On 14 January 2019, at Phillips Auction House in London the presentation and readings of Time to Break the Ice, a book by Chulpan Khamatova and Katerina Gordeeva, occurred. During the evening, more than £9000 were raised for treatment of Russian children with oncological diseases.
Katerina Gordeeva and Chulpan Khamatova
Time to Break the Ice contains conversations, short stories and memories of Chulpan and Katerina about their work, friends, art, journalism and charity. At the presentation, the authors read excerpts from the book and were interviewed by journalist Mikhail Zygar about how they started to do charity work and why it is the most important issue now. Breaking the ice in an ever-freezing country is an allegory for the activities of any charity organisation.
Chulpan Khamatova, an actress and co-founder of Podari Zhizn foundation:
My main goal in writing this book was to tell about Podari Zhizn. I wanted to show the foundation from the inside, to show charity work as a vivid, pulsating, exciting and bright thing. From the outside, charity may look dull or even dreary. In fact, however, it is full of risk, creativeness, and responsibility. You close your eyes and enter the path, and you do not even know if you have enough strength to overcome all this and to haul it on your shoulders.
Katerina Gordeeva, a journalist and trustee of Podari Zhizn foundation:
The book has a metaphoric ending. You hear several street cleaners breaking the ice in the neighbourhoods nearby. They do not see each other, but the clang of their heavy tools reverberates in the air. You hear it every morning. The job has to be done. You should break the ice, because if you don’t, the ice will not retreat. You can get frozen in it and you will lose the possibility to rescue yourself and to help those who will obviously not get through.
The evening was concluded with a charity reception at ZIMA Russian Restaurant.
The event received financial support from Citigold Wealth Management and Pavel Morozov, a patron of the foundation.
All the funds raised will be used to purchase medicines for the treatment of patients of the Gift of Life Foundation.
Photo credit: Tania Naiden.
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