Oksana Kapinos
producer
Oksana is a journalist and multimedia producer in TV and film with a Master’s Degree in Social and Media Communications from the Jan Amose Komensky University in Prague.
She has been working as a multimedia producer at Current Time TV under Radio Free Europe/Radio Liberty (RFE/RL).
Her passion for film production began in 2017, when she won a special project grant from RFE/RL to produce her first documentary film Always There, the story of a special group of children with Epidermolysis bullosa.
For more than ten years, I have been living and working abroad. I have always been interested in how foreigners perceive Ukraine and Ukrainians. And then I thought of creating a movie that could show the history of the Ukrainian people that would be admired by the whole world. From friends abroad, I learned about the Ukrainian band DakhaBrakha and their unique style of music. They won me over with their originality. I see these musicians as the most internationally-influenced Ukrainian group touring today. Their creativity and inspirations have no boundaries.
As I began to learn more about the band DakhaBrakha, I was surprised to find that information about its members was scarce. The musicians are virtually never interviewed and, with the exception of their own concerts, hardly appear in public. Subsequently, I met with Ukrainian director Anna Korzh, who knew the musicians personally. Together, we decided to bring the project to life: to introduce the world to the most prominent Ukrainian musicians of today by revealing their unique journey in a feature-length documentary.
Anna Korzh
film director
Anna graduated from the Kyiv National University of Theatre, Cinema and Television’s Department of Television with a Master’s degree in 2016. She recently participated in the American Film Showcase workshop at the University of Southern California (USC) in Los Angeles as part of her ongoing role as the director of DakhaBrakha: On the Road, a feature-length music documentary. One of the curators of the documentary program at the Contemporary Ukrainian Cinema nonprofit and coordinates several film festivals in Ukraine.
The movie DakhaBrakha: On the Road is a journey of musical discovery. We started traveling with the band back in 2018 and have witnessed some of the most important moments in the musicians’ process: songwriting and arrangement, rehearsals, soundchecks, and concerts; in Ukraine, France, Brazil, North America, and again in Ukraine. The film touches on the band’s history, the musicians’ memories, and the people who inspired them to pursue careers in music. We see the whole range of emotions: from fatigue and unwillingness to go on tour, to the exhilarating feeling of traveling and discovering new cities, to the joy of returning home.
By observing the band in close quarters over many months, speaking with the musicians about their work and their families, interviewing their friends and fans from around the world, we get a close-up view of the backstage life of DakhaBrakha in a full-length documentary format.
