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
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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 23rd 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.
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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.”
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