Episodes

Roman Pilipey is a Ukrainian photojournalist based in Kiyv. The first main event he witnessed as a photographer was the Euromaidan revolution in Kyiv, 2013-2014, when Ukraine showed its clear and unmistakable determination to be a part of Europe. It is no coincidence that the invasion and annexation of Crimea by Russian military happened only a few months later. From 2014, Roman was covering the, then still isolated, war in eastern Ukraine, and, in the same year, became the staff photographer fo...

Today is a double premiere! For the first time I made an actual home visit and I conducted the entire interview in German! My apologies to all English native speakers, the next one will be for you again as well. Meine Reisegefährtin dieses Mal ist Iryna Schneider. Sie betreibt eine eigene Marketingagentur seitdem sie aus der Ukraine nach #München umgesiedelt ist. Über sich selbst sagt sie: “Tagsüber bin ich Marketingmanagerin und abends Künstlerin.” Wir unterhalten uns über ihre Kunst entlang ...

Mykola Kondrashev is an award-winning cinematographer and photographer based in Kiyv who also holds a master's degree in psychology. With his experience on a wide array of projects including commercial music videos, feature films, and television series, Mykola has honed his skills to create captivating and powerful visuals. Mykola’s impressive portfolio of projects spans the globe and he has worked with huge names like Coca-Cola, Radisson and Nescafé. Mykola’s dedication to his craft is evide...

Gayane Arushanian is a multidisciplinary artist from Kyiv. She is the founder of the School of Experimental Art in Kyiv and the G-ART STUDIO in Zaporizhzhia. Gayané is not only an outstanding artist, but she also has a Master's in Urban Construction and Design and Economic Cybernetics from the Zaporizhzhia State Engineering Academy. Her mathematical knowledge and her artistic eye and love for colour enable her to create shapes, forms and colour patterns oscillating between harmony and chaos. ...

Anastasiia Sanzharovska is a producer, director, and video editor from Ukraine. She originally studied system analysis and maths but turned to her real passion film soon after finishing her studies. She has been working as a producer, director, 1st AD, and video editor ever since. In February 2022, Anastasiia was in Egypt for a 3-week holiday but got stuck there due to Russia's invasion of Ukraine. She has been living there ever since. We'll talk about her early beginnings in filmmaking, why sh...

Today with us in the Yellow Van is Andriy Dubchak, a correspondent and photographer for Radio Free Europe and Radio Liberty as well as the founder of the interactive media platform Donbas Frontliner. He specializes in telling the stories of soldiers and civilians caught up in the conflict in eastern Ukraine. He received a 2022 Free Media Award from the Fritt Ord and ZEIT foundations for his "courageous professional reporting from battle zones." Andriy also received a Lovie award for coverage of ...

With us in the Yellow Van this week are Dafna Rachok and Ivan Shmatko. Dafna Rachok is a PhD Candidate in the Department of Anthropology at Indiana University Bloomington. Her research seeks to understand how vulnerable groups in Ukraine respond to existing HIV prevention and treatment programs and how their attitudes to the state shape their desire or reluctance to seek those programs. Ivan Shmatko is a PhD student in sociology at the University of Alberta (Canada). Ivan has been a part of the ...

Nick Torzhevsky is a film director and producer from Kyiv with over 10 years of experience directing and producing broadcast TV series, commercials, and feature films. Nick's latest project, Ukraine Rebirth, is putting a focus on the rebuilding of Ukraine after the war - something that struck me as extraordinary as the war is still raging on without an end in sight. On the website of Ukraine Rebirth, the project is introduced as follows: "Our main message within the series, as seen from the tit...

Alex Kraev is a musical multi-talent who gave his soul to punk rock. He plays the drums, bass, and guitar in multiple bands and is an absolute musical powerhouse. His influences are many, but his goal is one and the same: to challenge stereotypes and self-imposed laziness of body and mind. His music is loud and gets under your skin. Challenging riffs, vocal cascades, energetic rhythms and climactic melodies tear you out of your comfort zone, sharpen your senses and abduct your body before they s...

Oleksiy Martsenyuk is the Executive Director of the Center for Defence Strategies in Kiyv, an organisation that helps to monitor defence reforms and develop key government policies that will affect the country's security and defence sector. This certainly needs a little more explanation from you, Oleksiy! And we will get into that in the course of the podcast. Also, he served as a Civilian Deputy Minister in the Ukrainian Ministry of Defence for just under a year. Originally, Oleksiy has a busin...

Anna Pykhtina is a communication and PR expert from Kyiv, Ukraine, focusing on Ukrainian NGO work and civic education, currently living in Warsaw, Poland. After the outbreak of the war, Anna and her boyfriend fled Ukraine to Poland, where they are currently living with friends. Anna was the president of AEGEE-Kyiv, Europe's biggest interdisciplinary student organization. She has been travelling extensively in Europe and is, I think it is safe to say, a strong proponent of the European idea. Addi...

Oleksii Isakov holds a Master in Intercultural Communication Studies and a Bachelor in Linguistics and Translation Studies. His main focus is literature and film. He was born in Odesa and has been living in Germany for the last ten years working at the European-University Viadrina in Frankfurt a.d. Oder - the only university in Germany with a professorship for Ukrainian History, which says a lot about Ukraine's perception in Germany - and throughout the world. In preparation for our conversation...

In our first episode of the new season, our guest is film director, screenwriter, and creative producer Mariia Ponomarova (1991, Kyiv). Mariia studied film directing and screenwriting at Karpenko-Karyi Kyiv National University of Theatre, Cinema & Television in Ukraine graduating cum laude in 2013. Focusing on character development in film during her course, Mariia graduated from the Master of Film artistic research program in 2016 at the Netherlands Film Academy. Short fiction and documentary f...

Fonsi, the Yellow Van, is ready to depart for another season. Find out what the season is all about in this trailer. Music: Jim Kroft "Love In The Face Of Fear" Yellow Van Stories is a Mind The Bump Production Support the showYellow Van Stories is a Mind the Bump Production.

Today we come to you with the, for now, last episode about Myanmar. The initiative Print For Crisis, which has been on the road with us for the last four weeks, has come to an end and we thought it would be a nice opportunity to have a small retrospective of the conversations we were lucky enough to have in support of the initiative. Through my conversations with Teza, Chiara, and Minn, I learned that there are a lot of reasons for hope and optimism for the future of Myanmar. One reason in part...

Teza Soe is a Burmese visual storyteller with a doctorate in photography, who received her PhD with a project focusing on the role of women in Myanmar society. After reading the preface to her thesis, I felt that it would be a much better introduction than I could ever hope to craft for her. So, just this one time, I took the liberty of copying her own words, rather than write an introduction myself: I left my country, Myanmar, when I was 16 to attend a university in Thailand. The reasons for ...

Chiara is an Italian visual storyteller based in the UK in London. In her work she explores identities, relationships and gender issues. She is an active member of Women Photograph, a non-profit launched in 2017 to elevate the voices of women* and nonbinary visual journalists. The roots for her interest in identity and the power of relationships can be traced back to a farm near Milan, I believe, where Chiara grew up. It is a place that has been in her family's hands for many generations and h...

Claudia is a camera assistant from Munich in Germany. And, above all, my "baby" sister. For close to ten years now, she has been honing her craft in film and cinema, steadily rising up in the camera ranks. Her passion and joy are absolutely infectious, despite the obvious stigma of this particular adjective of late. She has been a part of many big German film and TV productions, working with some of the finest German actors, directors, and camera operators. I am extremely proud of her and I c...

Erik is an author, publisher, moderator and podcast host from Berlin, Germany. He has published an impressive amount of work, ranging from travel guides, travel books, short story anthologies to magazine articles and more. He is also the founder of Weltwach (which roughly translates to world awake), a German online magazine for adventure and travel topics. The related podcast, hosted and produced by Erik, already has produced 188 episodes and counting. Since last year, the Weltwach podcast prod...

George is an author, a radio DJ and presenter, a musician, photographer and filmmaker. But above all he is a traveller, exploring the shared essence that makes us all human. His thirst for the world and its people is hard to quench and the moments of connection and mutual exchange always leave him wanting more. No wonder then that he turned to photography and its scientific promise of turning ethereal visual impressions into lasting memory, making good on one of mankind’s oldest dreams. Here i...

Xiao graduated in 2005 with honors in chemistry from Caltech and subsequently worked as a research technician at the Broad Institute of Harvard/MIT and has an MD-PhD from the Weill Cornell/Rockefeller/Memorial Sloan-Kettering Tri-Institutional MD-PhD Program in New York City. At the moment, she is finishing up her 4th clinical year at Johns Hopkins University as a combined paediatrics-medical genetics resident. She is going to stay there for a 5th year as a research fellow and genetics chief re...

Shelter and housing is taken for granted for most of us. And when we speak of lockdown we generally think of it as an isolation within our own very comfortable four walls. But what about our fellow humans who are not fortunate enough to have a place of their own, who don’t have this very basic need covered? How does the pandemic beat down on their already unimaginably harsh reality? Going through a second and third lockdown, it is worth remembering that there are others less fortunate than us -...

Oska Melina Borcherding is a director, actor, dancer and musician from the beautiful city of Berlin. I got to know Oska during the Ierapetra Film Festival on Crete in Greece, where he was running with his short film “Giagia” (which is Greek for “grandmother”). It is a beautiful film about the days following the death of his Greek grandmother and how her legacy and memory is preserved in the stories shared by her family and by the characters she helped shape. He is planning a sequel to the film ...

Erik Penny is a US songwriter, musician and painter who has been living in Berlin for more than 12 years. Erik grew up in El Paso, Texas, where he started his musical career as a bassist at the age of 16. A while later he started a course in painting which he aborted shortly before graduating to go on tour with his band. This success of the tour led to his decision to go to Los Angeles. Here he recorded several EPs and two studio albums - "Footprints" and "The Linger Kiss". After various visits ...