Congregation Agudas Israel’s Art Committee presents a screening of three short films by U. of S. MFA candidate Nik Chermenskaya on Sunday afternoon, April 19 at 2 PM in the multipurpose room. Nik’s films deal with themes of war, migration, grief and memory. Join us for these moving and thought-provoking films, enjoy some refreshments and chat with the artist.

Bio
Nik (Veronika) Chermensky is a young Russian-Jewish animator, filmmaker, and artist who recently relocated to Canada for an MFA at the University of Saskatchewan. Anchored in memory, Nik’s work allows the viewer to journey through time, place, space, and states of mind. Nik’s work has been screened and exhibited internationally in Serbia, Mexico, Israel, and at the Annual Graduate Interdisciplinary Conference at Concordia University in Canada.

Artist Statement
My work explores challenging narratives that often defy verbal articulation. I merge hand-drawn or painted aesthetics with digital animation and motion graphics to immerse viewers in mental states that evoke transcendental experiences. Having lived in Russia and Israel and having had the chance to see their cultures and histories from the outside, I realized how much fear, pain, and guilt I carry—not just from exceptional tragedies but from everyday experiences. My work embodies many stories that confront the seemingly incongruent narratives I have been told and brings them into a space for shared reconsideration.

Screening Program
1. Hod
Internationally screened short, animated film. Two figures walk through a snowy Russian city as ghostly giants, monuments of past generations, silently process overhead. Unseen yet omnipresent, these ancestral phantoms echo through a fragmented dialogue marked by resignation, defi ance, and historical fatigue. Rendered in a painterly aesthetic with surreal perspective shifts and dissonant soundscapes, the film is a meditation on collective trauma and inertia.

2. Siren
This short stop-motion animation was created shortly after my arrival in Canada, when the memory of sirens still lingered and any rising sound triggered an adrenaline rush and an instinctive urge to run and hide.

3. The Children of Tomorrow
Premiere!
Short animated film that follows a young woman and her close relationship with her friend who died by suicide. The film unfolds through the heroine’s inward descent into grief, memory, and unresolved intimacy, alongside an outward journey from the Russian capital to her hometown. As the journey progresses, dreamlike sequences interrupt the present, collapsing time into a single unstable space in which Polina continues to exist.