For over ten years, Kyiv artists Ada Rybachuk and Volodymyr Melnychenko have been working on the project of the Park of Memory at Baykovy Hill in Kyiv. Next to the world-famous building of the Halls of Farewell at Kyiv crematorium (in cooperation with the architect Avraam Miletsky), Rybachuk and Melnychenko created the Wall of Memory project – a series of monumental unique sculptures over 2000 square meters in size which represented various key tragedies from the history of mankind. This wall was intended to be the central element of the Park of Memory – a neo-avant-garde art piece, devised by Rybachuk and Melnychenko. However, at the beginning of 1982, the local authorities decided to cancel the work on the Wall, and to pour concrete over several hundred square meters of ready sculptures. This decision was one of the largest-scale acts of art censorship in the USSR. Israel Goldstein’s film was the first public act of support for the artists, who for years have been fighting for the restoration of their long-term project.
Israel Goldstein was born in 1918. He is Ukrainian/Soviet cameraman and film director, maker of over 100 documentary films. Frontline cameraman, participant in the Battle of Stalingrad. His films include The Wall (1988), Babyn Yar (1989), The Cry of a Bird (1990), A Leaf of the Notebook (1993), A Farewell to Cinema (1995).
