About the archive
Eurodonbas and EuroKryvbas sent a crew across Eastern Ukraine to find what Europe built here. This is the research those films were made from, kept in the open so it outlives the edit.
Where this came from
The archive started as a production folder. Making Eurodonbas meant working out who raised the ironworks at Yuzivka, which Belgian firm put up the soda plant at Lysychansk, and whether anything of either was still standing — then getting a camera to it. Much of what the crew filmed has since been destroyed in the war.
The answers ran far past what two films could hold, so they were written down properly instead: every place with its coordinates, every person with what the sources establish and what they leave open, everything tied to the footage it turns up in. Researchers are welcome to it, and it is built to hold up to them. But it is not written for a reading room first. It is written so the next crew — or anyone who grew up near one of these places — can pick up a thread and follow it.
How the records fit together
1. Locations
Where it happened: towns, works, mines and the infrastructure around them, each pinned to its coordinates.
2. Films
The documentaries this was researched for, with their credits, the places they were shot, and the footage the archive can show.
3. People
The industrialists and engineers the films are about, the people who speak in them, and the crews who made them.
Who makes this
435 Films
Production company on both documentaries. Its research desk is where the archive started.
Be Brave Films
Co-producer on Eurodonbas and EuroKryvbas.