UFCCU at 56th San Sebastian International Film Festival

September 18-27, 2008, San Sebastian, Spain.

There was no Ukrainian film participating in this important international film festival.

Yuri Shevchuk with Vera Farmiga at San Sebastian Film Festival on September 19, 2008.

Yet Ukraine as a subject matter of world filmmaking figured on more than one occasion. The rising American film star Vera Farmiga presented her latest film "A Boy in the Striped Pyjamas". In her conversation with Yuri Shevchuk she expressed interest in the Ukrainian Film Club of CU. Ms. Farmiga also said that she would like to attend the international conference "Visualizing the Holodomor: the Great Ukrainian Famine-Genocide of 1932-1933 on Film" organized by the Ukrainian Studies Program at Columbia University on December 2, 2008.

International Film Festival Molodist is becoming increasingly attractive to international film community as a forum for young filmmakers. Colombian director Juan Manuel Betancourt, whom I met at San Sebastian, will be participating in the official competition at Molodist with his short “Rojo Red”.

John Malkovich at his press conference, September 21, 2008.

The American actor John Malkovich who represented “Burn After Reading”, directed by the Coen brothers, said at his press-conference that his next work would be in a film about the “Viennese doctor Leopold von Sacher-Masoch,” (Masoch as in masochism). The Austrian writer (1836-1895) was born in and connected to Lviv, Eastern Galicia, its culture, and people (a fact Malkovich was not aware of). The film will not be shot in Lviv. Answering my question, would he be tempted to show the film at the KinoLev film fest in Lviv, Mr. Malkovich said, "I try to stay away from temptations…".

(from right) Linda Blackaby, Miguel Pendas, and J. Naranjo.

Interest in having Ukrainian participants was expressed by organizers of such other film forums as the Seville European Film Festival, the Archidona Film Festival near Malaga, and the San Francisco International Film Festiva, whose director of programming Linda Blackaby, Director of Programming at San Francisco (as seen in the picture with Miguel Pendas, Creative Director of San Francisco IFF, and Jorge Naranjo, filmmaker from Seville, Spain) specifically asked for information about Ukrainian female filmmakers.

The Ukrainian Film Club of Columbia University will continue to work with these and other international film festivals in order to promote Ukrainian cinema throughout the world and attract the attention of world filmmakers to Ukraine and its largely untapped cultural resources.