BLR 2005 | Director: Studio Tatjana | Colour | digital file | 60 min | russian OV with english SUB

In 2003, Studio Tatyana was shut down by the Lukashenka administration, but the filmmakers' work continued: I WAS CALLED TO THE BALL (BLR 2005) is the studio's final manifesto, completed after the closure using the archival material that managed to escape confiscation. Investigative and unsettling, the film documents the rise of the dictator and the political repression – including political assassinations – from the perspective of Russian and Belarusian politicians and citizens attempting to resist. The democratic politician Galina Starovoitova, interviewed in ORANGE VESTS, had been murdered in the interim. One can also see journalist Anna Politkovskaya in the film speaking at Starovoitova's funeral in 1998; Politkovskaya too would later be murdered. Not least in view of the violent suppression of protests in Belarus in 2020/21, the work is an early document of the spreading repression that renders visible the continuous and brave resistance, especially on the part of women*. Or as the Belarusian philosopher and activist Olga Shparaga titled her book in 2021: "The Face of the Revolution is Female". (Gaby Babić)