This evening at 7 p.m., the Instituto Goethe in Madrid will screen the Ukrainian documentary Roses. Film-Cabaret, directed and written in 2021 by Irena Stetsenko, and with testimonies by Dakh Daughters and Vladimir Troitsky. Screening in original version with Spanish subtitles. Admission will be free until full capacity is reached, and there will be a discussion at the end of the screening.
Women on the (intellectual) warpath, on stage and -brave and defiant at the same time- on the convulsive streets of Kiev. These are the protagonists of Roses. Film-Cabaret, a non-fiction film written and directed by Irena Stetsenko, which is a frenetic immersion into the guts and spirit of the Freak Cabaret Dakh Daughters Band (who the filmmaker knows very well and whose complicity can be detected in her images), which combines music, performance and political militancy in its shows.
But don’t let the title confuse you: the cabaret performed by these warriors is not based on the carnality and epidermal exhibitionism to which we are accustomed within the more usual standards of this type of show, but rather these girls wear full face make-up, customised instruments and use baroque-inspired outfits that do not exploit their carnality. Their aim is to entertain, but not only the crotch, but also the heart and, above all, the brain, by questioning many social and political issues.
This documentary film describes the Dakh Daughters as an unconventional intellectual cabaret group created by seven actresses under the roof of the contemporary experimental theatre Dakh in Kiev. The video diary spans almost five years, from their first show, entitled Roses, to their first popular song ‘Rozy/Donbas’, written long before the Donbas region became the war-torn zone of the so-called ‘Russian Spring’.
