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.
Following the tradition of bringing the newest and best in contemporary Ukrainian filmmaking, the February 29 presentation by the Ukrainian Film Club of Columbia University at U-of-T will showcase "Revisiting Great Ukrainian Film Classics: Oleksandr Dovzhenko's Zvenyhora".
Featured Films:
1. Zvenyhora, director Oleksander Dovzhenko, 1927
The event will showcase Oleksander Dovzhenko’s silent masterpiece Zvenyhora, 1927. The picture is the first part in his filmic triptych of Ukraine that also includes Arsenal and Earth. It is Dovzhenko’s metaphor of a thousand years of Ukrainian history, from the first Kyivan princes to the Russian Bolshevik war against independent Ukraine. The main protagonist is an old man, ageless, ingenuous, enterprising, cunning and indestructible – Dovzhenko’s personification of the Ukrainian spirit. The old man’s life is a hunt for a hidden treasure, a symbol of Ukraine’s sole and its, yet unlocked, spiritual potential.
Yuri Shevchuk, the Director of the Ukrainian Film Club and Lecturer of Ukrainian Language and Culture at the Columbia University, will introduce the film and mediate the post-screening discussion. A recently restored VUFKU 1927 original edition of Zvenyhora will be screened with the English translation of Ukrainian intertitles. The event is free and open to the public.
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”
- 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"