Crisis: A Visit of
Ukrainian Film Shoot

During my five-week visit to Ukraine, the director Valeriy Yambursky invited me to attend the shoot of his debut feature narrative picture, "The Crisis". The set was a cemetery near the picturesque village of Kolentsi, north of Kyiv. A small group consisting of the film crew and cast was dispatched in two vintage Soviet-era buses and two mini-buses of more recent Russian make [parading as Mercedeses] to the outskirts of the village on a grey warm day in early June. They were joined by a dozen local women hired as extras. The women were in a solemn mood, prepared for their part; the episode about to be shot was a funeral. They were visibly excited, after all, this was their "fifteen minutes of fame." Their mature age, mid-fifties to mid-seventies, did little to dampen their enthusiasm.


The events are held on the Columbia University campus, usually in one of the lecture halls at the Department of Slavic Languages, Hamilton Hall, seventh floor. There are also off-campus lectures/presentations in other U.S. cities and in other countries. The UFCCU has held screenings at Rutgers, Ohio State, and Harvard universities, the University of Toronto as well as at non-academic venues in Philadelphia, Edmonton, Toronto, Chicago, Hartford, CT, Yonkers, NY, and other cities. The Club offers its film collection and expertise to facilitate film presentations on invitation from interested parties outside Columbia University. Inquiries should be sent to Yuri Shevchuk.

The on-campus events usually take place every third Thursday of the month at 7:30 PM during the regular academic year with Christmas and summer holiday breaks. The events are announced on this website as well as on various internet mailing lists, Brama, in the Ukrainian Weekly and at other New York City universities such as New York University, City University of New York, the New School for Social Research and, of course, Columbia.

October-2008 Event on Campus

Meet the Filmmaker in Person. Director Roxy Toporowych presents FOLK!
a feature documentary that “opens the door to the underground world of Ukrainian dancing in present day New York City. Ms. Toporowych guides the audience through a fun-filled whirlwind of Ukrainian culture, Ukrainian-American life, and her one true obsession of folk-dancing.”
Tradition and modernity meet in Ms. Toporowych’s film. Seasoned with a generous doze of humor and healthy self-irony it celebrate what Ukrainians are best known for – dance, fun, and joie de vivre.
The audience will have the opportunity to discuss the film with its maker who will come from L.A. especially to present her directorial debut in feature documentary genre on Columbia Campus.
When: Thursday, October 23, 2008, 7:30 PM
Where: 703 Hamilton Hall, Columbia University
TThe film will be screened in its original English language version. Free and open to the public.

Fall-2008 Program @ University of Toronto

The UFCCU will continue to familiarize the Canadian viewers with both the new and the classical Ukrainian film. Two programs will be offered at the U-of-T: on Thursday, October 16, 2008, Yuri Shevchuk will present three Canadian premiers of shorts by the directors Kira Muratova, Nadia Koshman, and Hanna Yarovenko. On Friday, October 17 Oleksander Dovzhenko’s "Ivan" (1932) will be presented, screened, and discussed in the ongoing series “Revisiting Great Ukrainian Film Classics”. More details...

UFCCU at 56th San Sebastian International Film Festival

September 18-27, 2008, San Sebastian, Spain. Yuri Shevchuk.

There was no Ukrainian film participating in this important international film festival.

Yuri Shevchuk with Vera Farmiga at San Sebastian Film Festival on September 19, 2008.

Yet Ukraine as a subject matter of world filmmaking figured on more than one occasion. The rising American film star Vera Farmiga presented her latest film "A Boy in the Striped Pyjamas". In her conversation with Yuri Shevchuk she expressed interest in the Ukrainian Film Club of CU. Ms. Farmiga also said that she would like to attend the international conference "Visualizing the Holodomor: the Great Ukrainian Famine-Genocide of 1932-1933 on Film" organized by the Ukrainian Studies Program at Columbia University on December 2, 2008.

International Film Festival Molodist is becoming increasingly attractive to international film community as a forum for young filmmakers. Colombian director Juan Manuel Betancourt, whom I met at San Sebastian, will be participating in the official competition at Molodist with his short “Rojo Red”.

John Malkovich at his press conference, September 21, 2008.

The American actor John Malkovich who represented “Burn After Reading”, directed by the Coen brothers, said at his press-conference that his next work would be in a film about the “Viennese doctor Leopold von Sacher-Masoch,” (Masoch as in masochism). The Austrian writer (1836-1895) was born in and connected to Lviv, Eastern Galicia, its culture, and people (a fact Malkovich was not aware of). The film will not be shot in Lviv. Answering my question, would he be tempted to show the film at the KinoLev film fest in Lviv, Mr. Malkovich said, "I try to stay away from temptations…".

(from right) Linda Blackaby, Miguel Pendas, and J. Naranjo.

Interest in having Ukrainian participants was expressed by organizers of such other film forums as the Seville European Film Festival, the Archidona Film Festival near Malaga, and the San Francisco International Film Festiva, whose director of programming Linda Blackaby, Director of Programming at San Francisco (as seen in the picture with Miguel Pendas, Creative Director of San Francisco IFF, and Jorge Naranjo, filmmaker from Seville, Spain) specifically asked for information about Ukrainian female filmmakers.

The Ukrainian Film Club of Columbia University will continue to work with these and other international film festivals in order to promote Ukrainian cinema throughout the world and attract the attention of world filmmakers to Ukraine and its largely untapped cultural resources.

Edvins Snore Meets with Columbia Students

Edvins Snore (right) discussing his film with Tanah Spenser of THE BIRCH, journal of Eastern European and Eurasian Culture, published by students of Columbia's Slavic Department.

On September 16, 2008, Edvins Snore, the director of the contraversial feature documentary The Soviet Story visited Columbia University on invitation of the UFCCU. He discussed with students enrolled in the course Soviet Post-Soviet, Colonial, Postcolonial Cinema (taught by Yuri Shevchuk) his film. In it, Mr. Snore, who was born and grew up in Riga, Latvia, makes a compelling case in favor of revisiting the history of Soviet Communism and the atrocities suffered by Ukrainians, Poles, the Balts, and other minorities at the hands of the Soviet regime and still denied by the Kremlin today. The world public opinion remains completely unaware of such crimes as the murder in a manmade famine of 1932-1933 of 7 mln. Ukrainians, execution of Polish POW at Katyn, mass deportations of Latvian, Lithuanians, Estonians, Crimean Tatars, Chechens and other ethnic groups to Siberia, Soviet-Nazi military, political, and economic cooperation before 1941. The students had previously seen extensive parts of the film and were in a position to discuss it in detail. Interested members of the Ukrainian Film Club of CU, who had been invited to meet with Mr. Snore, also took part in the discussion. Present was also the Honorary Consul of the Republic of Latvia in NYC Mr. Daris Delins.

Columbia University Conference to Commemorate the Holodomor-Genocide

October 1, 2008. Yuri Shevchuk.

On December 2, 2008 the international conference "Visualizing the Holodomor: the Ukrainian Famine-Genocide of 1932-1933 on Film" will be held at Columbia University in New York. This event is organized by the Ukrainian Studies Program of Columbia and co-sponsored by the Harriman Institute and the Department of Slavic Languages. Held in a string of other academic forums around the USA and Canada to mark the seventy-fifth anniversary of the Great Famine in Ukraine, the Columbia conference will offer a novel approach to raising awareness worldwide of this largely unknown human calamity; it will focus on film, and filmmaking as a means to understand the consequences of this tragedy for Ukraine and the world. Meant to appeal to the widest possible audience of scholars, students and the general public, the conference will bring together academics and filmmakers and investigate analytical and theoretic, as well as empirical, perspectives on the Holodomor. This uniquely Columbia format became possible thanks to the fact that over the last four years, with generous community and Ukrainian Studies Fund support, the Ukrainian Studies Program has gained international recognition as the leading center of Ukrainian film studies in North America. >>>
 
 

The Ukrainian Film Club of Columbia University (UFCCU) is a forum of Ukrainian Cinema in New York City. It is a non-for-profit educational and cultural initiative within the expanding Ukrainian Studies Program at Columbia University. It was organized in October 2004. Its events are free and open to all. Its goal is to promote knowledge of Ukrainian cinema in the world. >>>

The UFCCU collection consists of the films donated by their directors to the Club or acquired through open commercial distribution. The films are made in Ukraine or in other countries on Ukrainian subject matter. Films are in DVD format with the exception of a few on VHS. Ukrainian-made films have English subtitles. As a matter of policy the Club neither loans nor duplicates the films in its collection, most of which are unique copies with English language subtitles. Instead we gladly accept invitations to screen films at various outside venues. >>>

 
 

Typically, a UFCCU event consists of a brief introduction by Yuri Shevchuk, the founding director of UFFCU and lecturer of the Ukrainian language and culture at Columbia; a screening; and a discussion with the audience participation. Events are organized thematically, around a chosen film either made in or related to Ukraine, or around an individual director or group of filmmakers. Ideally the Club would like to screen films with the participation of their directors. We have already hosted Taras Tomenko, Serhiy Bukovsky, and Taras Tkachenko of Kyiv, Ukraine, and Andrea Odezynska of New York, NY. >>>

Parallel to film presentations and lectures, the UFCCU runs various projects aimed at promoting the knowledge of Ukrainian cinema and Ukraine in the West. Among its on-going projects are:

  • The International Translation Workshop

  • Ukraine. A View from the West

  • Ukrainian themes in Hollywood

  • Ukrainian film in an International Perspective >>>
 
 

UFCCU exists thanks to the institutional support of the Ukrainian Studies Program, the Ukrainian Studies Fund, the Department of Slavic Languages, and the Harriman Institute of Columbia University. Financially it depends exclusively on generosity and support of individual and institutional donors. >>>

The Club's website Forum is provided for the audience of our many events and presentations to express their opinions and thus offer the filmmakers in Ukraine much-needed international feedback. The Club customarily notifies the directors whose films it will be screening next, and they often respond to audience comments expressed on the Forum. We actively encourage such participation in whatever language. We appreciate your comments both on films, film-related matters, and on our website and how it can be improved. When posting a comment on the Forum be sure to enter the password letters given above the "preview message" button into the blank space provided and then click on "post message". >>>

Ukrainian Film Club of Columbia University© 2008. For more information please contact Yuri Shevchuk