Museum of Memories

Into the Ukrainian Arteries through Cinema

Amrit Gangar প্রকাশিত: মার্চ ৩, ২০২২, ০৭:১১ পিএম

1.

“ENTHUSIASM: SYMPHONY OF THE DONBASS”, 90+ YEARS OF A FILM, A RETROSPECTIVE OF VERTOV FILMS AND WAR NOW

In 1996, I had curated and organized a Retrospective of films by the Soviet master Dziga Vertov which also showed his poetic film Symphony of the Donmass”, the Ukranian region much in news since 2014, more so now. Pravda (25 Feb 2022) writes, “Alexander (also spelled Oleksandr) Turchynow, the head of the headquarters of European Solidarity Party, served as acting president of Ukraine from February to June 2014, and then until 2019 he served as the secretary of the National Security and Defense Council. When serving as acting president, he ordered to start anti-terrorist operation in the Donbass in April 2014.” The 2022 developments had already had their resonance eight years back. Did you get my point? [To use NDTV’s Ravish Kumar’s pet phrase].

Back to the great cinema, Vertov produced in Ukraine of the 1930s. “Symphony of the Donbass” was produced in 1930 by the Ukraine film Studios. Its images and sounds were recorded on location using the Shoring system – in mines, factories, and other locations. It is cinematographic poetry at its best and I had written about it in the “Retrospectives” catalog I edited for the MIFF 1996.

 

2.

The historic Odessa steps return to us via Sergei Eisenstein’s 1925 silent classic “Battleship Potyomkin” (Potemkin) that dramatized the mutiny in 1905 when the crew of the Russian battleship ‘Potemkin’ rebelled against the officers. 1925 (defacto 1905) to 2022 is a 117-year-long story. One of the most memorable scenes in the film’Potemkin’ is the massacre of civilians on the Odessa Steps, aka the Potemkin Stairs, a giant stairway in Odessa, Ukraine. The top step is 12.5 meters (41 feet) wide, and the lowest step is 21.7 meters (70.8 feet) wide. The stairway extends for 142 meters but it gives the illusion of a greater length.

The region in the Black Sea is in unprecedented violent turmoil now, that’s 21^st-century human civilization. The Ukrainian capital of Kiev (Kyiv) is 480 km away by road from the port town of Odessa. During the 19th century, Odessa was the fourth largest city of Imperial Russia after Moscow, St. Petersburg, and Warsaw.

3.

DOVZHENKO, ‘ARSENAL’ : STORY OF AN ETERNAL SORROW, ANTI-WAR FILM FROM UKRAINE, RECLAMATION OF INTERNATIONALISM

Aka ‘January Uprising in Kyiv in 1918’, the pacifist ‘Arsenal’ is nearly a century old (1928-2022). In 1989, the film was part of my curatorial imagination titled “Celebrating Poesy of Cinematography’ dedicated solely to Alexander Dovzhenko. It returns to me once again in the theatre of history turned brutal, violent, nationalistic, religious, melancholic, and absurd.

Shot at Odessa Film Factory, ‘Arsenal’ was made in 1928 and released in 1929. In the complex elaboration of the image of the train, a symbol second only to that of the arsenal itself in the heart of this film, the ‘worker’ Timosha (Semyon Svashenko) first appears. The involuted political history of Ukraine immediately after the First World War and the Bolshevik Revolution takes the form of a series of happenings on the train.

What is, however, significant is the identity of the human being as a ‘Worker’ (Proletariat) and that needs to be reclaimed against religiously divided identifies of hatred and killings. Fortunately in India, the recent ‘Kisan Andolan’ (though the word ‘Peasant’ has been kicked out of the media margins) has replaced the divisive identity of Hindu-Muslim with the Tiller of the Land, 

 

4.

"UKRAINE IS LIKE A TRABANT THAT WANTS TO BE A FERRARI” - DR HENRY MARSH  (b. 1950)

This is fairly recent history and the film of my reference is multiple award winning documentary “The English Surgeon” which premiered at the BFI London Film Festival in 2007; directed by Geoffrey Smith. The 93-min film focuses on the work of Dr. Henry Marsh, a neurosurgeon from the UK, and his efforts to help desperately ill patients in Ukrainian hospitals. Dr. Henry Marsh first went to Kyiv, Ukraine in 1992 to give lectures, and was appalled when he saw the medical system there. He went on to pioneer neurosurgical advances in Ukraine.

In ‘The Guardian’ (see the link below), Robert McCrum wrote: “Although Marsh operates around the world, Lviv is an apt destination for a surgeon who is a junkie for jeopardy. This former Austro-Hungarian provincial capital, once called Lemberg, has been described as the soul-city of Ukraine. Barely 50 miles from the Polish border, have Lemberg’s cobblestones had the melancholy of streets steeped in atrocities.”

Note: TRABANT (Trabbi, Trabi) was a series of small cars produced from 1957 to 1991 in former East Germany.

5.

FOR YOU ‘SASHA’ (ALEXANDER AVRAMENKO) WHEREVER YOU ARE IN THE WORLD

‘ZVENIGORA’: DOVZHENKO DRAWING A 1000-YEAR-OLD UKRENIAN HISTORY, FOLKLORES & LEGENDS, SCREEN UNIT & I

A.V. Avramenko was in charge of the film section at Bombay’s House of Soviet Culture around 1989 and he whole-heartedly supported my curatorial imagination of holding a Retrospective of extraordinary films (even if they were not subtitled in English) of the Ukrainian film director Alexander Dovzhenko, which included, what I called, the Ukraine Trilogy: ‘Zvenigora’ (1928), ‘Arsenal’ (1929) and ‘Earth’ (1930) besides other films. All projected (by the ace projectionist Laxman) on 35mm at the elegant HSC auditorium, this was India’s first such Retrospective. Screen Unit did it. And now we are back in Ukraine in different and tragic circumstances. My family and I remember Sasha and his relishing sumptuously delicious vegetarian Gujarati thali at Samrat restaurant, Churchgate. How history keeps changing is something we cannot predict as we cannot the human greed for power and pelf.

The idea of ‘Zvenigora’ is spectacular. In the form of a fable, Dovzhenko relates the thousand-year-old history of Ukraine. It includes episodes of the invasion of the Slav lands by Varyags, the struggle against the Tartar hordes, the rebellion against the Polish yoke, and the romantic tale of the free Cossacks who lived in their camps at the Zaporozhe Sech to which Gogol sang praise. [‘Alexander Dovzhenko: Celebrating Poesy of Cinematography’, the Retrospective publication, ed. Amrit Gagar, Screen Unit, September 1989] Dovzhenko sang the film ‘Zvenigora’ out like a bird, he didn't 'make' it.

 

6.

DOVZHENKO, THE LAST OF THE UKRAINE TRILOGY “EARTH”: BESTOWING DIGNITY AND GRACE TO CINEMA & HUMANITY

“This was the very first motion picture made on the spot about the transition of the Soviet village to the collective farm way of life (1930). And it is yet unsurpassed for its historic changes that were taking place in the life of the fore of poetic and philosophical interpretation of the people.” [‘Alexander Dovzhenko: Celebrating Poesy of Cinematography’, the Retrospective publication, ed. Amrit Gagar, Screen Unit, September 1989] People of the Ukraine, of the Soviet Land are now in the crossfire of war of devastation and deaths!

In “Earth” (Zemlya) Dovzhenko films his lyrical hero invisibly omnipresent, meditating upon life, overtly stating his attitude, sympathies, and moods. The author conveys his thoughts by images giving a spell-binding picture of the land-blossoming fertile, abundant and eternal. The characters of people of labor in the film are permeated with love, kindness, and good humor.  The finale of the film Dovzhenko constructs on the basis of songs – and this, in the silent cinema! The world made such cinema of grace and gratitude almost a hundred years ago, no longer! It, instead, produces war and misery for the poor peasants.

7.

‘UKRAINFILM’ STUDIO, THE KYIV FILMSTUDIO, THE FILM STOCK ‘UKRAINFILM’, AND THE KYIV MOTION PICTURE FILM FACTORY

ALEXANDER DOVZHENKO’s FIRST SOUND FILM “IVAN” (1932)

That was the glory of Kyiv (Kiev) and the Ukraine way back in 1932 when the great Soviet Ukrainian Alexander Dovzhenko composed (like a poem) his first sound film “Ivan”, which seems to have ‘inspired’ the director B.R. Chopra and the writer Akhtar Mirza towards the 1957 Hindi film “Naya Daur”. The glaring difference, however, was Dovzhenko created poetry out of cinematography (in Bressonian sense of cinema) at its core as against the other. No wonder, this country called India talks more about songs, singers and stars and less about cinematography proper. She still does the same while producing barely any poetry, but ‘dialogues’ for which awards are given, booklets produced and mimicries staged.

Just watch a few inaugural moments of Dovzhenko’s 1932 “Ivan” and you will realize how the concrete image could transcend to become a great poem! The Soviet Union’s Ukraine comes to us through her cinematographic grandeur and glory we should not miss in these times of devastations and tell the young Ukrainians to be proud of their artistic past, if not so much real- and geo-political. We are proud and grateful for such a great cinematographic legacy they have left for us to comprehend within a complex historical paradox!

 

8.

‘UKRAINE ON FIRE’ (2016): IGOR LOPATONOK & OLIVER STONE - A HISTORICAL PERSPECTIVE OF THE CONFLICT

Ukraine. Across its eastern border is Russia and to its west-Europe. For centuries, it has been at the center of a tug-of-war between powers seeking to control its rich lands and access to the Black Sea. 2014's Maidan Massacre triggered a bloody uprising that ousted president Viktor Yanukovych and painted Russia as the perpetrator by Western media. But was it? "Ukraine on Fire" by Igor Lopatonok provides a historical perspective for the deep divisions in the region which lead to the 2004 Orange Revolution, 2014 uprisings, and the violent overthrow of democratically elected Yanukovych. Covered by Western media as a people's revolution, it was in fact a coup d'état scripted and staged by nationalist groups and the U.S. State Department. Investigative journalist Robert Parry reveals how U.S.-funded political NGOs and media companies have emerged since the 80s replacing the CIA in promoting America's geopolitical agenda abroad. 

 

9.

EXPLORING UKRAINIAN ‘TERRA INCOGNITA’ THROUGH PARAJANOV’s “SHADOWS OF OUR FORGOTTEN ANCESTORS”

BACK TO DOVZHENKO STUDIOS, KYIV, UKRAINE AND POESY OF CINEMATOGRAPHY

My FB series “Ukraine” has by now reached the ninth planetary constellation revolving around this land of myth and mirth, pathos and poignancy, resistance and rigour and still a terra incognita to use Andriy Kulakov’s phrase. As he writes in his essay “Tabula rasa, or How to Find a Ukrainian Terra Incognita”, “For many people, Ukraine is still a ‘terra incognita’. It remains an unknown land even for Ukrainians themselves, and even more so for our close or distant neighbors.” Tragically, Ukraine now is in the news for wrong reasons of war and killings, for television channels it is like a series of entertaining sitcoms. That is the tragedy of our times, the so-called Age of Information!! We are being fooled all around…

By now we are also merging into the Ukrainian legends and fables, and walking back to Alexander Dovzhenko through Sergei Parajanov’s film “Shadows of Our Forgotten Ancesors” (1965), a Ukrainian film produced in Kyiv (Kiev). Georgian-Armenian filmmaker Parajanov based his legendary film on the novelette of the same name by Ukrainian writer Mykhailo Kotsiubynsky about young Hutsul lovers trapped on opposite sides of a Carpathian feuding families. Carpathia is a historic region on the border between Central and Eastern Europe largely located in western Ukraine’s Zakarpattia Oblast.

 

10.

MEMORIES OF HUNGARY (1989), CZECHOSLOVAKIA (1989), AUSTRIA (1989, 2008), USSR / RUSSIA (1991, 1999), POLAND (2017), CROATIA (2018): UKRAINIAN CORN BREAD

Last loaf of the unique Ukrainian corn bread i had eaten was in Zagreb (Croatia) and then it came straight from peasants baking it in a big chullah (open oven) in Parajanov’s film “Shadows of Our Forgotten Ancestors”. And then in my imagination i heard Ukrainian children singing a song of bread. Join them to kindle a hope –

I am Baking, Baking Bread

I am baking, baking bread

For the children for lunch.

The smaller will get less,

The bigger will get more.

Dash it into the stove!

Dash it into the stove!

Put it in - take it out!

Put it in - take it out!

I am cutting, cutting bread,

I am eating, -

Yum!

[English translation Pechu,Pechu Khlibchyk… courtesy Googleshwara]

 

11.

UKRAINIAN RHAPSODY: WARS BACK & FORTH, OKSANA PINING FOR HER LOVER ANTON…

History never moves in a straight linear line, its zig-zag ways of movement in time, keep on astonishing us in the human-centric world that we have created, the world squandering money on deadly war-heads when millions die of starvation and anxiety. Sergei Parajanov’s 1961 film “The Ukrainian Rhapsody” takes place during the war when Anton is captured. He, however, manages to escape and hide in the house of an organist. American troops enter the city, Anton cannot leave the city because of the ban. His beloved Oksana from a Ukrainian village is still waiting for him.

At its outset, this essentially anti-war film acknowledges contributions from Kolkhoz workers and soldiers of the Soviet army towards realization of the film.The Sanskrit word इतिहास (history in English) is an interesting word (इति + ह + आस) which would strangely mean "यह निश्चित था" (it was certain). Such pre-determinism!? The historical words in the film are ‘Kolkhoz’ and ‘Soviet’ The Russian word ‘kolkhoz’ means collective farming. इतिहास (Itihaas) after all is a sum total of unfathomable, unpredictable human minds… But at the moment we are worried about the beautiful Oksana and her Ukrainskaya Rapsodiya…

12.

TURNING THE UKRAINIAN GOGOL's STORIES INTO OPERAS BY CZECH-GERMAN KAUFMANN AND INDIAN TALES THAT UNITE

In its war-torn devastations and dirges, Ukraine keeps astonishing me with unexpected twists and turns, look how we turn to the celebrated novelist, playwright and short-story writer of Ukrainian origin, Nikolai Gogol (1809-1852) whose short stories viz. ‘The Nose and ‘Overcoat’ (‘Die Nase’ and ‘Der Mantel’ in German, respectively) turned into operas by Walter Kaufmann (1907-1984) about whom i have written a book “The Music that Still Rings at Dawn, Every Dawn: Walter Kaufmann in India 1934-1946” published by the Goethe Institut / Max Mueller Bhavan, Bombay. It was released by the great composer Vanraj Bhatia (1927-2021) in 2013. The book refers to these.

Incidentally, the 1955 Hindi film “Garam Coat” (Dir. Amar Kumar), had attempted to relocate the Ukrainian / Russian Gogol’s story in the post-Partition Uttar Pradesh (North India).

13

FROM MY MUSEUM OF MEMORIES 324

INTO THE UKRAINIAN ARTERIES THROUGH CINEMA

NIGERIAN MEDICAL STUDENTS IN UKRAINE, NEO-NAZIS, ‘FEATHERED DREAMS’ AND A LOVE STORY

Director Andrew Rozhen was inspired to make the film during trips to Nigeria, when he met a surprising amount of locals who spoke Russian or Ukrainian, having studied in Ukraine. Ukraine is a popular destination for African university students, due to its relatively low cost and better standard of education. ‘Feathered Dreams’ *(2012) explores the lives of this community of African students in Ukraine.

Specially produced for release in Nigeria (in the English language), the film, based on a true story, shot in Nigeria and Ukraine, deals with a young Nigerian woman (played by Omoni Oboli) who dreams of becoming a singer after her father’s wish. Unfortunately, her father dies and she agrees to her mother’s wishes and leaves to study medicine in Ukraine. The conflict between her dreams and her family dictates leads to a chain of dramatic events; from dropping out of school to a near-death experience resulting from racial assaults by Neo-Nazi fascists to homelessness and possible deportation.

In a way, the film establishes the fact of the presence of Neo-Nazis in Ukraine and their attacks on foreign students. It is the first Ukrainian full-length film in the English language.

 

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