NEWS AND VIEWS: Ukrainian film becomes a permanent attraction (06/04/06)

NEWS AND VIEWS

Ukrainian film becomes a permanent attraction

by Yuri Shevchuk

It does not seem like much when you attend a monthly screening (held the third Thursday of the month) of the Ukrainian Film Club. The audience is varied - students of Columbia and other New York City universities, and people interested in Ukraine and simply in something different from the usual Hollywood fare.

The setting, 717 Hamilton Hall, a typical Columbia lecture auditorium seating about 100, can hardly be more prosaic. The uninitiated guest will have no way of telling that what he is part of is the only permanently functioning forum of Ukrainian cinema in New York, in the United States or in North America.

Since it was founded in October 2004 the club has shown the most recent Ukrainian films, including these by directors whose work would otherwise have had no chance or channel by which to reach an American viewer: Oles Sanin, Hanna Yarovenko, Taras Tomenko, Ihor Strembitsky, Serhiy Bukovsky, Serhiy Masloboyshchykov, Viktoria Melnykova, Oleksander Shmyhun, Serhiy Koval, Valentyn Vasianovych, Roman Shyrman and many other. Many of these directors are prize winners at such international film festivals as Cannes, Clermont-Ferrand, Sao Paulo and Berlin.

The Ukrainian Film Club has its own website, thus far the only English-language venue on the World Wide Web wholly devoted to the Ukrainian film: www.columbia.edu/cu/ufc. It has a coterie of devoted followers, and an extended network of direct contacts with film-makers, critics, producers and actors in Ukraine. As a result, the club has been in a position to obtain the most recent films and often shows them before they are shown in Ukraine. At least every other film screened by the club is a U.S. or North American premiere.

Conforming to the ethos of Columbia, each event is not simply about showing the selected films. The screenings are also an opportunity for the Ukrainian Film Club to engage the audience in discussion of Ukrainian cinema, as well as of culture, politics, history and other related issues. The screenings are proceeded by a short introduction about the films and their makers by this writer, the founder and director of the club, and followed by discussions and question-and-answer sessions.

On a number of occasions the club has hosted film-makers who presented their own works to the audience. Among them were Ukrainian directors Taras Tomenko (winner of the Berlinale 2001 Grand Prix for the Best Short), Taras Tkachenko, Serhiy Bukovsky, and the U.S. director Andrea Odezynska.

With the introduction in March 2005 of its website, designed by web-master and Columbia student Adrian Podpirka, the club went international. It has already held lectures and film screenings in Philadelphia, Hartford, Conn.; New Brunswick, N.J.; Toronto; Cambridge, Mass.; Columbus, Ohio; Yonkers, N.Y.; and Edmonton - both at Ukrainian community centers, as well as universities like Harvard, Ohio State, Rutgers and the University of Toronto.

I was invited to give a series of three lecture presentations at the University of Toronto titled "Between a Rock and a Hard Place. Ukrainian Cinema Since Independence." These lectures covered Ukrainian full-length feature films, documentaries and how language and identity issues are reflected in Ukrainian films.

On March 10-12 the Ukrainian Film Club of Columbia University presented a three-night program of contemporary Ukrainian cinema in Edmonton at the Citadel Theater of Ziedler Hall, arguably the best venue in downtown Edmonton, where foreign films are shown. The screenings were organized by the Ukrainian and Business Club of Edmonton.

The Ukrainian Film Club seeks to reach beyond the Columbia academic community and the usual segments of the American Ukrainian community in its mission to popularize Ukrainian cinema and engage cinema professionals around the world. This writer published on the club's website and in the leading Ukrainian cinema magazine Kino-Kolo his interviews/conversations with the recognized Polish film director Krzysztof Zanussi, famous U.S. directors Paul Schrader and Peter Bogdanovich. They can be accessed at http://www.columbia.edu/cu/ufc/pages/newsreel.htm.

The club has established its presence and reputation also in Ukraine, not only among professional film makers but in the wider cultural context. It was invited to be a guest of honor at the Proloh Film Festival of Young Cinematographers in May 2005 and the Open Night Film Festival in June 2005.

Articles about the Club where published in Kino.Teatr and Kino-Kolo, two influential film periodicals published in Kyiv. Various Ukrainian TV and radio channels carried segments about the Ukrainian Film Club of Columbia University.

All this proved possible with minimum financial support. Being an educational not-for-profit initiative, the Ukrainian Film Club charges no fees for screening films in its collection and relies almost entirely on the voluntary donations of the film fans who attend its events and the sponsors of the invited screenings. Additional support for advertising is provided by the Ukrainian Studies Program at Columbia and the Harriman Institute. Thus far, thanks to the club, American and Canadian audiences were able to see about 30 films made in Ukraine or about Ukraine in such genres as full-length feature and documentary short feature, documentary, and animation.

The club's future program promises to be even more interesting. Its collection is growing with every week, and the club expects to soon receive two films that represented Ukraine at the Berlin International Film Festival-2006, the animated cartoon "Poverty" by Serhiy Koval and the full-length feature "Happy People" by Alexander Shapiro, as well as full-length feature films that recently premiered or are about to premier in Ukraine - "Orange Sky," "We'll Break Through" and "The Pit."

It is a policy of the Club to screen films with English subtitles to reach the broadest possible audience.

Yuri Shevchuk is lecturer of Ukrainian language and culture in the department of Slavic languages at Columbia University.

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