Ukraine
Ukraine Delegation
October 25-October 31, 2010
Filmmaker: David Novack, Burning the Future: Coal in America
Filmmaker: Dylan Nelson, Soundtrack for a Revolution
Expert: Mark Freeman
“We attended a Molodist screening of Soundtrack for a Revolution, which played to a packed hall. In fact, people had to be turned away. The response was extremely positive and conversations about the film continued informally.” – Mark Freeman
“It’s certainly true that by far the most common question we were asked after screenings was, “How do you get the money?” Audiences assumed that the government was the main, or only, source of documentary funding in the United States; they found it hard to believe anybody would invest money in so noncommercial an endeavor as a documentary film.” – Dylan Nelson
Delegate Report
Mark Freeman
Kiev
On Saturday, October 23, I registered for the Molodist Festival and attended the opening ceremony at the National Opera Theater of Ukraine. The next day, I flew to Odessa and met with filmmakers David Novack and Dylan Nelson.
Odessa
Our press conference on Monday morning, October 25, included participants Yan Yusim, director of U Cinema; Susan Cleary of the US Embassy; David; Dylan and myself. It was well attended and ran unusually long. There were two segments on the 11:00 p.m. news––one on Dylan and one on The Betrayal.
I introduced the opening ceremony, which was followed by the screenings of Burning the Future: Coal in America, Soundtrack for a Revolution and The Betrayal. There was a good response from the audience. The US Embassy prepared wonderful program notes and a poster.
Anna Summar with Poster
On Tuesday morning, we made a presentation for law and economics students of Odessa National Mechnikov University. We also met with Professor Yevgen Streltsov, the vice rector of the university. He introduced us to a class of about 70 third and fourth year law students.
Dylan presented a lecture about the legal history of the US Civil Rights Movement and showed clips from her film, Soundtrack for Revolution. She was able to discuss the economic impact of the Montgomery boycott, as well as the US voting system. Students were riveted by the footage. They asked questions about human rights and US foreign policy.
Dylan reports, “This morning, I presented clips of Soundtrack to around 70 students. I learned that they were law students only 10 minutes beforehand, so tailored my talk around the ways in which the American legal system affected the Civil Rights Movement––from Brown vs. Board of Education to civil disobedience to the Voting Rights Act.” David's skills as a documentarian, by the way, are exceeded only by his skill at drawing maps of the US in chalk.
The students had some difficulty following the complexities of the US legal system, but were fascinated by the footage. Questions followed about US human rights policy and foreign policy. Dylan remarked that although our visit was supported by the State Department, she was free to voice her disagreements with US policies. There was also a discussion about racism and immigration policies in the Ukraine. After the presentation, I overhead a student talking with Dylan and thanking her for her presentation, saying that it provided “food for thought.”
We took two local documentary filmmakers to lunch: Dymtrto Dokunov and Igor Degtiarenko. They showed us a local film they had made about a little-known Christian cult here. It was nicely done and we had an interesting exchange about documentary practices. They attended David’s master class that evening.
Before the evening screening, we toured the Odessa Studio, which was established in 1907. Our guide was a Soviet-era director, now curator of a collection of artifacts and equipment from the studio, which closed in the 1980s. He filled us in on a rich history, including unfamiliar details of the making of The Battleship Potemkin.
David Novack with students
That evening, we screened Sputnik Mania, which was followed by a workshop by David. Made in LA and One Bridge to the Next were also screened. Unfortunately, the Sputnik Mania screening was marred by audio and video interruptions. The audience was patient and the film was eventually shown in segments. During the technical difficulties David, Dylan and I discussed funding, writing and research and the variety of approaches to nonfiction storytelling.
David’s workshop covered writing and structuring issues. It was thorough, insightful and well received. I presented introductions to Made in LA and One Bridge to the Next. I suggested that problems of migration weren't unique to the US and pointed out that both of these films, like Dylan's and David's, focused on the impact that committed individuals can make on improving social conditions.
Our last appointment was with the director of the Odessa Film Festival, which is scheduled for next June. David was invited to participate as a featured filmmaker, or perhaps as a judge. We will make an effort to increase awareness of the festival in the US.
The following day began with a presentation for 100 students of Odessa Ecological University of Burning the Future, followed by a meeting with a small group of journalists involved in creating documentaries on ecology on Odessa.
We brainstormed numerous ways in which production might be expanded in Ukraine––including Internet channels and cooperation with NGOs. We stressed the notion that it is possible to produce programming without government support. We explored the possibility of future Fulbright collaborations as a way to increase practical skills. David offered a number of suggestions to a young woman producer interested in documenting a threatened indigenous community in Siberia. Also, a knowledgeable local television reporter interviewed David.
David Novack with Reporter
That afternoon, we screened Street Fight. This film was particularly timely, as local elections were scheduled for October 31. Many in the audience were surprised to see the depth of commitment in evidence in this film. They expressed little enthusiasm for the local election. Our research indicates that, as was expressed to us, the only choice was the "lesser evil."
At a workshop, Dylan gave a clear and compelling presentation on documentary structure. She effectively used the Selma section of her film to illustrate the points she was making. Many in the audience had seen the complete film the evening before. The program in Odessa was especially noteworthy for the continuity and community over the three nights of screenings. We then screened Autism: The Musical.
Kiev
The next day in Kiev, we did a presentation for students of the School of Journalism of National Taras Shevchenko University in the afternoon. It was held at a former Communist Party school for international relations, which was built on the site of a Jewish cemetery. The school retained some of its opulence, including oversized marble entryways and red-carpeted halls.
Mark Freeman at Molodist Kyiv Festival
About 100 second-year students of journalism and public relations attended the scheduled discussion. We added a second in-depth section with a smaller group of 40 students. After clarifying that we weren't soliciting their responses for our own uses, they were forthcoming with suggestions of film projects they would like to see made. Perhaps the most intriguing was a young woman's story about the challenges of young Ukrainian women trying to survive in the underground economy in New York City.
That evening, we attended a Molodist screening of Soundtrack for a Revolution, which played to a packed hall. In fact, people had to be turned away. The response was extremely positive and conversations about the film continued informally after the Q&A session ended. Some students who had attended the afternoon presentation also came to the evening screening.
On the afternoon of October 29, we held a presentation/workshop for students of Kyiv National Karpenko-Kary University of Theater, Film and Television. This was among our most rewarding presentations. These 50 production students were especially enthusiastic. It would have been ideal to have an opportunity for a more extensive workshop and a chance to see their work.
That evening, we screened Burning the Future. Dylan and David made a strong connection with a former Soviet Chernobyl radiation officer. They discussed the possibilities of collaborating on a documentary production. The following day, he presented autographed copies of his book to all of us.
David Novack with Poster
There was a morning workshop for participants of Molodist Kyiv Festival October 30, which was limited by the relative early hour and location. However, it was taped and will no doubt have an extended life. David and Dylan built on the commonalities shared by their films. The audience was given a good grounding in the ways that documentary techniques can be used to build and support civil society. We screened Burning the Future and Soundtrack for a Revolution at the Zhovten Cinema.
Conclusion
In a very short period of time, we were able to reach a wide variety of audiences––students, professionals and the general public. The concentrated attention that the films and filmmakers received in Odessa was especially noteworthy. Although the excitement of the Molodist festival extended to our works, it also presented a surfeit of choices and options for audiences. In Odessa, we were able to build rapport with audiences over several nights, and to represent films that were shown without the presence of their directors.
Everyone at the Embassy went out of his or her way to make our work effective, efficient and enjoyable. The experience exceeded my expectations.
Delegate Report
Dylan Nelson
During my visit to Ukraine, I contemplated the country’s short statehood and long, terrifying history. After a first brief, intense flowering of culture known as Kyivan-Rus, Ukraine spent the next thousand years as a satellite of Krakow or Moscow, or both, until it became an independent state barely 10 years ago. Geographically a steppe––in recent history the breadbasket of Russia, and like Sylvia Plath’s Poland, ‘scraped flat by the roller of wars, wars, wars’––Ukraine has yet to determine its own identity. The former Soviet Socialist Republic remains riven by pro- and anti-Russian factions, also ingrained ethnically, linguistically and in accordance with physical proximity to Russia or Europe.
Dylan Nelson illustrates So USA
In eight short days, our delegation wasn’t going to answer the question, ‘What does it mean to be Ukrainian?’ Nor were we going to be able to confront the country’s economic, environmental and infrastructure challenges, or counteract the political corruption still rampant despite a short-lived populist revolution in 2004. But, by screening a handful of American documentaries––including one I produced, Soundtrack for a Revolution––we could show how we Americans have dealt with similar problems in our own history. We could promote democracy, with all its flaws, over autocracy; we could encourage independent thought; and we could engage with individuals over a shared love of film. In short, we could connect. And we did.
Odessa
After meeting our wonderful coordinator and translator, Anna Sumar, and Susan Cleary, the Embassy’s fantastic cultural attaché, my colleagues Mark Freeman and David Novack and I sat for a press conference. We had been told there was little interest in documentaries in Ukraine, yet a dozen reporters attended, poised and attentive. Several asked good questions, and we were delighted to see the conference air on the local news that night as we drank our post-screening vodkas.
We were similarly pleasantly surprised when we arrived that evening at the U-Cinema, our screening site for the next three nights. A former film studio fallen on hard times, U-Cinema nonetheless boasted a committed owner (Yan Yusim) and a creative and enthusiastic clientele. The chilly cavern of an auditorium may have swallowed the audience of 40 or so that first night, but it couldn’t swallow their appetite for American documentary. For three documentary features, from 6:00 p.m. to well past midnight, the audience stayed, watched and questioned. And the next night they came back. We had the same audience members for three nights running, which I found both inspiring and moving.
Ukrainians are indeed interested in documentary. After years of strife, uncertainty, starvation and unimaginable violence, they have stories to tell. But potential Ukrainian documentarians also face obstacles: lack of financial support, a perceived lack of market appeal for documentaries and perhaps, most significantly, a long history of repressive and tyrannical rule. Although the Soviets, the most recent dictatorial regime, are nearly 20 years gone, many of the people we met during the trip bemoaned the passivity Communist rule spawned––a fear of rocking the boat combined with a pervasive sense of powerlessness.
This attitude is understandable, certainly, but it may not provide the most fertile soil for documentary filmmaking. Our Odessa audiences, however, proved that the impulse to provoke, enlighten and engage others survives––even thrives––in modern Ukraine. That first evening, after screenings of David’s powerful environmental film, Burning the Future, and Soundtrack for a Revolution, a young man approached me. About 25, with bohemian hair and an earnest demeanor, he belongs to a small group of young Odessans who have been making short documentaries for local television. He said the Showcase films revealed to him greater possibilities in documentary art and, to my immense pleasure, he spoke especially glowingly about Soundtrack, which tells the story of the American Civil Rights movement through the protesters’ freedom songs.
Soundtrack demonstrates that a disempowered minority can, through peaceful protest, effect dramatic social change. “It is a film all Ukrainians should see,” the man said, “especially the young ones.” According to him, Ukrainian young people need to be exposed to films and other cultural stimuli that will wake their consciences and make them realize that they, as individuals, do matter. Their own memories of Communism dim or nonexistent, his peers are nevertheless apathetic, conditioned to accept the status quo. “And they want to make money,” he added, with a faint note of disdain. He then showed us, on a laptop among the bowls of borscht on the table, some of his work. The standout was a film about an old woman living alone in the countryside, the sole remaining adherent of a heretical religious sect. Unsubtitled and moody, the film offered hauntingly beautiful images of the countryside a priest, and the woman’s solitary labors to maintain her leader’s memory.
It’s certainly true that by far the most common question we were asked after screenings was, “How do you get the money?” Audiences assumed that the government was the main, or only, source of documentary funding in the United States; they found it hard to believe anybody would invest money in so noncommercial an endeavor as a documentary film. Again and again, David and I emphasized that documentary storytelling shares much with other forms of storytelling, including narrative film. Documentaries are not meant purely to educate but also to entertain. We also stressed that documentary filmmakers in the US face many of the same challenges as Ukrainian documentarians. In the US, we must be entrepreneurs as well as artists; we struggle to raise the money for our films, not only through government grants and equity investors but from parents, friends, small donors and generally constant hustling. “Why go to so much trouble?” audience members asked. Because, we answered, we’re passionate about the stories we tell. We believe they’re important for understanding our world, and for improving it. We believe that we, as filmmakers, can make a difference.
Dylan Nelson Dmytro Dokunov and friend
Our second day took us to Odessa National Mechnikov University, where I presented clips from Soundtrack to about 50 law students in a very steep, terraced lecture hall. We discussed the legal basis for the Civil Rights struggle, from Plessy vs. Ferguson to Brown vs. the Board of Education, with special reference to the sit-ins and demonstrations in Selma in support of voting rights. Odessa was having an election later in the week, and I wanted to demonstrate to the students that voting was a privilege that, even in the democracy-touting United States of America, people had to fight to win. I told them that I wished most Americans appreciated voting more, and outlined why it matters: that we vote to elect our representatives and senators, who in turn make the laws that govern us, to be approved by the President and then checked by the Supreme Court. I hoped they would see the link between the civil rights movement, a long-ago battle for self-determination an ocean away, and their own actions at the ballot box. I don’t know how well I managed to get through to them. Perhaps the subject of elections is a sensitive one.
That evening, we went early to the U-Cinema to spend time with the director we’d met the previous night. He maintains a Cinema Museum on the property, although all the films the studio made prior to World War II have been lost. As I, a (relatively) young American raised on tales of Red-baiting and Stalinist pogroms, looked at this beautiful old man’s face gleaming with righteous pride in his achievement, I suddenly saw the world differently.
This epiphany of our essential human brotherhood was a relevant one to have just prior to a screening of Sputnik Mania, a fascinating film that outlines the panic with which the US met the launch of Sputnik I in 1957. David also made an excellent presentation about documentary character building, as demonstrated in his film Burning the Future.
Our third and final evening screening was Street Fight, an extraordinary doc about a bitter mayoral campaign between two black candidates, provided a compelling context for my presentation about documentary storytelling in the voting rights section of Soundtrack for a Revolution. Punctuated by three clips, I analyzed how we establish our world, our heroes and our villains, and traced the ways in which conflict escalates to Bloody Sunday and then finally resolves with the March to Montgomery. The audience seemed engaged, educated, and even entertained––no financial questions here! I felt a real affection for them, trudging out to the cinema night after night, accepting what we had to offer and, in turn, giving us themselves.
Kyiv
The next morning we flew to Kyiv in pre-dawn darkness and soon found ourselves before a group of 60 journalism students at the National Taras Shevchenko University. David and I tag-teamed our presentation on documentary storytelling as though we’d been teaching together for years. The students were responsive and curious. We ended by asking, “If you could make any documentary film, what story would you tell?”
Silence. “If you don’t want to volunteer you could write your idea down,” I suggested. We explained that we merely wanted to know what they found interesting. What stories compelled them? What excited them or infuriated them? Please, we asked again, everyone write down an idea––no names––and then we’ll read them and discuss them anonymously.
It was great. These were journalism students, but the notion that they could make a film with social commentary––or even a personal story––clearly excited them and felt new. The pencils flew. The scraps of paper came up to us in stacks. Most of the documentary ideas were solid. These kids wanted to tell stories of drug addiction, ethnographies of minorities, environmental stories and stories shedding light on homosexuality in Ukraine.
The most complex pitch came from a young girl who spoke nearly fluent English. She wanted to make a film about Ukrainians who go to America and find that the American dream is not, in fact, easy to achieve. Many of these girls are ultimately forced into jobs of sexual submission, if not out-and-out prostitution, then pole dancing and stripping. We all discussed ways she might approach the storytelling, and the class left still chattering; we felt we had reached them. The experience had certainly laid bare our own assumptions––about student-teacher relationships, about the workshopping and the development process, about the free dissemination of ideas. So often, travel provides a clearer view of the self than of the other culture. Kyiv, as Odesa, was providing me with a constantly evolving perspective.
Odessa, however, felt much more intimate; Kyiv, where the Showcase was part of the enormous Molodist film festival, was a whirlwind. That night, there was a screening of Soundtrack. This was a much smaller venue than in Odessa, but every seat was filled. People sprawled in the aisles.
As a filmmaker, of course, for me that evening was the high point of the trip. The last two days held more strong team-teaching sessions: a lovely workshop for some university film students and a Molodist Master Class.