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. All films are in Ukrainian with English subtitles.
“The Name” (2006), director Alla Yakovleva, is a short feature (25") based on the story of Yuri Olesha. It is one of the recent works of perhaps the most recognized Ukrainian film and theater actor Bohdan Stupka. The creation of the Ukrainian language version of the film was sponsored by the Ukrainian Film Club of Columbia University.
“There Was a Woman Who Lived in a Shoe” (2005), director Olena Fetysova, is a short documentary (30") about a married couple who dedicated their lives to rearing abandoned children they adopted from an orphanage.
“Wandering Around” (2005), director Anatoliy Lavrenyshyn, is a short animation film (10") about a young man meandering in and out of reality, besieged by his insecurity and repressed fears, dreaming of finding his true love.
All the films are in Ukrainian with English subtitles. The program will be introduced by Dr. Yuri Shevchuk, the director of the Ukrainian Film Club at Columbia University. Discussion will follow the screenings.
The animated full-length film “Cars/Tachky” (118 minutes) will be screened in a wonderfully executed Ukrainian language version with each part dubbed by a separate actor, culturally adapted to the Ukrainian context, loaded with allusions, intertextuality, puns, incredibly funny, and creating an illusion that it is in fact a Ukrainian film about American racing cars. Free and open to the public. Bring along your kids. There will be a lottery whose winner will get a DVD of “Cars” dubbed into Ukrainian, Estonian, Polish, Turkish, Russian plus the original English version. The proceeds will go to support the Ukrainian Film Club of Columbia University.
Past lectures:
- Lecture One: “Oxygen Starvation: The Defeated Expectation of Freedom”
- Lecture Two: “The Little Engine That Could: Ukrainian Documentary Cinema”
- Lecture Three: “Language and Identity in Contemporary Ukrainian Film”
- Lecture Four: “A Ukrainian Despite Herself. The Cinema of Kira Muratova”