ORANZHEVYE ZHILETY 1993 Directed by Yury Khashevatsky
While the USSR is slowly collapsing, screenwriters Ella Milova and Irina Pismennaya meet with a feminist collective in Berlin. They observe that the ideas of feminism diverge heavily between West and East. For two years, the Belarusian women travel across their former homeland – from the maternity ward to the Tadjik cotton belt – letting party officials, factory workers and prison inmates speak. Wearing orange vests, engaged in the grittiest sort of manual labour, they tell a tale of twofold burdens, exploitation, militarisation and environmental destruction. A harsh, educational kaleidoscope, a film-letter, addressed to West-German director Helke Sander.
