Film Library
Absolute Warhol, 2001.

Original title: Absolut Warhola
Copyright: StrandFilm Productions GMbH in association with Pandora Film Productions, 2001
Format: documentary, full-length
Carrier: DVD
Color: color
Length: 80"    
Original language: Slovak and Ruthenian-Ukrainian
English subtitles: yes

Film crew
Director and writer: Stanislaw Mucha
Cinematographer: Susanne Schule
Sound: Eike Hosenfeld and Michel Klofkorn
Original music: Drislak
Producer: Reihard Brundig and Dieter Reifarth

Synopsis
In this witty, affectionate and slyly humorous film, the German documentary filmmaker Stanislaw Mucha traces the family roots of the American pop artist Andy Warhol back to two ethnic Ukrainian villages in Slovakia. There he finds Warhol’s eccentric relatives, all of whom treat the famous hometown boy with pride even though none of them has actually known him or understands his art. They know so little of him that when Warhol sends original art work to his relatives, they use the art as clothing for children’s toys. With gentle humanism, the film gravitates from the art of Warhol to the lives of his relatives – characters in their own right. We see the “artfulness” with which they come to grips with their everyday lives and the strange outside world. These villagers’ healthy attitude towards art, life and the encroaching modern world makes Absolute Warhol a buoyant documentary.

Awards
Official selection at Philadelphia Film Festival, Montreal World Film Festival, Berlin Film Festival, Manheim-Heidelberg Film Festival, Los Angeles Film Festival, Hot Docs Toronto.

Arsenal, 1929.

Original title: Arsenal
Copyright: Artwork, 1997 Kino International, distributed by Image Entertainment.
Format: feature, full-length
Carrier: DVD
Color: black-and-white
Length: 73"
Original language: silent with Russian intertitles and English translation.
English subtitles: yes

Film crew
Director: Oleksander Dovzhenko
Script writer: Oleksander Dovzhenko
Cinematographer: Danylo Demutskyi

Film cast
Semen Svashenko as Tymish
Ambrosiy Buchma as the laughing-gas soldier
H. Khorkov as the Red Army Soldier
Dmytro Erdman as the German officer
Serhiy Petrov as a German soldier
M. Mikhaylovsky as the nationalist
A. Yevdakov  as Tsar Nikolas II.

Synopsis
Based on an actual incident from 1918, the film’s story concerns a group of Ukrainian Bolsheviks who revolted against the Central Rada, the first government of independent Ukraine. The Bolsheviks put up a defense of their cause inside the Arsenal munitions plant in the capital city of Kyiv. Outnumbered by the Ukrainian government troops the Bolshevik rebels are overrun and defeated in a climactic battle, but their revolutionary spirit prevails. The film is notable for Dovzhenko’s refusal to reject national identity as a source of courage. Although his films, like all Soviet films of the period, were made officially "in the service of the state," they’re deeply subversive.

At the Crossroads, 2005.
Original title: Na perekhresti
Copyright: Oleksiy Omelyanchuk & Yuri Sak, 2005.
Format: short feature, drama, stereo sound, Kodak, super 16 mm
Carrier: DVD
Color: color
Length: 15"
Original language: Ukrainian and Russian
English subtitles: yes

Film crew
Script-writer, director, and producer: Oleksa Om
Script-writer: Yuri Sak
Cinematographer: Thomas George
Original songs "For You", "I'm Going Home" by the Okean Elzy, 2003.
Produced by the Independent Film Studio Awakening (Probudzhennia)

Film cast
Yuri Sak, Tetiana Ivaniuk.

Synopsis
A story that could have been taken from the real life of five million Ukrainian guestworkers scattered around the West in search of economic opportunities for themselves and their families. In Prague, Sashko, a young musician from Lviv works at a construction site. His beloved Nelia washes dishes in a posh restaurant. Sashko, without asking his girlfriend, decides to return to Ukraine and start a family and new life there with her. Nelia, it turns out, is not so sure …

This is the first independently financed Ukrainian film to be showcased by the Ukrainian Film Club of Columbia University. American premier took place on November 17, 2005, Columbia University.

Between Hitler and Stalin, 2003

Original title: Between Hitler and Stalin
Copyright: Ukrainian Canadian Research and Documentation Center, 2003.
Format: documentary, full-length
Carrier: DVD
Color: black-and-white and color
Length: 58"
Original language: English
English subtitles: no

Film crew
Director and producer: Slavko Nowytski
Script writer: Kristi Wheeler
Cinematographer:
Storyline by  Wsevolod W. Isajiw
Film Coordinator: Andrew Gregorovich
Narrated by Jack Palance

Synopsis
This documentary tells a revealing story of the Second World War from the point of view of the Ukrainian people caught between the murderous dictatorships of Nazi Germany and Communist Russia and faced with all the losing options.

The Blue Balloon, 2005.

Original title: Le Ballon bleu
Copyright: Jean Bojko, 2005
Format: documentary, short
Carrier: DVD
Color: color
Length: 10"    
Original language: French with Ukrainian subtitles
English subtitles: no

Film crew
Director and writer: Jean Bojko
Cinematographer:
Sound: Patrick Peignelin
Songs: Ukrainian folk song performed by Ksenia Aksman, first heard in a train car in 1941, the Blue Balloon, by Bulat Okudzhava

Synopsis
Jean Bojko paints a moving portrait of his mother, Ksenia Aksman. Ms. Aksman as a 19 year old, compelled by historical circumstances to leave her native Ukraine and to settle in France, heard “The Blue Balloon” sung in 1941 while she was a passenger on a train. She was 83 when the film was shot.

To purchase the film write to Mr. Jean Bojko at: jean.bojko@wanadoo.fr

Borderland. Ukraine and the Birth of Democracy, 2006.

Original title: Borderland. Ukraine and the Birth of Democracy
Copyright: Alaya Productions, 2005/2006
Format: documentary, full-length
Carrier: DVD
Color: color
Length: 90"    
Original language: English
English subtitles: yes

Film crew
Director and writer: Paul Tremblay
Producer: Iryna Goula

Synopsis
By exploring the experiences of six participants, before, during and after Ukraine’s Orange Revolution, this film poses two important questions: What does it mean to be a People? And What does it mean to be free?
This is a work-in-progress version of the film screened by the director at Columbia University by invitation of the Ukrainian Film Club on March 23, 2006. Of particular interest are the interviews with the Ukrainian pop-singer Ruslana. She may now wish to retract many of the pronouncements she somewhat naively made in the romantic fervor that overtook the pro-Yushchenko electorate after the victory over Yanukovych. The completed 60-minute version of the film is entitled “Crossroads. Ukraine and the Triumph of Democracy.”

Bright Is the Night, 2004

Original title: Noch svetla
Copyright: Illusion Films Studios, with the support of the Cinematography Service of the Russian Federation, 2004.
Format: feature, full-length
Carrier: DVD
Color: color
Length: 92”
Original language: Russian
English subtitles: yes

Film crew
Director: Roman Balayan
Script writer: Rustam Ibragimbekov, Roman Balayan,
inspired by A. Zhovna’s story “An Experiment”
Cinematographer: Bohdan Verzhbytskyi
Art director: Serhiy Khotymsky
Composer: Vadym Khrapachev
Producer: Vladimir Dostal
Sound: Natalia Dombruhova
Edito: Olena Lukashenko

Film cast
Andrei Kuzichev as Aleksey
Olga Sultanova as Lika
Aleksey Panin as Dmitri
Irina Kupchenko as Zinaida Antonovna
Vladimir Gostiukhin as Petrovich
Bohdan Khizhniak as Sasha
Olha Holitsia as Olya
Vadym Vovchuk as Vitya
Natalya Zelenetska as Alisa
Vladyslav and Viacheslav Rohoch as the twins
Olha Kohut as Vitya’s mother

Synopsis
This psychological drama inspired by Oleksander Zhovna's story «The Experiment» takes place in a home for deaf-mute-and-blind children. Two young teachers of the institution Aleksey and Lika (Anzhelika) are passionately in love with each other. So much so in fact that they want the rest of the world to experience the sensation. They decide to see if the handicapped children they were put in charge of are capable of experiencing love to the full. They try to provoke the feeling of love in two inmates of the home – Sasha and Olia – unsuspecting of the disastrous consequences their risky and cruel experiment can have.

Ukrainian Film Club of Columbia University© 2015. For more information please contact Yuri Shevchuk