Profile of Filmmaker: Victoria Melnykova.

August, 2009

Victoria Melnykova with the composer Volodymyr Zubytsky during filming of the "Fourth Wave" in Italy.

The documentary filmmaker Victoria Melnykova was born in 1969 in Kyiv. As many others who grew up in the heavily Russified capital of Ukraine in the Soviet era, she started rediscovering her Ukrainian heritage after the country became independent. Educated at the Ivan Karpenko-Kary University for Film, Theater and Television (atelier of Mykhailo Illienko) she trained her camera onto lesser known aspects of Ukrainian culture, presenting it, in stark contrast to the parochial stereotypes promoted by the Russian imperial policies, as modern, innovative, and multi-ethnic. In her début film “Consonance”, 2004, Ms. Melnykova celebrates Ukrainian choral music, that nowadays enjoys a truly breath-taking revival, nourished  by both ancient folk and classical traditions. Her second film profiled the internationally renowned Crimean Tatar jazz guitarist and composer Enver Izmailov.

In late 2008, she finished work on her feature documentary “The Fourth Wave.” Even though the subject of this film  is the fourth wave of Ukrainian emigration, once again music pervades the entire narrative, weaves its various sub-plots into one. The main protagonist is the exceptionally talented composer Volodymyr  Zubytsky, who leaves Ukraine for Italy in search of self-realization. He, as many thousands of his countrymen who also left Ukraine, seems painfully divided between his country of origin and his new home. This is the first part in a documentary series Melnykova is going  to do on the subject.