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.
True to tradition, the series will present a Canadian premier of the feature documentary The Fourth Wave, 2008, director Victoria Melnykova. The Kyiv-born Victoria Melnykova, is a graduate of the Ivan Karpenko-Kary University for Film, Theater, and Television. She is a recognized filmmaker in her own country and well-known to and liked by the Club’s audiences in the USA and Canada who saw her earlier films Consonance and With Best Wishes, Enver. Her new film discusses the massive emigration from Ukraine in the last decade. It is a masterfully done narrative. Come and see for yourself. You are bound to like it.
The screening will be followed by a panel discussion on the post-Soviet emigration to the West. Participants: Natalka Patsyurko (Concordia University) and Yuri Shevchuk ( Director, Ukrainian Film Club, Columbia University)
Original title: Chetverta khvylia.
Copyright: Ministry of Culture and Tourism of Ukraine, 2008.
Format: feature documentary
Carrier: DVD
Color: color
Length: 80 min.
Original language: Ukrainian with some Italian and Russian
English subtitles: yesSynopsis
This is the first installment in a documentary series about the so-called Fourth Wave of Ukrainian emigration to the West that started after the fall of the Soviet empire in 1991. The film focuses on the fate of the Ukrainian composer Volodymyr Zubytsky who could not realize his creative genius in an independent Ukraine and had to move to Italy to a small town of Pesaro. His story is presented as typical of a massive talent and brain drain that has occurred in Ukraine over the last two decades. Thousands of highly educated and uniquely talented Ukrainians contrary to their will had to leave their homeland in search of a happier life in the West.This is the first part in a documentary series Melnykova is going to do on the subject.
The screening is co-sponsored by the Canadian Foundation for Ukrainian Studies.
Canadian premire Holodomor: Technology of Genocide
This is a detailed step-by-step factual account of how the artificial mass famine of 1932-1933 in Ukraine, the Holodomor, was conceived, executed, covered up; who its masterminds, perpetrators, and apologists were. Against who it was directed. The film is rich with historical documentary information and some riveting eye-witness accounts of the survivors. It is a must-see.
Original title: Holodomor. Tekhnolohia genotsydu, 2005.
Copyright: National Television Company of Ukraine
Format: feature, documentary for TV in two parts
Carrier: DVD Color: color and black-and-white
Length: Part One 58 min. Part Two 53 min.
Original language: Ukrainian English subtitles: English voice-over and subtitles
Film crew Director: Viktor Deriuhin Script writer: Andrii Danylchenko
Cinematographer: Serhii Diakiv and Oleksander Evseev
Composer: Vadym Zhuravytsky
Narrator: Oleksander Stepanenko
The screening is co-sponsored by the Canadian Foundation for Ukrainian Studies.
- 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