Bondarenko: “The Kyiv City State Administration offered nothing to the Cultural Center. Our viewers turned out to be the real fighters for “Kyiv”

19.07.2020

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The second part of an interview with the director of the Kyiv Cinema Cultural Center, Honored Worker of Culture of Ukraine, Viliya Bondarenko. In the first part, Ms. Bondarenko told how her creative team resumed the work of a decaying cultural center in the 2000s, reconstructed the building with credit funds, developed international relations, and then was left on the street without premises and documents. The second part concerns court cases and the fact that the capital’s authorities offered nothing to the creative team with a 20-year history.

Vilia Bondarenko with Fanny Ardan in Kyiv | Image taken from the archive of V.Bondarenko

– How did the eviction of the Kyiv Cinema creative team go a year ago?

– On June 7th last year, with the help of the Municipal Security public utility company under a security services contract with the Kyivkinofilm public utility company, the Kyiv City State Administration’s departments of municipal property and culture forced the Cultural Center’s staff out onto the street. Armed men burst in during a morning screening attended by orphans, suspended the screening, took the children outside, and kept the staff in the building for eight hours without food or water. We were not even allowed to take our personal belongings, not to mention that the building is our company’s property.

The city has forcibly seized a cinema from the city! The mayor and his entourage called this raid an «inventory». However, the previous one took place in December 2018. We could not even foresee this course of events. Without waiting for a court decision, putting himself above the law, the mayor did what he had planned. Several hundred Kyiv residents came to the cinema in the evening to protest, blocking the road to express their disagreement with the criminal actions of the authorities. But no one from the leaders came out to talk to the people of Kyiv. A few days later, the new tenant started a dirty campaign: «The cultural asset of Kyiv is in a state of disrepair». From the first days they entered the cinema to the present, they and the mayor have convinced the community that the building is unfit for use. But how can this be?! Just before the seizure, we held two major international events – the First International Kyiv Jewish Forum was held on May 5th, attended by President Petro Poroshenko, the entire political elite, foreign diplomats, and human rights activist Natan Sharansky, who arrived on a special flight from Israel. For several hours before the event, the security services checked the technical condition of the building and the level of security, and only after thorough checks were guests allowed to enter the building. In late May, the Molodist International Film Festival was held in the cinema. By the way, the Kyiv City State Administration asked us to host this large-scale event in an official letter. And everything in the cinema was in a satisfactory condition for operation at the time, and the services did not detect any danger to people!

– Did the Kyiv authorities provide other premises for the creative team of the
Kyiv Cinema? Where do the team members continue to work now, and what is their
fate?

– No, the mayor’s office did not offer our team any other premises. But we wouldn’t have accepted it anyway, even if they had. For two decades, we have been working hard to develop the festival center at the international level. After the forced closure of the cinema, 52 members of the Association lost their jobs. Only a part of them eventually found a job, most of them are either temporarily working or looking for one. Here’s how the mayor’s actions affected the welfare of the Cultural Center’s employees.

Catherine Deneuve and Vilia Bondarenko | Image taken from the archive of the Molodist Film Festival

– Did the mayor of Kyiv, Vitalii Klytschko, and the Cinema-Center company
offer you any cooperation?

– There were no negotiations. The authorities did not want to hear from the Center’s staff.

– Who did you contact to help you get the premises back for further work of the Kyiv Cinema Center?

– Many Ukrainians, not only residents of the capital, know about the forced suspension of the Kyiv Cinema Cultural Center. Some only sympathize, while others add: “There is no point in fighting the authorities. They decided to do how they decided. They don't take people into account.”

The real fighters for the Kyiv Cinema were our viewers. During the year of struggle for the Cultural Center, they held dozens of protests near the Kyiv City State Administration, cinemas closed by the authorities, and sent a letter to the President. Our team is sincerely grateful to the people of Kyiv for their moral position and perseverance in the struggle.

– At what stage is the issue of changing the tenant now?

– The appeal against the Court of Cassation’s ruling to the European Court of Human Rights on the decision to recognize the priority right to lease the cinema building is already ready. Further, the lawyers have drafted a new lawsuit against the Kyiv City State Administration to reclaim our property from someone else’s possession and recognize the priority right of the integral property complex, not the building.

The lawyers are also appealing the decision of the Kyiv Administrative Court in the appellate instance, where we are involved as a third party. We accidentally discovered this “creativity” from Cinema Center from the register of court decisions. Imagine they were trying to declare an ordinary building unfit for use through a court decision!

Only the banners indicate that a year ago, movies were shown here On 30.01.2020, with the tacit consent of Cinema Center LTD., the court of first instance in the Kyiv Administrative Court was lost. In this decision, according to the inspection report (of the Pechersk Department of the State Emergency Service of Ukraine in Kyiv), the building of the Kyiv Cinema was recognized as an emergency. Cinema- Center LTD., as a business entity, does not dispute the claims for recognition of the building as unsuitable for operation in the said proceedings but fully supports them. A fictitious internecine decision.

The building inspection report is wholly copied and coincides with the conclusion on the emergency condition of the building ordered by Cinema Center LTD. from the Research Institute of Innovative Construction of the Ukrainian Academy of Sciences, which does not even have a license or relevant certificates to examine the emergency condition of the premises!

The Cinema-Center company has already tried to use this expertise as a basis and mislead the Kyiv municipal Property Commission members to get out of the lease. Interestingly, before the tender for the right to lease the premises, the State Emergency Service (in the Autumn of 2018) and the relevant appraiser for the tender inspected the condition of the Kyiv Cinema. The latter determined it as “satisfactory” and estimated the value of the building at UAH 170 million, and the Department of Communal Property reviewed this assessment.
– What steps is the Kyiv Cinema ready to take to preserve its achievements and the experience gained over 20 years?
– Resumption of all film festivals developed over the years of the cultural center’s work and which our audience has already missed. Of course, there is also the planned reconstruction of the cinema.

But this must be done quickly, and the reconstruction project must be agreed upon. If the city does not block our initiatives, the Kyiv Cinema can become a shining example of cooperation between the city, business, and creative teams. Our many years of work have proven that we do this at a high level. Read the first part of the conversation with the Head of the Kyiv Cinema Cultural Center here: «Head of the Kyiv Cinema Cultural Center tells us for the first time how the raider seizure of the premises took place».