October 31st - 20:23

Title: October 31st - 20:23 Medium: Super-8 film Aspect Ratio: 4:3 Resolution: 2880 x 2160 File Type: H.264 Codec / MP4. Comments: Early in the morning, the clerk at the hotel lobby helped me devise a plan to reach the border of Poland and Ukraine. The team showed me the closest entry that I can park the car and walk across the immigration on foot leaving the rental in a strange lot. After a few hours I found the location and called my photography friend, Shcheglova, to plan the meeting in Ivano-Frankivsk. Her twin friends Tania and Ann set me up with a driver from the border to their artist compound. He was a young Ukranian gentleman who did not speak any english, yet we spoke through a phone translator app the entire drive. This went on for about 4 hours, as we drove through the farmlands and passed the cities till the sunset and we reached the city with the sirens and planes overhead. Tania, one of the twins greeted me with a big hug. We had been talking online for a month before I arrived. She was the mastermind to help me visit to Ukraine. Her and her sister Ann with her black puppy walked me up and around their artist compound filled with a large community of young people getting together in a time of war. I learned that it is safer in numbers. To be together and work toward a common goal. Protection and unity. Why be home alone and hear the bombs fall, when you can gather together, rise up, and build a solution. It was inspiring seeing so many young people working together in this building. From creating supplies to innovating lamps made of Kombucha, Coming together under the roof from the conditions of life and death and war was the catalyst. Maybe it's true, something bad needs to be happening so we have no choice but to come together for the greater good and turn the traumatizing and terrible into great strength. We are all in this together. The twins showed me around their art studio and sat them down with a chess set with the match conveying a stalemate. To represent the conflict of Russia and Ukraine. Does anyone really win in a war? It is a blockage, a blockade. How do imaginary borders make us different even if we look the same? As the war continues, they are up against the odds. The board game and pieces are black and white, but life is made of color. The twins tower over the game holding one another. Happy Halloween to some, but the only day that exists to others. Tania and I went to her home and told me some of her war stories of how her and her twin Ann were interviewed by Vogue because of the incredible support to the elders and animals in Ukraine. Protecting these families from the rubble and giving them new homes. Building cement and solutions for their citizens to continue to thrive and survive. The night ended with Tania burning Russian literature and her friend busting through the door with a German Shepard because her phone was off. The taxi man pulled up for me and I took this sign to leave in the middle of the night. He jetted back to the border after getting stopped by Police a couple of times. I crossed again with my cameras and my heart beating in my chest. I made it back to Poland and drove through the night thinking about what just fucking happened.