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.
New Films and New Names from Ukraine
A selection of most recent works by a younger generation of Ukrainian filmmakers. These feature and documentary shorts will be screened in Canada for the first time. The program includes: The Bird Catcher, 2005, by Larysa Artiuhina, Images of Polissia, 2006, by Serhiy Marchenko, Obstacle and A Short Walk Forever by Maksim Neafit Buinitski, Rakhira by Marian Bushan, Flying by Roman Synchuk, Wardrobe by Yelyzaveta Kliuzko. The screening is co-sponsored by the Canadian Foundation for Ukrainian Studies.
Bird Catcher, 2005, Synopsis
[in the director’s own words] "Three people live in a city. Olha is a theater actress – beautiful, intelligent, purpose-driven. After a failed marriage it seems she finally meets a man of her dream. But successful director Oleksiy turns out to be just an episode in her life. Not even her six-year old daughter Alisa, the person closest to her, can save her from loneliness. In an attempt to distract herself Olha plunges into work and her little girl is engulfed by her imaginary world, impenetrable for rational-thinking Olha.
Mitia, an inmate in a psychiatric institution, is in love with Olha. He realizes that relationship with her is impossible, so he loves her platonically, at a distance like a dream or a fragile bird, one of the many he makes of paper. Finally Mitia musters courage to approach her with his confession of love. Accidentally he witnesses Olha’s dramatic encounter with Oleksiy. Mitia calls on his avian friends to help her. And they do, in their own special manner …"
Images of Polissia, 2006, Synopsis
A fascinating portrayal of life, culture, and nature of northern part of Ukraine, known as Polissia. The film features such venues as the deserted village of Ladyzhychi, evacuated after the Chornobyl disaster. Singing in the village of Teremtsi, the village of Duminske.” A real treat for those interested in little known folk culture of Ukraine.
Obstacle, 2010, Synopsis
Based on the eponymous story by the children’s writer Daniil Kharms this mesmerizingly atmospheric short is about children who play ominously adult games. A strange mixture of eroticism, terror, innocence and fantasy it echoes events murderous Soviet past. Belarusian Maksim Buinitski is a student at the Ivan Karpenko-Kary University for Cinema, Theater, and Television (Kyiv, Ukraine) and insists that he is making Ukrainian national cinema. This is his first directorial work. It reveals a talent and vision that are bound to impress.
Flying, 2008, Synopsis
This is a story of a relationship between an old woman suffering from Alzheimer disease, her adult daughter and her six-year old granddaughter. The implacable disease drags the old woman into the world of shredded memories of things past, wild fantasies, and weird visions. The old woman becomes increasingly at odds with the real world around her, its rigid rules and senseless conventions. Sound judgment slowly abandons her and the tension with her daughter grows. The little girl remains the only living creature who understands and supports her grandmother. What seems insanity to the daughter makes all the sense in the world to the little girl. Roman Synchuk’s poignant inquiry into the nature of aging makes the viewer pause and reflect on issues of human existence that sooner or later arise for each and everyone of us.
Rakhira, 2010, Synopsis
The film is based on the novel "Land" by Olha Kobylianska. The events take place at the end of the 19th century in rural Western Ukraine. Sava, a younger son of a farmer, is madly in love with a beautiful Gypsy woman Rakhira. Using her diabolic charms Rakhira pushes Sava to get the best part of his parents’ land that is to become the property of his hard-working elder brother Mykhailo. The two brothers are on a collision course that does not bode well for any one of them.
The screening is co-sponsored by the Canadian Foundation for Ukrainian Studies.
PKP (Pilsudski Bought Petliura), 1926. Directed by Heorhii Stabovy and Aksel Lundin. Silent. 67 minutes.
Synopsis
The defeated remnants of vile Ukrainian nationalists, headed by the leader of the Ukrainian liberation movement, Symon Petliura, cannot accept their historical fate and are plotting an insurrection against the Soviet regime in Ukraine. There is nothing Petliura and his cohorts would not do to win back control over Ukraine, including selling it to the highest bidder, in this case, the Polish dictator Jozef Pilsudski. A group of plotters are coordinating an insurrection in Kyiv with an attack from Poland headed by Petliura’s general Yurko Tiutiunnyk. Predictably, the invincible Red Army defeats the nationalist plotters and proves that the Soviet borders are impregnable.
Filmed in the wake of Petliura’s assassination by Sholom Schwartzbard in Paris on May 25, 1926, this political thriller is a typical example of early Soviet agitprop, which incorporates many of the important elements used in later Soviet and post-Soviet Russian movies that deal with the issue of Ukrainian nationalism. These elements include 1) the dehumanization of political enemies, presenting them as traitors to their own people and sell-outs to foreign powers; 2) the consistent association of essential traits of Ukrainian identity, such as the Ukrainian language, folk costumes, the national colors blue and yellow, and the national anthem, with provincialism and narrow-minded nationalism; and 3) the belittlement of the Ukrainian language through the singling out of certain linguistic features and expressions as nationalist and laughable. Many of these features are still very much present in the post-Soviet Russian discourse on Ukraine. Although aesthetically crude, the film contains a wealth of historical and cultural information for those equipped to read between the lines. It features unique footage of the legendary Ukrainian patriot Yurko Tiutiunnyk, who plays himself. He trusted the Bolshevik amnesty and returned to Ukraine to take part in socialist construction only to be later accused of anti-Soviet activities, arrested, and executed. The film also features Ukrainian Soviet actress Natalia Uzhviy in one of her early roles.
“PKP” is the first film in a new project undertaken by the Ukrainian Film Club of Columbia University, with the aim of making available to an international public forgotten or little-known Ukrainian silent films by supplying them with high-quality English subtitles.
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.
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
- Lecture Sixteen: Taras Bulba 2009
- Lecture Seventeen: Birds of Paradise 2008