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.
True to tradition, the series will introduce new films from Ukraine to the Greater Toronto audience. The program features three Canadian premiers of recent works by the internationally renowned director Kira Muratova along with Nadia Koshman and Hanna Yarovenko.
Muratova’s “Dummy” is an intricately woven detective story with a surprise ending, Koshman’s “Fireflies” tells the story of emotional attachment between two children and Hanna Yarovenko’s “Fiesta” is a documentary about Ukrainian folk music and its growing attraction for modern urban youth.
Featured Films:
Dummy, 2007
Director: Kira Muratova
Length: 32 min
This is Muratova’s take on the essence of happiness and different understandings thereof by different people. Is it morally justified to make a person happy for at least a couple of hours by lying to them and breaking all the basic moral norms?
Fireflies, 2005
Director: Nadia Koshman
Length: 36 min.
Raised in the city, young Sirozhka is taken for the summer to his grandmother's place in the countryside. There, he discovers the Ukrainian village with its distinct rhythm of life, customs, and its quiet irresistible beauty. Most importantly he befriends a local girl, Katia..
Fiesta, 2007
Director: Hanna Yarovenko
Length: 30 min
The protagonist is Mykhailo Koval, a retired village teacher, polyglot, bandura-player, and a great enthusiast of folk culture in its endless manifestations – music, crafts, embroidery, myth, theatre. His retirement marked a new chapter in his life – an indefatigable popularization of folk culture in his native village and around the country.
In the second installment of the program "An Unknown Oleksandr Dovzhenko" the full-length feature film "Ivan" by the founder of Ukrainian national cinema will be screened.
Made in 1932 on the eve of the Holodomor (Great Famine-Genocide in Ukraine), the film-poem is about the construction of the Dnipro Hydroelectric Power Station (Dniprohes), about the life of a country lad by the name of Ivan, who along with other youths comes to build one of the greatest manifestations of the Soviet industrialization. Dovzhenko depicts the process of the protagonists transformation caused by industrialization.
Awards: The Venice International Film Festival, 1934, Award for the Best Program presented by a State (USSR)
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”
- 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)"