aaus-list @ ukrainianstudies.org -- [aaus-list] July 3: "New Works and New Names in Ukrainian Cinema"

["Seegel, Steven" <Steven.Seegel@worcester.edu>]

The Harvard Ukrainian Summer Institute will host the following film showcase at Harvard University on Thursday, July 3.  All are invited to attend. 

 

 

NEW WORKS AND NEW NAMES IN UKRAINIAN CINEMA

Presented by Yuri Shevchuk

*** Co-sponsored by the Ukrainian Film Club and the Ukrainian Studies Program at Columbia University *** 

 

Thursday, July 3, 2008 

CGIS South (S-020): Belfer Case Study Room

7:00-9:00 PM

 

 

Taxi Driver, 2006.

This exquisitely stylized gem of a film is about a strange unrequited love at first sight of a taxi driver who gives a lift to a beautiful and naïve  girl on her way to studies at a "cable college".  Certain that in the college the girl will be turned  into everybody's whore, the enamored young man  locks her up and proposes to her. Rejected, he desperately seeks ways to win her heart. This at once comical, grotesque, and absurd story develops in a southern Ukrainian town that through breathtaking camera work of Andrii Lysetskyi looks strangely beautiful and apocalyptic in its decrepitude.

 

Bozhychi, 2006.

A look at the revival of Ukrainian folk song tradition  that captures the imagination of an increasing number of young people. The Bozhychi, a folk singing group  from Kyiv, visits different parts of the country,  from central and eastern Ukraine to the Carpathian  mountains, unearthing and recording authentic folk songs, including those created in the Soviet and  post-Soviet period.

 

Stray Dog, 2007.

A stray dog suddenly comes to Petrovych's household  and quickly precipitates a series of crises on the  local scale. The dog brings out the good and the bad  in people whose paths it crosses in a small village near the Ukrainian capital Kyiv. As the tragicomic story unfolds the difference between the dog and its human counterparts becomes increasingly tenuous.

 

Dummy, 2007.

>From the official film description: "This is Muratova's take on the essence of happiness and different understandings thereof by different people. Is it morally justified to make a person happy for at least a couple of hours by lying to them and breaking all the basic moral norms?:

 "Dummy" is Muratova's third feature short following her "Letter to America" (Pismo v Ameriku) and "Inquiries" (Spravki). As if continuing the themes of the two previous films the director creates yet another image of an extraordinary crime. This time around, the evil-doer is a mysterious benefactor, with a mission to make happy a woman who earns her living as a street portrait-painter. The plot line is based on a collision of two evil intentions, one being more cunning that the other. A competition of the bad with the worse. Yet again Muratova focuses on theft, cheating, and deceit, when even a swindler can fall prey to swindling.

 
For more information: www.columbia.edu/cu/ufc 
 
 
Dr. Steven Seegel
Director, 2008 Harvard Ukrainian Summer Institute
Assistant Professor of History, Worcester State College
Harvard University
Harvard Ukrainian Research Institute
34 Kirkland Street
Cambridge, Massachusetts 02143
office: (617) 496-6001
cell: (865) 437-7832
fax: (617) 495-8097