By Tamar Baumgarten-Noort. One of the most famous films of the Ukrainian film history is called SHADOWS OF FORGOTTEN ANCESTORS, a Romeo and Juliet kind of story taking place in the Ukrainian hinterland. It made director Sergej Paradzhanov a star of the Ukrainian cinema in the 1960s – but that film’s title from 1964 could also be stated as a motto for the problems of Ukrainian filmmaking.

The Ukraine has been independent since 1991 and was democratized in the course of the Orange Revolution in 2004 – but it is still searching for a national identity. Every fifth inhabitant of the Ukraine isn’t Ukrainian – the nation unites people from more than hundred nationalities, with Ukrainian being the official language but almost 75 per cent of the people speaking Russian. The long affiliation with the USSR but also the newly established commercial links to Western Europe and America shape what looks like a bipolar nation: Oriented towards Russia on the one side, and towards the West on the other.

Two film festivals worth mentioning

This national identity crisis is also felt in the artistic realm. There may be efforts to establish the Ukraine as a film culture. But what the Ukrainian Cinema Foundation does is mostly advertising to foreign production companies to come shoot in the untouched landscapes of the country – without forgetting to mention that there are no powerful unions or obstructive laws limiting child acting or animal treatment. So the film industry seems like an economic sector first and foremost. It’s fitting that while the official institutions are very keen to present the Ukrainian film abroad, in the Ukraine itself there are only two film festivals worth mentioning: the KROK, specialized in animation films, and the “Molodist” festival, famous for its international appeal, having awarded prizes to the likes of Tom Tykwer, Danny Boyle, Stephen Daldry and François Ozon. Ukrainian cinema is hardly to be found there, although after all in 2008 alone seven feature films have been produced.

The Ukrainian poetic cinema

In an artistic sense, the Ukrainian cinema has to face up to the shadows of forgotten ancestors in more ways than one. The historically grown multiplicity of national identity makes it hard for young filmmakers to look up to prominent role models or to leave their paths in order to find their own voices. That may be the reason why after the Ukrainian independence in 1991 there was a return to the 60s: back then Paradzhanov’s film SHADOWS OF FORGOTTEN ANCESTORS had defined a movement that garnered some reputation as the “Ukrainian poetic cinema”. It was oriented on painting traditions, without much interested in narration, rather putting abstractly composed pictures front an centre, experimenting with the form and character of the medium itself. When the country was looking for a Ukrainian voice after 1991 they turned back to this one and only originally Ukrainian art film movement there ever was. But the poetic cinema was a feature of the 1960s and 70s – in a new Ukrainian state, where all of a sudden Western movies could be seen and the theatres had to regulate themselves by market standards, the poetic cinema didn’t have a place any more.

The struggle for an artistic voice still goes on. Some filmmakers have tried to connect the legacy of the poetic cinema with a new sense of reality. The future will tell if and how this can work. Then the Ukrainian cinema has a big chance to grow and become an impressive voice in the European chorus.

Links

• DIAGNOSIS (UA 2009. Myroslav Slaboshpytskiy)