and going about their lives as best they can. So we’ll be there to support them.”
This content is brought to you with funding assistance from New Zealand On Air.
