Collaborating at the edge of visual art and cinema since 2013, Kyiv-based artists and filmmakers, Roman Khimei and Yarema Malashchuk graduated as cinematographers from the Institute of Screen Arts in Kyiv, Ukraine. Focusing on the role of the extra, their works engage with imperialist mythologies. They were awarded the main award of the PinchukArtCentre Prize (2020), VISIO Young Talent Acquisition Prize (2021), as well as the Grand Prix at the Young Ukrainian Artists Award (MUHi 2019). Their debut documentary “New Jerusalem” premiered at Docudays UA IFF 2020 and received the Special Mention Award at Kharkiv MeetDocs. The duo also participated in the Future Generation Art Prize 2021, a group exhibitions at Haus der Kunst, Baltic Triennial 14, M HKA, post-MoMA, HMKW Dortmund, Museum Morsbroich. Their video works are in collections of Frac Bretagne, Fondazione In Between Art Film and Seven Gravity Collection.

I am an ordinary girl from Ukraine, Marusya Shuvalova. I’m 12 years old, I’m a swimmer, a homeschooler and I’m in 7th grade. Three years ago I became an actress, so the film industry has also firmly entered my life. Sooner or later, many actors make their films as directors. This happens when they have something to say to people. In my country there is a war with Russian invaders, so I have something to say to children like me.

Anastasia Babenko is a Ukrainian writer/director based in Seattle, WA. In addition to contributing as a guest curatorial essayist of The 3rs Thing’s Good Symptom serial anthology, her writing has been published in The Seattle Times, Crosscut, Marie Claire Ukraine, Wonderzine and elsewhere. Her debut short film The Diaper Cake received a Vimeo Staff Pick and played over twenty Oscar-qualifying film festivals around the globe, including Clermont-Ferrand IFF, Palm Springs ShortFest, Short Shorts & Asia, etc. Her latest film project was invited to participate in Talents Sarajevo Script Lab 2023.

The 3rd Thing is an independent press dedicated to publishing necessary alternatives. We publish innovative work representing in form, content and perspective our interdisciplinary, intersectional priorities. Our projects are primarily by artists and writers who identify as members of traditionally marginalized groups, primarily Indigenous people, womxn, queer people and people of color. We think of each project as a break in the stockade—a way out of the settlement and into the wilderness. Come through.

Often our books are the result of an artist working in a non-dominant discipline—a playwright writes a book of poems, a theater-maker writes a book of essays, a filmmaker writes a book of theory…. And while our emphasis is on print traditions, our projects may take any number of forms: books, broadsides, performances, installations, colloquia, video anthologies, etc.

Good Symptom is The 3rd Thing’s first time-based publication showcasing literary media arts experiments that push the language of poetry, essay, correspondence, autobiography, manifestos, thought pieces and hybrid literary works off the page and onto the screen. A serial anthology troubling the boundaries between cinematic and literary forms, Good Symptom delivers a year of innovative film released in 12 monthly installments. Every month, subscribers to this series enter a world that disregards genre and disturbs disciplinary lines between literary and media arts with 1-3 short films and accompanying critical essays by project curators and guest writers.

Subscribe to Good Symptom to see these extraordinary works and all past and future volumes of this experiment in time-based publishing.