Behind the curtain: How Kino Kolo are spotlighting Eastern European cinema for East Midlands audiences

Eastern European community cinema Kino Kolo are looking to bring people together through cinema; allowing diasporas to see their culture onscreen while at the same time teaching Western audiences about UK minority communities. Members Liam Skillen and Lila Yakimova understand the power of film to teach people about countries they may have never visited before. The group are also keen to expand their events and introduce paired activities into screenings such as cooking or crocheting, helping immerse people into the culture they are seeing on screen. They believe that these events can highlight the many overlapping aspects of various cultures, all brought together in Nottingham.

Kicking off their project was a screening of a Polish comedy titled The Cruise in Mansfield: a Polish classic that Liam tells me almost every family remembers watching at least once. The film highlights how these films connect to different groups on a variety of levels. At just over an hour and full of slapstick humour the entire audience understood and found it easy to connect to. However, the spoken jokes, even with English subtitles, were so specifically Polish that the English audience were a bit unaware of the humour. Despite this, the film’s playful energy and short run time was accessible to a wide range of people from different backgrounds. 

Liam says that they got great feedback from the crowd, as most people were expecting the stereotypical grim communist-era drama that Eastern European cinema has garnered an unfair, and untrue, reputation for. Breaking down these stereotypes of the often-monolithic definition of Eastern European cinema is key for Kino Kilo, as they aim to expand people’s knowledge of how diverse and varied these films can be. They have also found a large appeal for films that feel true to the country's own culture and are not Westernised films aimed at reaping awards at prestigious ceremonies.

Screening these films doesn’t always come easy though and they must also battle with getting licences for some of these films, with these often being licensed by the countries themselves, creating a potentially long and expensive process to being able to screen the films they want to. Luckily Kino Kilo has started making a myriad of connections across the country and abroad, including a partnership they have with Klassiki: a streaming service showcasing films from Eastern Europe, the Caucasus and Central Asia. Connections like these make the group hopeful that they will be able to expand their events to hosting other collectives or directors in Nottingham.

On the topic of slow, bleak cinema, Lila talks about her home country Bulgaria’s style of cinema that reflects the country's tumultuous history as a former Soviet state, which included limited access to their own culture, music and food. This has ultimately led to the country's cinematic output to mostly be deep and dark explorations of emotions, which come from the need to use cinema to deep dive into their emotional pasts. It’s just another example of how intrinsic the idea of processing both individual and collective trauma is to both filmmaking and viewing a film as an audience. 

Their most recent event was a sold-out screening of a recent documentary titled HOME by Mela Milleard, which took place at Mammoth Cinema. HOME aims to explore the meanings of family, identity, emigration and really look at what defines our home. Lila discusses how this cross-pollination of ideas and concept of our own inner connection to our homeland fits right into Kino Kilo’s modus operandi. As the group is dedicated to expanding their events beyond the borders of the screen, they also organised a multilingual poetry reading session to take place after the film. It featured poems read in Hungarian, Ukrainian, and one Bruce Springsteen poem read out in English.

Of course, focusing on Eastern European cinema offers a huge plethora of films to select from. From Czech New Wave to surrealist fantasy films there is a wealth of beautiful work to be shared with an audience who have potentially no experience with these styles of cinema. But they are conscious of not just barraging audiences with niche films from their own personal interests, instead they explore films that the various Eastern European communities want to see. Part of this is screening films that can appeal to the whole family, like cartoons or stop motion animations aimed at a younger audience – but are still enjoyable for adults as well. This includes screening a collection of shorts containing little to no dialogue, which they see as a way of getting around the language barriers that might put off younger audiences.

However, they are still open to exploring the spookier and more adult side of Eastern European cinema, well-renowned for its surrealist fantasies. Their next planned event being a collection of Hungarian shorts which Liam describes as unnerving. One featured director is Luca Tóth whose specialty is exceptionally creepy and absurd animations, and Péter Litchter who uses found and archival footage to create an eerie atmosphere. Both are contemporary directors that the group are hosting which allows them to build connections internationally for future screenings and events. They also have a partnership with Tenx9 – another community project that sees nine people use ten minutes to tell a true story from their life – on the horizon, combining their audiences to create even more opportunities to connect to local communities.

Keep up with future Kino Kilo events over at their Instagram: @kino_kilo_notts