Learning to Milk a Cow

2016, HD digital video, 64mins, colour, sound

The story of my grandmother’s life continues from Finding a Place to Sleep. When she was 19, she was taken from her family in urban Soviet Ukraine to work on a Bavarian farm under National Socialism. She had the luck and perseverance to survive hardships of the forced famine in her homeland and forced labour in the new one. The stories of her everyday life – learning how to milk a cow, falling in love – are interspersed with three generations of reflections on politics, longing, feelings of displacement and loss. Hand-processed black & white film, colour film, photographs and official documents create a montage of different perspectives. The hand-touch aesthetic combines with the acousmatic effect of disembodied voices, in this deeply intimate portrait obscured by memory loss, mis-translation, fear and trauma.

Watch Trailer on Vimeo.

Film’s Webpage.