The Ninth Annual Russian Film Week festival that took place in New York on November 13-22 also screened a new feature film by Kira Muratova “Melody for a Street Organ” (Ukr. “Melodia dlia katerynky”). Muratova’s film was funded in part by the Ukrainian Ministry of Culture and Tourism and in part by the Kyiv-based Sota Production Company. Kira Muratova enjoys an international recognition and is the only Ukrainian film director – at least by citizenship – who has continued to make films over the last two decades. Meanwhile almost all her peers, including such celebrities as Yuri Illienko, have failed to find government support for their projects. The favoritism shown her by the Ukrainian state is nothing short of ironic given the fact that her films offer precious little for the Ukrainian viewer to identify with and often border on open mockery of Ukrainian language and culture.

Alla Ruslanova plays a mental homeless woman, the only character in the film who speaks Ukrainian.

It is rather problematic to classify any of her creations as a product of a Ukrainian national cinema. The Russian Film Week seemed ambivalent about the national attribution of Muratova’s new film. On the ‘Schedule and Tickets’ page of its website, “Melody for the Street Organ” was billed as a “Ukrainian film” probably in recognition of its Ukrainian funding. Yet on the ‘Films’ page nothing was said about its Ukrainian provenance and the reader was left with the impression – not incorrect – that it was Russian. It is peculiar that a “Ukrainian film” should be included in the Russian Film Week’s program given the fact that over the years since the Soviet collapse it has been a practice in Russia to carefully exclude all visual, textual and other references to Ukraine. Why? Because they are believed to irritate Russian audiences and thus seriously compromise the product’s box-office prospects. It is a known fact that the films made in Ukraine for distribution on the Russian market carefully avoid or, when this is impossible, retouch Ukrainian language street signs and other such cues in the frame.

Muratova’s new film was shown at the festival designed to promote a Russian film product because this film, like all her others, is Russian in content and form. The only Ukrainian input is the money that financed its production. In it, Russian actors Oleg Tabakov, Renata Litvinova and Nina Ruslanova play different roles. Others like Heorhiy Deliev and Natalia Buzko, though from Odesa, are also Russian by language and culture. The film synopsis suggests that Muratova yet again tells a Russian story: “This is a story of a boy named Nikita and his stepsister Alyona who, orphaned by the death of their mother, set out to the big city to find their dads. In their journey they encounter a lot of different people: good and bad, poor and rich, smart and unintelligent – yet no one is interested in them because they are preoccupied with their own concerns, especially since it’s Christmas Eve.”

In an interview to this website on October 29, Mrs. Hanna Chmil, the director of the Ukrainian National Administration for Cinematography, said that the producer of the film Mr. Oleg Kohan provided a copy of the “Melody for a Street Organ” to be screened at the Russian Cinema Week in contravention of her express request not to show the film here. Two days after, in another conversation with this writer, Mrs. Chmil did an about-face and said that there was nothing wrong with the film’s message and the fact that it would be shown at the Russian Film Week and that her Administration had no obligation to Ukrainian viewers in New York.

The production of Mutratova’s latest film is emblematic of the current state of the Ukrainian film making. While dozens of young talented directors, writers and actors are consistently refused any support by the government, Ms. Muratova, the filmmaker who is a mouthpiece of the imperial Russian culture and mindset, enjoy continuous funding for her projects at the expense of the Ukrainian taxpayer who is yet to enjoy a commercially successful and critically acclaimed Ukrainian film. It is little wonder that the producers of the film chose a Russian film festival for its US premier, anticipating the reaction it would provoke from American Ukrainian viewers. “Melody of a Street Organ” seems a fitting finale of Victor Yushchenko’s presidency that has been a disaster for the Ukrainian national cinema. From here, the Ukrainian filmmakers have nowhere else to go but up.

Yuri Shevchuk