Documentary cinema often fills in the space which the media are unable to fill: in the world of information wars and an endless stream of news, documentary cinema can create a focus, separate the important from the fleeting, allow us to look closer, think and trust. That is why documentary films are becoming ever more popular, not only among audiences but also as tools of learning and reflection. The Maidan and the events in the Donbas did not only bring people with political demands onto the streets, but also people with cameras. Did the TV market feel it? How did it respond to this? Television is also changing and striving to be ‘closer’ to the viewer, more “lively.” Can television integrate documentary films as a new genre? Is contemporary documentary cinema able to preserve its genre independence as it directly collaborates with television?

Participants:

Kenan Aliyev has been the executive editor of the Russian language TV channel Current Time since 2014. During his tenure, he oversaw the launch of Current Time TV, an independent and international news network designed to connect Russian speakers around the world. Current Time is a project of Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty (RFE/RL) in cooperation with the Voice of America. The network regularly airs creative documentaries, including those that are banned in Russia because of their content. Kenan was previously director of Radio Azadliq, RFE/RL’s Azerbaijani broadcast. Before joining RFE/RL in 2004, Kenan had worked in Washington, D.C. as a regular contributor to the BBC World Service and as a broadcaster for Voice of America, receiving VOA’s Gold Medal Award for professional achievement in 2003.

Ivan Bukreev is the head of the NLO TV channel, and a producer. From 2007 Ivan was head of strategic procurement of the rights on programme formats and rights on the internet for the 1+1 TV channel. He soon began to work as a sales manager of the Russian representation of NBC Universal, one of the world’s largest companies specialising in media and entertainment. Since 2012 he has headed the New Channels Development Department of the Ukraine TV Channel. Ivan is also a director for the NLO and Indigo TV channels. In 2016 he became the producer of the Ukrainian romantic comedy ‘Infoholic’.

Olha Zakharova is a strategic marketing director of the Media Group Ukraine media holding. Olha is an expert and author of masterclasses and publications on marketing, branding and creativity in printed media and online, and has won awards at the New York Television Festival. She has been a permanent jury member of the PROMAX international competition for TV design since 1998. Between 1996 and 2008 she worked as a creative director, and was head of the creative projects department of the 1+1 TV channel. Between 1998 and 2010, she worked as the general director and chairwoman of the board of the 1+1 Video Design company (brands of the Ukrainian TV channels Cinema, TET, ICTV, etc.).

Moderator: Angelina Kariakina, editor-in-chief of Hromadske

Angelina worked as a reporter for the Kyiv office of Euronews. In 2015, she joined the team of Hromadske as a journalist and host. She covered the trials of Oleg Sentsov and Oleksandr Kolchenko in Rostov-na-Donu, as well as the migration crisis in Hungary. Together with her colleague Nastia Stanko, she started a series of documentary investigations In the Wake of the Revolution about the events of the Maidan. She graduated from the filmmaking workshop of Serhiy Bukovsky.