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.
Assholes. Arabesques.
Ukrainian filmmakers banded together to make, from nothing, feature shorts that are completely independent, with a vision of reality that will take your breath away. It’s about Ukraine, with Ukrainian talent, and in the Ukrainian language – the three faculties that have hitherto been largely absent from films made in Ukraine over the last years. F***ckers. Arabesques has it all.
F***ckers. Arabesques had its Ukrainian premier on September 23, 2010 and caused quite a stir among the public and filmmaking community alike.
Conceived by Volodymyr Tykhy, F***ckers.., nineteen shorts by various directors, features a peculiar social type of a post-Soviet Ukrainian, a jerk, existing between the Soviet past and a future that would never come. Outrageously funny and deadly serious at once, this is a must-see.
The screening is co-sponsored by the Canadian Foundation for Ukrainian Studies.
White Bird with a Black Mark, 1970
This masterpiece of Ukrainian poetic cinema will be screened restored and digitally re-mastered with English subtitles for the first time in Canada since it was made in 1970. It features a star-studded cast which includes Ivan Mykolaichuk, Bohdan Stupka, Larysa Kadochnykova, Kost Stepankov. Shot in the breathtakingly scenic Carpathian Mountains it tells a dramatic story of a family ripped apart by historical events before, during, and after WW2. With English subtitles. Free and open to the public. Yuri Shevchuk will introduce the film and hold a traditional post-screening discussion. The digitally restored version of the original motion picture was done by the Information Business Systems and Telecommunications, Kyiv, Ukraine. We wish to thank Mr. Pylyp Illienko for the DVD copy of the film made available for the purpose of this and other public screenings organized by the Ukrainian Film Club of Columbia University and to popularize Yuri Illienko's work worldwide.
The screening is co-sponsored by the Canadian Foundation for Ukrainian Studies.
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)