The history of making "Non à La Guerre!" video

Under construction

Feb 13, 2023

Here I’ll be adding some background related to the lines and images used in the video made for the song "Non à La Guerre!" (Watch it on YouTube)

The song and video came from my own experiences and rethinking of what’s going on in my homeland Ukraine and how it is connected to what we experiencing here in Canada and elsewhere…

Stories behind some of the images used in video:

Preface:

Above:

Ukrainians were among the first to protest for civil rights and freedoms in Canada on January 28, 2022, when Freedom Convoy arrived to Ottawa. The War has not started then in Ukraine yet. month later Ukrainians will protest again - with equally many (but now often with different group of) Canadians - for freedom in Ukraine, against the brutal violation of any human norms by Russian military.

Below:

This is the house in Kiev, near which I used to live for over twenty years before I came to Canada. (You might have seen this picture on Google, but the image below is screenshot from my Skype call with a classmate - so that you know it is not fake or from our place)

Note, I deliberately spell “Kiev” not “Kyiv” here and in the movie.

My own family name (Gorodnichy) was spelled in so many ridiculously different ways since Ukraine has become independent from Russia (with three “y” as in Gorodnychyyi -in my first passport that was issued in ukraine, and starting with “H” as in Horodnichy - in my M.Sc. diploma) , before, I eventually managed to convert it in all my official documents to its normal way it as is now . And that’s ok, it was annoying abit but I would definitely not start the war conflict because of that.

Besides Russian capital is not spelled “Moskva” either in English, but “Moscow”, isn’t it? Imagine changing “Moscow” to “Moskva” in all international airports - that would sound ridiculous, would not it?

But I do understand that, after what Russia has done to Ukrainians, you do want to distance yourself from Russia as much as possible… even at inconvenience of spelling your name in weird way.

The Narrative:

The song starts from pictures from the largest peaceful protests (seen in the World since WW2) - against the war in Iraq on March 15 2003 - that we held in Ottawa of which we (my wife, our just first daughter and grand-dad were part of.

People can be easily manipulated - without them even realizing that.

In some cultures like in former USSR, people learnt that not everything you see on TV is true. In Canada, Canadians may not have as much experience with state-paid propaganda as we did in USSR. So here are some images to about that.

Police brutality against peaceful “armless” protestors - looks the same - whether it in Russia or Canada. You even cannot easily distinguish which is Russian and which is Canadian police - can you? Both the faces (with no mercy or doubt of police vs. with pain and disgust of protesters) and equipment (those with rubber stick and helmets vs. those in home cloths and wheelchairs)

It’s the sign of the same state machine (“investment of administration”).