Pinchuk, Spielberg to produce Babyn Yar film

PARSIPPANY, N.J. - Ukrainian businessman Viktor Pinchuk and renowned filmmaker Steven Spielberg are getting together to produce a documentary about Ukrainian victims of the Holocaust, the Associated Press reported on March 2.

According to the BBC, Mr. Pinchuk told journalists in Kyiv back on January 12 that he visited the United States to meet with Mr. Spielberg and discussed the documentary.

"We agreed that he will make a film about Ukraine. A document that he will produce the film has already been signed," Mr. Pinchuk said, according to the BBC.

The film will be based on more than 3,000 videotaped interviews of survivors and witnesses, Douglas Greenberg, the director of the Shoah Visual History Foundation, told the Associated Press, adding that the director would be known in June.

"We haven't yet decided how we will release it, whether it will be in theaters or on TV," he said, according to the AP.

Mr. Spielberg founded the Shoah Visual History Foundation in 1994 after filming the Oscar-winning movie "Schindler's List."

The film will reportedly focus on the Babyn Yar tragedy and should be completed in 18 months. Work in Los Angeles has already begun on the film, while more documents on the tragedy were still being collected in Ukraine, Mr. Pinchuk said.

The Ukrainian businessman also said that he was financing the film but he did not answer questions with regard to how much money he had invested in the production.

Mr. Pinchuk said that Mr. Spielberg sent him a letter in which the film director wrote: "OK, I will be the executive producer - but on condition that you are my co-producer," the BBC reported. Mr. Pinchuk said he was "flabbergasted" by the offer.

Copyright © The Ukrainian Weekly, March 20, 2005, No. 12, Vol. LXXIII

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