This year for the first time since its launch in April 2002, a full-length feature film from Ukraine was officially selected to compete in the World Narrative category at the Tribeca Film Festival, arguably the biggest US international film festival today.  The film “Two in One” directed by the Odesa-based director Kira Muratova got some of the limelight of the two-week media frenzy at Tribeca with the arrival on April 30 of a two-member Ukrainian delegation to represent the film - the lead actor Bohdan Stupka and the film’s producer Oleh Kokhan. While neither of

Before the public screening of TWO IN ONE, from left journalist Christine Kotlar, Bohdan Stupka, Inna Lypnyk, Oleh Kokhan, Peter Scarlet, Yuri Shevchuk.

them can be said to have a truly international notoriety, Bohdan Stupka is one of the few Ukraine’s actors who enjoy celebrity status not only in their own country, but throughout the territories of the now defunct Soviet empire and deservedly so.  Stupka’s acting career spans more than 35 years. He is widely seen as the symbol of the Ukrainian identity on screen much as Robert De Niro or Jack Nicholson are considered to be American screen icons. This was his first ever part in a film by Kira Muratova, known to have consistently favored either local Odessa or foreign Russian actors. All of her films are in Russian, even though all, with the exception of two, have been fully or in part funded by the Ukrainian government. Muratova who since 1961 has lived in Ukraine, has contrived to ignore its culture, language and dilemmas as a country brutally assimilated by the Soviet empire.

May 2, 2007, from left, Oleh Kokhan, Peter Scarlet, and Bohdan Stupka.

Unlike other competitors for the same prize, Two in One was not aggressively promoted

through a PR-campaign, press conferences, film parties, enthusiastic backing by the respective immigrant community (like was the case with the Panamanian-Colombian co-production Towards Darkness, by Antonio Negret), or other means. There were precious few interviews with Stupka and Kokhan, no noticeable excitement on the part of the Ukrainian community in New York Metro area (which had every right to be conflicted by the fact that the film was in Russian only), no noticeable input of the Ukrainian Consulate or Embassy.

After the public screening of TWO IN ONE on May 2, 2007, Oleh Kokhan with the film's poster.

Two in One was singled out in a number of smaller yet also important ways. The Ukrainian Film Club of Columbia University with its extremely limited financial and human resources

aggressively promoted the film through its website, publications in the Ukrainian Weekly and Svoboda, announcements circulated on electronic mailing lists two Ukrainian American weekly newspapers, as well as by offering the logistical support to the film crew whose members knew nothing about the inner workings of Tribeca and had no command of English.

From left Ukrainian filmmaker Lesya Kalynska, student of the New York University Film School and participant of Tribeca-2006 short narrative competion and TWO IN ONE producer Oleh Kokhan near the press lounge of Tribeca-2007, May 2, 2007.

On May 2, Tribeca’s executive director Peter Scarlet in person introduced the film, its lead actor Mr. Stupka and the producer Mr. Kokhan to a half-full or half-empty (depending on one’s perspective) auditorium at the West Clearview Chelsea Theaters on 23^rd Street. Mr. Scarlet also stayed to mediate a Q-and-A between Bohdan Stupka and a few dozens die-hard fans well after midnight (most of the audience had left after the screening was over). Even though Muratova’s film won no awards its selection to the select number of only eighteen participants in the World Narrative Competition, one of the most popular in the festivals program, was in itself an achievement.

From left Antonio Negret, whose directorial full length feature debut “Into the Darkness” (Hacia la Oscuridad) competed with TWO IN ONE, discusses filmmaking with Lesya Kalynska and Oleh Kokhan in Tribeca Press Lounge.

The film had a rather mixed reception by the Tribeca’s viewers. Many praised it comparing it to Luis Buñuel, Reiner Werner Fasbinder or Peter Greenaway. Others were more critical of it. “Kira Muratova's desperate attempt at making a Big Statement about Important Things collapses embarrassingly amid contrived camera work, unpersuasive dialogue, over-acting, unmodulated sound, and a manifest inability to distinguish between the lurid and the profound, says Alexander Motyl, professor of political science at Rutgers University.  - Two in One reminds me of really bad late Fellini, and late Fellini is by definition really bad.”