Wonder and Kent discuss the documentary Porcelain War about three incredibly brave Ukrainian artists, two of whom are also soldiers fighting on the frontlines in service to their country. Themes that emerge are using art as a strategy of resilience, the way time slows when you create art and also when you go to war, when you experience bodily terror, and being of service. Additionally we observe a strong and vibrant match between the filmmaker and his wife, who create the beautiful porcelain objects the soldiers leave behind for others to find. Astrologically these themes relate to the 6th and 7th houses and to the planets Venus and Mars.
Distribution: Currently on Theatrical Run, more info
Directors: Brendan Bellomo & Slava Leontyev
Run Time: 90 minutes
Music Credit: spacedust by airtone
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Rough Transcript
[00:00:13.462] Kent Bye: Hello, my name is Kent Bye. Wonder Bright: And I'm Wonder Bright. Kent Bye: And welcome to the Story All the Way Down podcast, where we'll be unpacking the archetypal dynamics of Sundance 2024. In today's episode, we're going to be covering Porcelain War, which is a part of the U.S. Documentary Competition, and actually ended up winning the U.S. Grand Jury Prize for Documentary this year. This is the second of six of the themes of Faith and Ritual that we're covering here on the podcast, and it's directed by Brendan Bellemo and Slava Leontev. And Wonder, could you read the synopsis?
[00:00:43.130] Wonder Bright: I'd love to. Porcelain War. Under roaring fighter jets and missile strikes, Ukrainian artists Slava, Anya, and Andrey choose to stay behind and fight, contending with the soldiers they have become, defiantly finding beauty amid destruction. They show that although it's easy to make people afraid, it's hard to destroy their passion for living. And how does one continue to live when everything you love is under vicious attack? Porcelain War argues that you can learn to fight back using all the tools you have, including your art, in order to avoid erasure. We're ordinary people in an extraordinary situation, is how co-director Slava Leontyev describes their current life. Meanwhile, there is absolutely nothing ordinary about them. These artists, farmers, IT specialists, coming together to fight their oppressor. Porcelain War is a true cinematic gem. Leontyev and co-director Brendan Bellomo managed to gracefully capture the dissonance between the horrors of war and the fragile beauty of nature and artistic practice. Anya's and Slava's porcelain pieces come to life in delicately crafted animations that offer context to their maker's story and a stunning outlet for processing grief. And that synopsis was written by one of Sundance's programmers, Anya Trzebiatowska.
[00:02:05.638] Kent Bye: So yeah, for me, this is a remarkable piece - that it was even captured and shot, because these are people who are in the midst of war and constant threat of being bombed. They managed to find a way to still capture their day-to-day lives. And that's kind of like a split between the art that they're creating, but also their life in the military. And it was sort of like an embedded piece where they're on the front lines of this war as soldiers, but also they're off doing their art of this amazing porcelain pieces. And so this juxtaposition of the art that's being created despite the war and to really committed to further their culture. So this idea of the 11th House of the culture, but also the 5th House of the art, these cultural artifacts that they're committed to continuing to produce as a form of resistance. So using art as a form of resistance. So, yeah, I'd love to hear some of your initial reactions to the piece.
[00:03:02.396] Wonder Bright: One of the most striking things to me about this remarkable film is the ways in which, because the makers of the film are artists, they're actually able to capture this experience of war that I've read about in books about war or seen in other films, seen depicted one way or another, but I've never seen it depicted so intentionally. And that's the quality of time distortion that we experience in moments of war. So anytime we have, like, an accident, people often describe that moment where it like gets really, really slow. And there's something about war that seems to do that to people, partly because if you're going through mortar rounds or shelling or whatever. You’re under attack, time changes, the experience of time changes. But it's also the case that when people are at war - I've heard, I've never been at war - but what I've been told and what this film depicts beautifully is that there's often these long extended periods where you're not under attack, but you're waiting or you're walking for hours patrolling something. And this film not only pays attention to those long pockets of moments where you're waiting for war, followed by these extreme experiences where you're actually at war and your heart is pounding because you're following our protagonists through bombed out buildings and they're trying to rescue someone. So you have these long still moments followed by these moments of lots of action. But additionally, because the filmmakers are all artists, they're creating works of art, and then they bring them with them to the battlefield. And they're sharing the art, and then they're leaving it in spaces and photographing it. So you'll get these beautiful porcelain sculptures that have been hand painted by Anya, who is married to Slava, who is one of the soldiers that stays behind. Anya is not herself a soldier, but she stays in the home that she and Slava have lived in in Ukraine, and Slava goes out every day and he goes to war, basically, and he'll carry these beautiful sculptures that he and Anya have made together, and he shares them with his fellow soldiers, and they take them with them. And because there's a quality to their art that the process of making the art takes time, and the objects are so exquisite that when somebody is holding it, they become enraptured like they're a child. There's these wonderful sequences where Slava is sharing he and Anya's latest creation with his fellow soldiers and the soldiers are just looking. They're sitting by the side of the road, you know, maybe they're having a break, eating lunch, or they're waiting for the next outburst that they know is coming because they've been planning for it. And they're just all waiting in this moment of waiting, where time has changed. And now they're looking at this piece of work that took that same intention of changing time, because when you're creating something, your experience of time also changes. So one of my abiding experiences through this film is the way in which part of their resistance is occurring through their art, but it's occurring through the way that art is allowing them to process time and pay attention to what is happening to them differently.
[00:06:32.321] Kent Bye: Yeah, there was a 360 video documentary that was shown at South by Southwest called Fresh Memories: The Look, that was shot in Ukraine. And they had an installation where they had a little piece of porcelain. And I said, what's this about? And they were saying, well, actually when a whole building gets bombed out, that the porcelain is the one thing that survives because it can withstand these extreme amounts of heat. So there's this paradox with porcelain where it's extremely fragile on one hand, but it's almost, like, indestructible. It was a really great metaphor that they kept coming back to in this film, where they're talking about the fragility of the porcelain, but yet the strength of it. There's these dual significations. When I think about this film, there’s a primary signification of, maybe, Venus, of art, that's being created. But there's also a lot of Mars signatures of the war. Mars is in its joy in the 6th House, which is the military. They're also at war. So the predominant context of this is the 7th House / war, and that they're creating art in the context of war. So there's this 5th House expression within the context of a larger 7th House conflict, they're juxtaposing this relationship between the 10th House / career and the 6th House / job, where the 10th House is the midheaven, it's the middle of the sky, and it's often referred to as having a lot of social status. And so, some people have their career as a part of their profession, which becomes a part of their identity, their core identity. And that's juxtaposed to the 6th House, which is connected to servitude or maybe just a job that you're getting for money, but not something that you're really committed to in terms of your identity. It's just something that you do because you're trying to make a living. And so there's this interesting juxtaposition because there's people who have these other professions that they're known for, but because of the war in Ukraine, they're constricted or they've volunteered to be a part of the army. So they're going from this 10th House representation of their profession, now they're in a 6th House being the military, which can lead to injury and infirmment. So there's the other signification of the 6th House, which is having something go wrong with your health. It's the House of Bad Fortune. And Slava's also a teacher, so he's in a training context where he's doing a higher education of training these other soldiers who are maybe coming from not being a professional soldier or these other professions, and he has to basically whip them into shape and to train them with everything they need to know to be able to go onto the front lines and fight for their country. There's another signification that I just want to also call out, which is that the center photographer, Andrey, is actually a painter and his family actually has to leave. And so there's a 12th House refugee aspect where they have to flee the country, but he has to stay behind because If you're in Ukraine and male, it's actually very difficult to leave the country because you're expected to stay behind and to fight. And so he stays behind to fight, but there's another thread where he's in this exile in some sense. He's at home, so he's in his 4th House home, but all of his family have been exiled into this 12th House expression. And so they're gone, and so he's feeling that loneliness and isolation. he's in his own homeland, but his family is a stranger in the strange land. So he's experiencing that isolation. So there's other themes of his relationship to the family and reconnecting to his family that also is playing throughout the course of this. But yeah, like I said, there's an amazing ability for this film to even be shot and to capture all these different dynamics. But as I think about the contextual domains or the house significations of this piece, There's a lot of 7th House war, 5th House art, and the Nietzschean aspects of creating the art and the martial aspects of what it means to be on the front line of this war. So yeah, I'd love to hear some of your reflections on what kind of significations you're seeing in this piece.
[00:10:31.280] Wonder Bright: Yeah, I completely co-sign 6th House and Venus. Those are the main themes that I would look at. 5th House as a tertiary theme, creativity, pleasurable pursuits, art, beauty. But I would really look to Venus for that first, primarily, I think, because we're finding beauty in this unexpected place and we're finding creativity in this unexpected place. And Venus, obviously, goddess of love, art, beauty, all things beautiful. So whenever we talk about artists and musicians, we're always going to be talking about Venus in some way. And so this film is almost explicitly about the cultivation of beauty as an act of resistance in war. So it's an extremely - like, it's almost in sharp relief because the circumstances within which we find our protagonists carving out space for beauty is so extreme and so it really stands in stark relief to the chaos and devastation that lies all around them. And then I just want to pull out some of the themes about the 6th House that tie into what I was saying earlier about how this is a film that is so much about the experience of time, because the things that the 6th House signifies, which are illness, enslavement and service, all have something in common. So, you know, classically, it was pretty much just illness and enslavement. And you could also have, like, anybody who's enslaved, like if you are an emperor in ancient Rome, then you would look to your 6th House to see your slaves. And you pointed out earlier that the 6th House to the ancient Hellens was also a place of warfare because that would be where you would expect your enslaved people to lead a rebellion and you would expect to be able to send your soldiers to war because they would also be conscripted and hence basically enslaved people. Well, the thing that those experiences, those human experiences have in common, enslavement, illness, being of service, is that you don't have a lot of control over your body while you're in those occupations. And so when we don't have control over our body, our experience of time necessarily changes because we're going to resist mentally and emotionally the experiences that our body is going through in one way or another. And yet at the same time, I think there are people who are able to carve out space for their own experience of time when they are able to accept the finality of the reality that they find themselves in. So we think about enslaved African Americans who are really famous for singing these songs in their own tongue that allowed them to experience a measure of relief and resistance and community and solidarity, even though they were working under intolerable conditions. But that source of song making was in a way of carving out recognition between themselves about who they were. And you can see that kind of Venusian thread there. And so there's something just extremely powerful and obviously poetic about the way that Slava and Anya and Andrey are carving out their own sense of time, even though time has in some ways been stolen from them. And to me, that is an exalted version of a 6th House experience.
[00:13:57.714] Kent Bye: Yeah, and one of the things I forgot to mention was that there's a lot of 7th House themes with Slava and Anya being a couple, a married couple, and that Slava actually said during the Q&A that the only reason why he was able to do some of this, like go off and make art and tell this story in this film, was that he had someone who was basically stepping up and filling in for him when he was gone from his other duties. There was a sense where he had obligations elsewhere, but was able to carve out some time to be able to tell this story. And they were talking about how there's multiple aspects to this war that they're fighting. There's the war on the front lines that are being used with bullets, but there's this other war which is being used by the art and the practice of cultural production that they're doing to be able to actually produce this art. But it is being done in collaboration with both Anya and Slava, where he's the one who creates the porcelain and the molds and he fires it. And then she comes in and does all the painting with amazing detail of these enchanted creatures. And there's some really amazing sequences in this film where they have animation of some of her drawings, where I think she said during the Q&A that she was really happy to see her little creatures come alive in this imaginal way. So there's a Neptunian imaginal space where they're transcending the boundaries of what reality is by showing us these little enchanted creatures within the context of this really horrible war that's unfolding here. So yeah, I know that we talked about some of the significations of the piece and maybe you can tie a little bit about how Porcelain War fits into this broader theme of Faith and Ritual.
[00:15:40.223] Wonder Bright: So I created the category of Faith and Ritual because I was really attuned to the films that gave me what I would think of as strategies for resilience, or ways of attending to the world that helped people move through difficult times, or just in some ways seem to speak to how they really were able to bolster their humanity by paying attention to something that was really important to them. And for me, this film, Porcelain War, is a perfect example of that because their art is a strategy of resilience. It's a really explicit thing that they're doing. And one of the things that's interesting about The 6th House is that it is often tied to monks and nuns and people who are of service in the world. So 6th House work is that kind of work that one does because it needs doing. And the reason that there's a religious way of thinking about the 6th and the 12th Houses is because people who are able to find strategies for resilience in the 6th and 12th Houses are able to do so because they're able to find some meaning in what they're doing. So that can be explicit if you're a nun or a monk and your acts of service have to do with, well, today I am cleaning this floor. And, you know, like, a classic expression of this is in Karate Kid, where the kid is like being taught to “wax on, wax off”. There's this element of, you have to obey and you have to learn these acts and you have to surrender to the act of doing that act. And that will then teach you and give you the thing that you need to have. And so it's a classic thing in monasteries and nunneries that the people who attend are forced to commit, like they have to take care of the monastery or the nunnery. And that's actually part of their act of devotion to their faith. It's not the same thing as their religious rituals where they're counting their prayer beads or their rosary or saying their prayers, but it is as important a function of the running of those religious institutions as anything else. And so, it's always especially powerful when you see people who are conscripted or who have been enslaved and are forced into service to find the ways in which they're actually creating their own state of resistance and resilience and finding their own humanity in those paths because they haven't chosen them. They're not choosing to go to war. They're not choosing to be enslaved. We're not choosing to be ill. But there's an opportunity for us, even despite that, to experience ourselves as committed to an act that hallows our humanity rather than negates it. And so this film for me is something that does that and does it really explicitly and it's really beautiful. I'm reminded of Thich Nhat Hanh, the Buddhist monk who says that there are two ways of washing the dishes. The first way is to wash the dishes to get them clean. The other way is to wash the dishes to wash the dishes. And so there's something around that statement where there's an opportunity to surrender to the task at hand, as if it's just the task that needs doing. And you can see how there's a collapse of time in that way of thinking about things that is different than, I have to do this and I'm being forced to do this. It's like, I'm going to choose to do this and I'm going to make meaning in it. And to me, that's what Andrey and Slava and Anya all do really extraordinarily well. And it's incredibly moving to watch them go about that work.
[00:19:34.475] Kent Bye: Yeah, certainly a lot of those 6th House themes in this and one other 6th House signification that we haven't mentioned is that he has one of the most adorable dogs I've ever seen. So this dog ends up being a bit of a main character of just going around with him and shots of him, it's just an incredibly adorable dog. But at Sundance, he was actually holding his dog as they were traveling. So, but yeah, as we start to think about what we're bearing witness to and the significations that you would point to as something that could be a remedial measure.
[00:20:07.566] Wonder Bright: I want to bear witness to the quality of attention that these three artists bring to their work. It's the way that they're paying attention to their art, whether it's Anya painting the porcelain or Slava actually talking about guns and making sure that the civilians who he's tutoring understand how to fire them. And he spends the same kind of attention and care talking to these soldiers that he's mentoring that he does to the art and it's his quality of attention that really cultivates that different experience of time and gives me the inspiration for a kind of resilience inside of a 6th House experience. And Andrey also has a kind of quality of attention that he's paying to his family and to the duties that he is surrendering to so that his family can be safe. And the way that he's attending to that and the way that he's thinking about art as something that he can't engage in in this time because he's lost his passion for his art, but he's giving his attention to something else. And I just really want to bear witness to their bravery. But it's almost like they're just sort of, of course, this is what we're doing. It's the commitment almost more than a bravery. And that is it's just really powerful. And it is a beautiful thing to witness.
[00:21:42.110] Kent Bye: Yeah, and I really want to bear witness to the practice of creating art in the context of conflict. And in fact, if we break down the title of this piece, Porcelain War, it's saying how art within itself and the production of cultural artifacts can be a part of this broader information war to promote and to continue to have that resilience to propagate your creative works in the culture that is a part of the cultural identity of what makes Ukraine, Ukraine. And their own identity as artists is to continue their practice. And so, yeah, it feels like the type of film that if anybody is looking for inspiration for how you could continue your art within the most dire of circumstances, I think this is a great example of artists who've been able to find a way to continue their artistic practice in order to produce work. And the creation of the film within itself is a creative act. It's a bit of a miracle that they were able to even capture all the footage and to get all the equipment to them and to get the footage out of the country. Just even the logistics of producing this film is a miracle within itself. But the fact that it's this 5th House creative aspect of the Nietzschean impulse to create the beauty within the context of this larger martial conflict war, 7th House / opposition / open enemies type of situation. So yeah, that's I guess both the one I'm bearing witness to as well as the signification. What you would prescribe this to?
[00:23:17.617] Wonder Bright: Yeah, I didn't say what remedial measure I would prescribe this for. For me, it's 100% a 6th House expression. And for me, I would prescribe this for anyone who's having a difficult 6th House experience. One of the options that the hospital that I'm attending has for patients going through cancer treatment is art therapy. And I've only done one of their art therapy classes so far, but I loved it. And it was amazing to just have this moment to pay attention to art, to painting, to water, to pressing the brush to paper. And there's something really powerful about choosing that as an act of resilience. So yeah, I would say 6th House and also Venus in hardship. What does it take to create art when it's not an obvious thing?
[00:24:18.123] Kent Bye: Nice. Well, that's all we have for today on today's episode of story all the way down. And I just want to thank you for joining us on the podcast. And if you enjoy the podcast, please do spread the word, tell your friends and consider joining up on the newsletter over at storyallthewaydown.com. And just to keep track to what we're doing and to see how you might be able to be in touch or support us more in the future as we move forward. So thanks for listening. Wonder Bright: Thank you.
