Ms. Vroda signing a DVD with "Cross" for Yuri Shevchuk, Kyiv, June 25.

Every summer visit to Ukraine by the Club's director Yuri Shevchuk results in a new expansion of our film library. The year 2011 brought the biggest expansion numerically, if not artistically in the case of every single new acquisition. At once two projects of film restoration undertaken by the State Cinematographic Administration and the National Oleksander Dovzhenko Center were finally completed. As a result two gift sets of DVDs with restored and digitally re-mastered films were issued. One contains eight important films by the most iconic national film actor Ivan Mykolaichuk (1941-1987), appearing in them either as actor or film director, namely: "The Dream," "Shadows of Forgotten Ancestors," "A Stone Cross," "White Bird with a Black Mark," "Annychka," "The Commissars," "The Lost Petition," and "Babylon 20."

The other gift set is a 7-DVD collection entitled "Ukrainian Film Classics. Yuri Illienko." It includes such works by the recently deceased master as: "Shadows of Forgotten Ancestors," "A Well for the Thirsty," "The Eve of St. John's Feast," "A White Bird with a Black Mark," "The Forest Song. Mavka," "Legend of Princess Olha," and "Swan Lake. The Zone." Notable is the absence of Illienko's last work, the highly controversial "Prayer for Hetman Mazepa" in this collection. The film was banned by Moscow as anti-Russian, vilified by Kremlin-controlled Ukrainian media, and tacitly withdrawn from public circulation by its own producers. In 2009, Yuri Illienko's production company acquired the copyright for the film and is now preparing its commercial launch in an edited version with a Dolby sound track, and historical commentaries by the late master himself.

Films in both collections have subtitles in Ukrainian, Russian, and English. As was the case with previous such gift set restored and released in 2005 by the Oleksander Dovzhenko Center, "The Complete Filmic Heritage of Oleksander Dovzhenko," the quality of English subtitles is often less than adequate. The newest two anthologies of Ukrainian film classic continue an unfortunate and rather strange precedent set by their predecessor - they cannot be purchased on the open market by everybody willing to possess the films. Instead they are available only as free gifts to institutions distributed at the discretion of the newly reorganized and still very much in flux State Film Administration, a.k.a. Derzhkino. Each film in the two collections shows every twenty minutes or so a distracting reminder that the sale and purchasing of the film is illegal.

Our collection has also acquired some recently made Ukrainian films. Not unexpectedly, all of them are shorts: two animated films by Stepan Koval, an award-winning (Berlinale-2003) master of claymation, "To Become Firm" and "Carol of the Bells," animated shorts "Oh, Paris!" by Oleksander Shmyhun and "The White Raven" by Anatolii Lavrenyshyn; feature shorts by Dmytro Sukholytky-Sobchuk "The Thread" and by Maksym Ksionda "Beyond the Frames." A particularly exciting new acquisition is Maryna Vroda's "Cross," winner of 2011 Cannes International Film Festival prestigious Golden Palm for the Best Short. Ms. Vroda as a gesture of her appreciation for our work to promote Ukrainian cinema worldwide personally signed a DVD with her film for the UFCCU.