A series of lectures on the current state of and challenges faced by Ukrainian cinema as it tries to shake off the crippling legacy of the Soviet past and to adapt to the fast-moving reality of a post-Soviet Ukraine. Each presentation will be followed by screening of films representing a wide range of contemporary Ukrainian directors, genres and subjects. The events are FREE and open to the public.
The Firecrosser (2012)
Director: Mykhailo Illienko.
Duration: Feature narrative, 105 min. Ukraine’s official entry for the Oscar consideration in the Best Foreign Language Film category.
This melodrama is inspired by the real-life story of one Ivan Datsenko (Ivan Dodoka in the film), native of the village of Chernechyi Yar in central Ukraine. He becomes a fearsome fighter pilot during World War Two, earning the highest military distinction bestowed by Stalin. He escapes first from a Nazi and then Soviet concentration camps, flees to Canada, where - suspend your disbelief - Datsenko allegedly becomes the chieftain of an Iroquois tribe. This is the first in years Ukrainian film that received a national distribution and enjoyed an unprecedented box-office success in Ukraine.
Film is in Russian, Ukrainian, and some English with English subtitles.
The film will be introduced by Yuri Shevchuk, lecturer of Ukrainian language and culture and director of the Ukrainian Film Club at Columbia University, New York. Discussion will follow the film screening.
The screening is co-sponsored by the Petro Jacyk Program, the Centre for European, Russian, and Eurasian Studies, Canadian Foundation for Ukrainian Studies, Kontakt Ukrainian Television Network, and the Ukrainian Film Club, Columbia University.
Soviet Film and Stalin’s War on Independent Peasants, 1920-1930.
The destruction of independent peasantry by the Bolshevik regime was orchestrated with an unparalleled efficiency both in terms of the actual physical elimination of millions branded kulaks and the moral justification of the mass murder to the largely acquiescing public opinion within the Soviet Union and abroad. The lecture discusses the role Soviet film played in the preparation and execution of one of the greatest mass murders of European civil population whose scale and consequences are still to be fully appreciated. The lecture presentation is based on the research of a wide body of documents and motion pictures of the period and is richly illustrated with film clips.
The lecture will be presented by Yuri Shevchuk, lecturer of Ukrainian language and culture and director of the Ukrainian Film Club at Columbia University, New York.
The screening is co-sponsored the Petro Jacyk Program, the Centre for European, Russian, and Eurasian Studies, Canadian Foundation for Ukrainian Studies, Kontakt Ukrainian Television Network, and the Ukrainian Film Club, Columbia University.
All films are with English subtitles. Free and open to the public.
For more information on Ukrainian films, go to the Ukrainian Film Club's website:
Past Lectures:
- Lecture Four: “A Ukrainian Despite Herself. The Cinema of Kira Muratova”
- Lecture Five: “Lecture Five”
- Lecture Six: “Language Wars in Ukrainian Cinema, The Triumphs and Defeats of Film Dubbing”
- Lecture Seven: "New Films and New Names from Ukraine"
- Lecture Eight: "Ukraine in the Focus of Spanish Filmmakers"
- Lecture Nine: "Revisiting Great Ukrainian Film Classics: Oleksandr Dovzhenko's Zvenyhora"
- Lecture Ten: "New Films from Ukraine"
- Lecture Eleven: "An Unknown Oleksandr Dovzhenko: Ivan (1932)"
- Lecture Twelve:The Great Famine in Film- "The Living"
- Lecture Thirteen: The Holocaust in Ukraine - Screening of "Spell Your Name" and a panel discussion
- Lecture Forteen: The Fourth Wave: Post-Soviet Ukrainian Emigration to the West
- Lecture Fifteen: Holodomor:Technology of Genocide
- Lecture Sixteen: Taras Bulba 2009
- Lecture Seventeen: Birds of Paradise 2008
- Lecture Eighteen:Bird Catcher and others
- Lecture Nineteen: PKP (Pilsudski Bought Petliura)
- Lecture Twenty: Assholes. Arabescues.
- Lecture Twenty One: White Bird with A Black Mark
- Lecture Twenty Two: New Films and New Names from Ukraine. A parade of Canadian premiers.
- Lecture Twenty Three: Kyiv Frescoes, The Stone Cross
- Lecture Twenty Four: Ukraine. When the Countdown Began
- Lecture Twenty Five: The Dream