INTERVIEW: Film producer Nowytski on Ukraine during World War II (05/28/00)

INTERVIEW: Film producer Nowytski on Ukraine during World War II

TORONTO - "Between Hitler and Stalin - Ukraine in World War II," a film sponsored by the Ukrainian Canadian Research and Documentation Center has entered its editing phase. Its director and producer, Slavko Nowytski, was in Toronto on April 7-10 to oversee the editing and meet with the UCRDC film committee. The following interview about the progress of the film was conducted by Oksana Zakydalsky.

Q: Please give us an update on where you are with the film "Between Hitler and Stalin - Ukraine in World War II."

A: The film is being edited into a work print. A work print is essentially the way that the visuals and sound look and sound in script order. There may be a few elements missing, like sound effects or music but, basically, all of the cover footage and all the narration, the sound bites and the interviews are already in place, so that you can see whether the film moves the way you want it to. We also have most of the graphics done.

In our case, the main idea behind preparing a work print is to enable the film committee to actually see how it works for them. For the inexperienced, there is a danger in watching a work print because they may see it as a finished product. But if you know what you're looking for - if all of the narration is correct, if all of the cover footage fits the narration - then if something is found that isn't right, it can be fixed.

To avoid paying for an expensive narrator, I myself read the narration as a cue track. We have to have some of the interviews translated from non-English languages (the first version of the film will be in English). We need at least one male and one female translator voice. Once you actually hire a narrator and then find that you have to change the script, it can be very costly.

After the work print is approved, there should be no changes whatsoever. The next step will be to see the fine cut; in our case, the fine cut will look like the finished film.

Q: Could you explain the editing process?

A: The editing is being done on a computer - not on film, but electronically. We are using the Avid system where we have random access - we don't have to be linear in putting the film together. Substitutions can be made very easily; anything can be taken out.

Although I could do the editing myself, it would be slow and not cost-effective. So I have engaged professionals to do the editing - the firm VCR Active Media here in Toronto. I had the film all prepared in my mind - marked the script and prepared a paper edit so that the editor would know, shot by shot, what needs to be done. I was told it would take about 40 hours to create a new print.

The editing is being done in Toronto for two reasons: I have to check the editing and the committee is here and will have easy access to the work print. Secondly, it is more cost effective to do the editing in Canada. There are good facilities here, just as good as we have in the United States.

Q: What are the sources for visual information in the film?

A: This film consists of many elements. We started with interviews with people who lived through the war and what they remember of it. These were specific groups of people such as the Ostarbeiters who were taken to Germany to work; those that took part in the UPA [Ukrainian Insurgent Army] or the Ukrainian Division and survived, or those who were victims of one repression or another. These interviews were done first - so that we would have a basic witness foundation. I did many of the interviews in Ukraine myself. I had a partner there who found me people who were witnesses and I filmed them.

The second element is the use of an authoritative figure telling the story from a historical point of view and tying things together. We have the historian Norman Davies, a specialist in the history of Eastern Europe, especially Poland and Ukraine. He works at the University of London, but I filmed him in Cambridge.

The third element is other authorities on specific subjects. In the film we have Robert Conquest, a specialist on the famine in Ukraine and the Soviet Union of the 1920s-1930s, and John Armstrong, who has written extensively on Ukrainian nationalism. I filmed Dr. Conquest in California, while Dr. Armstrong came to Washington. Another specialist, the commentator on Ukraine in World War II from an American point of view, is Zbigniew Brzezinski, who has strong opinions on Ukrainian independence and Russian imperialism.

The fourth element - archival motion picture footage of World War II - came from two main sources, Soviet and German archives, although some material from U.S. archives also was used. We have a Ukrainian producer, Volodymyr Kmetyk, who will take care of the distribution of the film in Ukraine - and he, at my request, bought the material from the archives in Kyiv and in Moscow. He acquired about nine hours of archival material, mostly documentaries.

Finally, we have still photos from the archives and from various other sources: from Ukraine, from the UCRDC's collection, from Petro Sodol of Litopys UPA and also documents, supplied mostly by the UCRDC or shot from books.

Q: How many years have you already spent on this film?

A: Initially this project was to be a six-part series, and we worked on that for about a year or two before it was changed to a one-hour format. The agreement under which I have been working with the UCRDC is dated 1994. Working on this film has proven to be very difficult for me as this is not a full-time job for me - I have a day job. All these years I haven't had any life to speak of - I get up at 5.15 a.m., I'm at work at 7-7:15, out by 4 p.m., have something to eat, and then I work on the film. How much can you do after you've worked a full day?

Q: What is your day job?

A: I'm an international television broadcaster - now this is called a video journalist. I handle my own digital camera and cover stories for a program called "Window on America" and for some other programs. "Window on America" was formerly funded by the USIA and is now under the International Broadcasting Bureau. Everything we do is for foreign (outside the United States) consumption.

"Window on America" is a one-half-hour weekly magazine-type show that is beamed to Kyiv and then broadcast throughout Ukraine on a Ukrainian network. I am in charge of a segment on this program - I can often choose the subject, write the script and shoot the film.

Before coming to Washington, I lived in Minnesota, where I worked as a producer and director of documentaries, both on film and video. My training is in acting and directing - at the Pasadena College of Theatre Arts in California. Then I enrolled at New York's Columbia University, where I pursued motion picture studies in the department of communication and graduated with an MFA degree in 1964. My first job was in Canada - at Montreal University, where I worked in musical theatre. I then moved to Toronto and in 1959-1960 I worked in live television drama. I also began to make documentaries - my films on Leo Mol and on Ukrainian settlement in Canada, "Reflections of the Past" - were made in Canada.

Q: You were the director and producer of "Harvest of Despair," which came out in 1984. How would you compare working on that film with working on this World War II film?

A: "Harvest of Despair" was done on 16mm film. Working with videotape is quite different. The main problem with working with tape is that the source material is not in one format - I am working with five formats: digital, high 8, VHS, Beta, SVHS, also in two systems, the European Pal/Secam and the North American NTSC. Each format required a separate machine, so that there was a lot of technical stuff around me that I had to deal with until I was done with the paper edit. Each shot had to be given its address so that the editor would be able to find it exactly and, through the use of a time code, know where I wanted the shot to begin and to end and where it fit in the script.

If you have various sources with different tape formats, it is hard to achieve a unified look. They all had to be brought into one format, which is now in the hands of the editor who still has some freedom to do things. Electronic editing has the advantage that you can add all kinds of special effects - zooms, pans - even though you didn't shoot it that way.

On "Harvest of Despair" I worked closely with Yuri Luhovy, who was co-director and editor of that film. The most difficult thing for me on this film is working by myself. I like working with somebody, bouncing things back and forth. Working by yourself is a very lonely job and, if you work alone, you can get too close to the subject. Furthermore, working by yourself requires more discipline - I found I couldn't work more than a couple of hours a night. I had to rely on Saturdays and Sunday afternoons. I had to do a lot of shooting myself - not just the interviews, but also the stills, the books.

But what I enjoyed most about this film was meeting all the people, doing the interviews with the people who actually lived through the period, asking the questions, getting replies, living through it with them again - that was most interesting. We have a total of about 80 hours of interviews from Ukraine; they are very valuable and the center will keep them in its archives.

"Between Hitler and Stalin" is a much more complicated story than "Harvest of Despair," which dealt with only one subject - the famine. With the story of Ukraine in World War II you are dealing with a lot of topics. With only one hour of film, the greatest difficulty was that so much had to be said and so much had to be left out. How can you say it all in one hour? It's not even an hour - it's actually 56 to 58 minutes And yet that's the reality of television. Something had to go. But what? You have to simplify. But if you simplify, what do you leave out?

Although we did have a writer, Kristi Wheeler, it ended up being pretty much a script by committee, because everyone kept contributing, making suggestions and various cuts. It took longer, but I think it's better to have several sources of information and new input, because many people checked the facts and the treatment, many people gave their ideas and feedback. Of course, it was difficult to integrate all that needed information and still have a script that would not only read well, but sound well and allow space for dramatic pauses, for music and so on.

The main aim in making this film is to inform the English-speaking world about the realities of Ukraine. Although now a lot more people know about Ukraine, still the fact of how much Ukraine suffered, how many Ukrainians died in World War II is astounding - more than the total military losses of the United States, Canada, the British Commonwealth, France, Germany, Italy and Japan together. So many films have been made about World War II, but who cares about Ukraine? There are still amazing facts that will be shown in this film for the first time. Most films just feature the bigger picture, but it's the smaller picture that concerns us and that's what we want people to know.

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