The Ukrainian Film Club of CU kicked off its yearly Harvard Summer Series with a screening of the PBP (Pilsudski Bought Petliura). This silent narrative feature directed by Heorhy Stabovy and Aksel Ludnin and produced by the VUFKU film factory in 1926 attracted an audience of some twenty viewers made of Harvard Summer School students, faculty, and fans of Ukrainian film from the Greater Boston Area. It was not a bad turnout given the fact that the general student enrollment of the Harvard Ukrainian Summer Institute in 2010 was only sixteen, perhaps the lowest since its inception in 1971. The film was introduced by Yuri Shevchuk who also mediated a lively discussion after the screening.

This year, as was the case in the past, the film series was made of three events, all taking place in the comfy amphitheater of Belfer Case Study Room of the Center for Government and International Studies (CGIS South) on the corner of Cambridge and Prescott Streets. The two other programs were:

- July 13, 2010, Mister Pylypenko and His Submarine, directors René Harder and Jan Hinrik Drevs, Germany, 2006-2009.

- July 27, 2010, Evilenko, director David Grieco, thriller, 2004. Starring Malcolm McDowell.

The German feature documentary “Mr. Pylypenko and His Submarine” had an enthusiastic reception and provoked quite a lot of interest on the part of some twenty-five people in the audience. In part this was due to its subject matter –  the people of Donbas, the region located in the easternmost part of the country, and often erroneously considered to be not quite Ukrainian. Donbas is the most densely populated, industrialized area, and the home base of the Party of Regions that won the latest presidential elections and quickly overtook the executive, legislative, and judicial power in Ukraine throwing it years back to its Soviet colonial past. Paradoxically this region is the least known to the rest of Ukraine and the world. An added attraction to the film was its focus on an everyday common denizen of rural Donbas, a retired Jak-of-all-trades Mr. Pylypenko, a bit crazy, a bit idealistic, very goal-driven in his pursuit of building a submarine in a landlocked village, hundreds of miles away from the sea. The two parts of the film proved a trip of discovery for the audience that was both informative, thought-provoking, and loaded with humor.