After some 450 days of war, Ukraine has been in the news every day. If nothing else, the war has made Ukraine famous. But the remarkable thing about Ukraine is that it is not all carnage and misery. People are still going to the cinemas and are still creating under the most heinous conditions. Now Ukrainian culture is coming to Sydney for a weekend film festival. It gives Sydneysiders a unique opportunity to examine the indomitable spirit of Ukraine through its recent cinema that is full of resolute hope and courage.
The three-day film festival opens with the extraordinary Mariupol: Unlost Hope [pictured, and extended trailer below] by Maksim Litvinov, better known for his light entertainment television series such as Love in Chains. This is a superbly crafted documentary, the sound design alone is worth the price of admission, that examines the lives of five ordinary citizens who lived in Mariupol for the first month of the war. Based on the diaries of local journalist Nadia Sukhorukova, the three women and two men elegantly express the background and social context of their beloved city. They detail what they saw on the streets and express how they felt as the war detonated their peaceful lives through the first month of the invasion in Mariupol. It is powerful.
Equally potent is one of Ukraine’s most popular films, The Guide, that helps frame the context of the current war in the Soviet enforced famine of 1932. It was Ukraine’s official entry to the foreign language Oscar competition in 2014. Directed by Oles Sanin, this is a patriotic tear-jerker about the escapades of Ivan, a blind folk musician and Peter, a ten-year old American boy on the run from the authorities after his father, an American engineer, is killed for obtaining secret documents about the repressions. Blind Ivan makes every effort not only to protect his young guide, but to educate him in how to live with a pure soul untarnished by the horrors that he has seen, suggesting that he may have a clearer vision of the world than those with perfect vision.
Good thing that there is a comedy in the line-up with Oleksii Taranenko I Work at the Cemetery about thirtysomething Sasha who manages a company that installs tombstones. He has a dark past and a daring teenage daughter in the present and has what is often called, “a difficult character”. He has no shortage of customers, each with a unique personal tragedy. Even though it often appears as if the cemetery is not outside, but within, Sasha manages the madness with a good dose of irony until his 14-year-old daughter and his past reappear.
The festival features an Australian premiere, Carol of the Bells, also known as Schedryk directed by Olesya Morgunets. Everyone will recognise the immortal Christmas tune, but not everyone will know that it comes from a popular Ukrainian folk melody that now represents the spirit of unity all over the world. The film tells the story of three families, Polish, Ukrainian and Jewish all sharing a large house in the war years. Their harmonious life together, sharing music and stories, is shattered first by the Soviet occupation and the persecution of the Polish family, then, by the Nazi occupation of Ukraine, and the decimation of the Jewish family. Sacrificing their own lives, the Ukrainian family manage to save their neighbours’ children and their own daughter. Death and loss come to these families, but they are united by the promise of a brighter future.
Festival director, Kateryna Kyrychenko [left] is a recent migrant to Australia. Before the war, she worked in documentary cinema and knows all of the filmmakers in the program. She was able to source all the films for free as all the money from the box office will go to the U-Help Charitable Foundation. Kyrychenko explains: “My motivation for staging the film festival was that I wanted Australian audiences to understand that Ukraine is much more than just the war and yyshyvanki and to give people an insight into the Ukraine sense of humour, our culture, society and our concerns.
“Film is the best platform for showcasing our diverse cultures, perspectives and artistic expressions. I chose each of the five [including documentary Ballroom King] films carefully – each one is an internationally recognised masterpiece, with numerous awards. Although we are far from Ukraine, all our efforts are aimed at helping the people of Ukraine. Our goal is to bring peace through goodness, honesty and light. It is time to fight against darkness, cruelty and lies, to make sure that every life matters. Today, there is a war going on in my country and my colleagues die every day, defending the right to simply be free, so that their children live in a free country. The freedom to dream is not only a human luxury, but rather a human need, for which Ukrainians fight and make enormous sacrifices. Millions of people died during the First World War. World War II lost tens of millions of people. There will be no Third World War. This is not a trilogy. Ukraine will stop Russian aggression on our land. I am sure that this victory is very close because we are all united. I invite you with my colleagues to plunge into the wonderful world of Ukrainian cinema.”
Ukrainian Film Festival Sydney is on May 26-28 at Dendy Newtown Cinemas
