The legendary British actor Malcolm MacDowell became the newest honorary member of the Ukrainian Film Club of Columbia University thus yielding the weight and authority of his name to the Club’s mission of spreading the knowledge of and interest in Ukrainian cinema around the world. In response to Yuri Shevchuk’s invitation to join the Club Mr. McDowell simply said, “I am happy to lend my name to it.”

Malcolm McDowell as Alex DeLarge in Stanley Kubrik’s A Clockwork Orange (1971).

Malcolm McDowell was launched into stardom by Lindsay Anderson’s film “If….”, 1968 in which he played the lead part of a rebellious youth named Mick Travis. The film won Palm d’Or at the Cannes IFF and became an immediate classic. Mr. McDowell’s rise to world fame was consolidated by the lead role in Stanley Kubric’s “A Clockwork Orange” (1971). “O Lucky Man” (1973), the second part of what later became Lindsay Anderson’s filmic trilogy was widely distributed in the former Soviet Union and made Mr. McDowell one of the most beloved Western actors among young people to the east of the Iron Curtain, and his character Mick Travis a symbol of non-conformism and resistance to totalitarian ideology.

On the occasion of screening of the thriller “Evilenko”, 2004, directed by Italian David Grieco, Yuri Shevchuk interviewed Malcolm McDowell over the phone from his home in Ojai, California. In “Evilenko,” he offers one of his finest, psychologically nuanced and, sadly, little known performances as the worst serial killer in Soviet history. By his own admission, his experience in Ukraine, during the filming of Evilenko made him fall in love with the country and its people.