The 2018 Ukrainian film festival,
held at Trinity College, Cambridge, on the evenings of 9 and 10 November, was
unusual in not having Dr Rory Finin at the helm as he had begun a two-year
sabbatical shortly before. The festival
programme, however, was up to the usual standard and mixed fiction and non-fiction,
humour and the very serious. It was
introduced on the Friday night by Dr Olenka Pevny, Rory’s replacement as
director of the Cambridge Ukrainian Studies department.
The first film, shown on Friday
evening, was Invisible Battalion: The
Stories of Our Women at War (2017), directed by Iryna Tsilyk, Alina Gorlova
and Svitlana Lischynska. There have been
shorts focusing on women in the conflict in the east of the country, but this
documentary is being promoted as ‘the first full-length film about the
Ukrainian women’s participation in the war with Russia.’ It focuses on six women who had, or still
were at the time of filming, participated in the war in Donbass, showing how
they are playing an active and vital role.
At the start of the conflict in
2014 the Ukrainian government was woefully underprepared, and the armed forces
had been run down on the assumption that the country would not have to confront
external aggression. Volunteers filled
the gap until the Kiev government could gear itself up to make a response, and
many of these were women who considered they had as much right to defend their
country from external aggression as the men, and should be treated on equal
terms. Unfortunately they found themselves
discriminated against and fighting two wars: one against the Russian-backed
separatists, and the Ukrainian authorities for recognition of their sacrifices. That struggle is part of a broader effort to
achieve gender equality.
There was no conscription and
severely limited opportunities for women within the regular army when the war
began, so they had to join the volunteer forces instead. In that capacity they were not listed as
combatants because they were not regulars. Consequently they have largely had
to rely on ad-hoc help from the population rather than official sources. As they receive little support from the
Ukrainian government, the Ukrainian Women’s Fund and UN Women devised the
Invisible Battalion project. This is
designed to highlight, among legislators and the public, the roles being played
by women both in the front line and in support, study the effects of war on
women combatants, and improve conditions during and after their period of
service. The film is part of that
campaign.
The six interviewees fulfill, or
fulfilled, a variety of functions in the war effort. Each segment is fairly brief, but gives a
feeling for their day-to-day lives.
There is no commentary and the stories are left to speak for themselves. Text information is provided on the participants’
civilian lives, and they come from all walks of life; what they did or do in
the war, undertaking jobs as varied as medic, sniper, administrative support
and trainer; the places they served; and their awards (which are often
numerous). Some have been directly involved
since 2014 and tiredness is etched on their faces.
Participation takes its
toll. Emotions have to be repressed; as
one interviewee says, she cannot cry despite the terrible things she has
witnessed. PTSD is a significant theme
of the film. A woman recounts how since
she came back she has become alienated from her family. There have been a number of suicides among
female veterans and difficulties reintegrating into civil society after having
been changed by the war. Unfortunately
there is little assistance for those in that situation, and such intervention
programmes as there are usually not state-sponsored. There are other effects of the war: one woman
says she and her husband are desperate to start a family, but how can they at
the present time? Not all sacrifices are
obvious to the outsider.
An element of the campaign was
the presence after the screening of some of those women involved in the
conflict, and they conducted a Q&A session.
In a wide-ranging discussion they said that part of the fight they are
waging is to have all positions in the military open to women, and to ensure
that promotion opportunities are equal.
At present women suffer discrimination as promotion for them tends to
occur mainly in non-combat roles and the only female general is in the
intelligence service. The situation is
improving though, with more front-line roles opening up for women, but progress
is slow. They also noted the asymmetry
between the support Russia gives the separatists and the outside aid Ukraine
has received to deal with a threat which affects a large number of countries in
the west, and in 2014 the Russians had had much more experience of conflict in
a variety of countries than had the Ukrainians.
Naturally the speakers were
optimistic about the eventual outcome of the war, but only that morning I had
listened to a report on the BBC World Service about elections in Donetsk and
Luhansk, and the reporter pessimistically considered that the longer the
conflict lasted, the more difficult it would be for Ukraine to regain its lost
territories. Even if Ukraine does
succeed, it looks like being an arduous slog.
Whatever the result, the impact will be long-lasting on the country’s
civil society. It was telling that one
speaker noted her belief that Ukrainian citizens now trust central government
less, and tend to rely on each other.
She said that the war has shown the people to each other.
After watching the film and
listening to the speakers it seems remarkable that the government has not given
more recognition to these women, who are fighting just as hard as the men, and
not integrated them into the regular armed services. One clue is perhaps in the response from one
of the women at the Q&A when asked if the women were paid the same as the
men. She replied that while in the
regular army pay rates for men and women doing the same job are the same as far
as she could tell, the women volunteers are not paid at all. Considering how many volunteers there are
fighting alongside the regular troops, the government is being subsidised by
all those women who give their time – and sometimes their blood – on behalf of
the state. They deserve better. The obvious conclusion is that the Kiev
government needs to develop a covenant that sets out its obligations to its
armed forces, men and women, regular and volunteer.
Saturday’s films were a
documentary and a fiction film, Slovo
House (2017) and Between Two Hares
(1961) respectively. Slovo means ‘word’,
and Slovo House (Budynok 'Slovo'), directed by Taras Tomenko, examines a remarkable
period in Ukrainian literature when an entire apartment block was occupied by
writers of the finest calibre in what was then the Ukrainian capital Kharkiv
(before its relocation to Kiev in 1934).
Construction of the block commenced in 1927 and the film suggests it was
a response to inflammatory remarks made by Maxim Gorky, who refused to allow
his novel Mother to be translated
into Ukrainian on the grounds that it was not a language but merely a dialect
of Russian. This naturally offended
Ukrainian sensibilities, and as living conditions in the city were generally
poor, the Slovo House was built to house its writers with Stalin’s blessing as
recompense; Stalin had stated that Ukrainian was indeed a separate language as
part of the policy of Ukrainianisation.
The block was constructed in the shape of an elongated letter C, which
is the first letter of cлово (slovo), and residents began moving into the
relatively luxurious apartments in 1929.
Having all your intellectuals in
one basket made it a cauldron for a creative ferment, assisted by communal
dining, and much of the film is a flat-by-flat profile of the residents,
showing what remarkable personalities they were. It also allowed easy surveillance by the
authorities of these potential subversives.
After a creative flowering in the 1920s the Ukrainianisation policy was
reversed in the 1930s as repression increased and dissenting voices were
silenced in the purges. The Holodomor
signalled further efforts to subjugate Ukrainians, and the writers were accused
of nationalism and even terrorism.
Gradually they were arrested by the NKVD and executed in a ‘cleansing
campaign’, an effort that accelerated after the assassination of Sergei Kirov
in December 1934. By their end, the
purges had touched almost two-thirds of the flats in the Slovo House.
The building is still standing,
though looking rather dishevelled these days, and its story was told through a
mixture of archive film to evoke the period of the Slovo House’s heyday (including
some well-known – perhaps too well known – shots from Man with a Movie Camera) and contemporary footage, mostly drone
shots which lovingly caress the building and its location. A final section lists the inhabitants, a roll
call of Ukraine’s intelligentsia, crushed by Stalinism. Slovo
House won the Golden Dziga for best documentary at the 2018 Ukrainian Film
Academy Awards, and it is a worthy winner for bringing to wider attention an
assault on Ukrainian identity that went hand-in-hand with the starvation being
inflicted on the country by the regime in Moscow.
There was a technical hitch which
delayed the start of the final film so sadly the audience for Between Two Hares (Za dvoma zaytsiamy), directed by Viktor Ivanov, was quite small,
though the wine provided was adequate compensation for the wait. Made during the Khrushchev period, ‘Ukrainian
screwball comedy’ is probably not a phrase which is used very often, but this
was a very funny film when non-Soviet audiences might have expected output at
that time to be on the dour side. The
title comes from a Ukrainian saying that if you try to chase two hares you
won’t get either, which was something of a spoiler.
The film concerns the
misadventures of Svirid Golokhvasty, a dapper young barber in early
twentieth-century Kiev who is on the brink of bankruptcy because of his
profligate ways. His solution is to
marry for money. One likely prospect is
Pronya, the spoilt and exceedingly plain daughter of a pair of wealthy but
peasant shopkeepers, whom he courts in the guise of being well-off. Meanwhile he falls in love with Galina, the
beautiful daughter of a poor woman who sells apples, but who wisely does not
reciprocate his affection.
Caught by her harridan mother paying
attention to Galina, he finds himself betrothed even though there will be no
dowry. What he does not realise is that
the two mothers are sisters, so it can only be a matter of time before his duplicitous
behaviour is exposed. Galina as it
happens is in love with the blacksmith and cannot abide Golokhvasty’s dandyish
ways; Pronya on the contrary finds him attractive thanks to his sharp dressing
and elevated (if often nonsensical) speech, and feels that he is of the right
social status. So, not aware of the true
state of affairs, Pronya agrees to marry him.
Matters come to a head when he
and Pronya are about to plight their troth at the cathedral. He is recognised by some of the participants
from the ‘engagement’ party at the poor relatives’ shack and they rush off to
alert Galina’s mother. As the happy
couple process up the steps the poor sister denounces the groom for the cad he
is, and Pronya berates him for humiliating her.
He vainly denies he had entered into an engagement with someone else but
naturally the wedding is off and he and his cronies are thrown unceremoniously
down the steps by the crowd. Picking
himself up he musters his dignity, and he and his friends retreat from the
scene.
The film holds up very well and
is an entertaining well-integrated mix of madcap comedy and social satire
(complete with sexy nun). Watching this
version is a fairly new experience because we were told that the original
Ukrainian soundtrack was only rediscovered five years ago. On completion the film was dubbed into
Russian and received wide distribution in the Soviet Union in that state. In 2013 the Ukrainian soundtrack was found in
a regional archive and the film restored to its original condition. While there is great affection for the film in
both Ukraine and Russia, there is something symbolic in recovering a Ukrainian
film that had had its identity usurped by Russia. After the serious films preceding it, it was a
pleasantly escapist conclusion to the festival.
