Boynya - The Slaugterhouse

Ukraine 1998, 9 min

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Presentations:

Clermont-Ferrand International Short Film Festival 1998

In a quiet morning, a man comes out of a wooden trailer. The weather is still fresh. He pulls on a coat and goes off to work with a swinging walk.

The din of the machines and the bellowing of the cows in the slaughterhouse puts an end to the peaceful morning. The mechanism of the cog-wheels gives the pace and compels the poor man to commit the irreversible act. The cattle, taken away with violence by the chains are now reduced to skinless corpses, mere pieces of meat. In spite of himself, the man has become a link in this infernal chain.

It is against this imperious mechanism, symbol of the duty to accomplish in the socicety, that Taras Tomenko stands up and introduces doubt and hope. When the man is asked to kill a horse, the slaughter comes back to his human nature. The memories of his childhood slowly reappear like forgotten fragments, and reveal the absurdity of his duty. Killing this horse comes back to killing numinous and beloved moments. And this is purely unbearable to him.

Taras Tomenko underlines here with strength the dissonance that may exist between a man’s true nature and his inescapableduties. When the harmony is broken, inner conflict is unavoidable and it fuels mechanisms of inhibition and compensation inside of us that are too often assimilated to incapacity or weakness.