Russia’s invasion of Ukraine has prompted the biggest shake-up of European energy markets this century. This film explains how Europe became so dependent on cheap Russian gas, and explores the hard choices facing the EU as it tries to balance energy security and climate ambitions. Read more at https://on.ft.com/3D7bv31
The Secret Protocol at Yalta Must Be Known and Acknowledged If the Callousness of the past Is Not to Be Repeated
Last Sunday, August 14, was the 76th anniversary of the beginning of Operation Keelhaul, the execution of a secret protocol agreed to at Yalta.
I believe perhaps one can best get an appreciation of the horror of the operation by watching the British documentary, Orders from Above (1975), a link to which can be found at the very end of this email and below. I recommend it whether or not you read the rest of this email.
I do note that throughout the documentary Soviets are consistently inappropriately referred to as Russians. Of course, the “Soviet Union” and “Russia” were erroneously seen as synonyms throughout the life of the Soviet Union and in too many cases after.
Individually and collectively man is supposed to learn from history yet one must address man’s inhumanity to man over-and-over again. And, in the case of Operation Keelhaul it is important know it was not a case of the Nazis brutality but the British and Americans doing the unthinkable.
Continue reading “Operation Keelhaul: Secret Protocol at Yalta”
Documentary film about the secrets of Ukraine’s Declaration of Independence [24 August 1991]. Why did the communists vote for independence? Why did George Bush come a month before? Who actually wrote the Declaration of Independence? Find the answers to all these questions in the video!
’10 Things Everyone Should Know About Ukraine’ brings to life familiar and yet unknown stories about Ukraine. Ten short films [just over an hour in total] tell about famous figures, historical and cultural events in Ukraine, and invite to see Ukraine of ХІХ-ХХI in the local and world contexts.
Intro: 10 Things Everyone Should Know About Ukraine
Taras Shevchenko: The Serf Who Founded a Nation
Lesia Ukrainka: Fin-de-siècle Ukrainian Feminism
Why Do Ukrainians Take To The Streets?
Les Kurbas: Ukrainian Avant-Garde Theatre
Fighting for the Self: Poetry from the Gulag
Holodomor: The Ukrainian Famine of the 1930s
Ukrainian Cinema: Giving a Voice to the Silenced
The Bloodlands: Ukraine in World War II
Andrei Sheptytskyi: A Count Who Became a Priest
У 2017 році ми зняли документальний фільм про українську політику. Їздили показувати його країною і навіть мали певний резонанс, коли нам вимикали світло перед показом. Але тоді ми так і не виклали цей фільм у мережу, тепер виправлю цю помилку.
Фільм «Клептократія» це антологія українського політикуму від Кравчука і майже до Зеленського. В цьому фільмі ми пророкували глобальний запит на оновлення, але тоді ще не було зрозуміло яка сила з’явиться. І тим більше неможливо було передбачити наслідки такого оновлення…
Передивіться «Клептократію» і пригадаєте багато чого цікавого з нашої новітньої історії. Якщо вам сподобається, ми подумаєм на тим, чи є доцільним знімати другу частину.
Kleptocracy (from Greek κλέπτης kléptēs, “thief”, κλέπτω kléptō, “I steal”, and -κρατία -kratía from κράτος krátos, “power, rule”) is a government whose corrupt leaders (kleptocrats) use political power to appropriate the wealth of their nation, typically by embezzling or misappropriating government funds at the expense of the wider population.
On April 26, 1986, a tragedy of unspeakable magnitude occurred at the Chornobyl nuclear power plant in Northern Ukraine. At 1:23 AM, an explosion at the plant blew the concrete roof off Reactor #4 spewing huge amounts of toxic radioactive particles into the atmosphere. Other than immediate attempts by Chornobyl workers to put out the fire caused by the explosion, there was no official government reaction to this catastrophe – no announcements were made, no warnings given – nothing that showed the slightest concern for the population of Ukraine, or for the global community in general. In a deliberate act of what can only be seen as negligence and disregard for the safety of millions, Soviet authorities remained silent. Continue reading “35th Anniversary of the Chornobyl Disaster”
35 years ago today, on April 26, 1986, the worst nuclear accident in history occurred in Chornobyl (Chernobyl), Ukraine.
Chronicle of Severe Days (1986) | 6.5 min
Film by Volodymyr (Vladimir) Shevchenko | Narrated by Elena Filatova
What you will see:
Continue reading “35 Years Later: Remembering the 1986 Chornobyl (Chernobyl) Nuclear Disaster”
The extraordinary story of Andrei Sheptytskyi, a count who gave up a life of wealth to become a Ukrainian Catholic priest, who saved Jewish lives in WWII and eventually founded Ukraine’s most modern university.
With Bishop Borys Gudziak, Archeparch of Philadelphia for Ukrainians and Metropolitan for the Ukrainian Catholic Church in the USA, President of the Ukrainian Catholic University.
Take a tour celebrating the life and achievements of Ukraine’s foremost cultural icon on the 200th anniversary of his birth.
See original works by T. Shevchenko loaned by the National Museum in the name of Taras Shevchenko in Kyiv, Ukraine.
How the multiple occupations of Ukraine during the Second World War had a devastating impact on the populations of Ukraine, including the Holocaust.
With Professor Timothy Snyder, the Richard C. Levin Professor of History at Yale University and a permanent fellow at the Institute for Human Sciences in Vienna.
Throughout its history, Ukrainian cinema has captured the plight of marginalised peoples and identities, allowing those forgotten or hidden from society to come to life on screen.
With Dr Olga Bryukhovetska, Associate Professor of Cultural Studies at the National University of Kyiv Mohyla Academy.
How Ukrainian modernist writer Lesia Ukrainka (1871-1913) pioneered a new feminist literature, at the forefront of European trends of the time.
With Dr Sasha Dovzhyk, Associate Research Fellow, Birkbeck, University of London.
Why Should the World Care?’ How the Holodomor fits into the wider understanding of Stalin’s USSR, and how the famine was covered in world media.
With Dr Daria Mattingly, Leverhulme Trust Early Career Fellow and Affiliated Lecturer in Slavonic Studies, University of Cambridge.
How the dissident poet Vasyl Stus fought for human and national rights and created unique poetry of the self, overcoming the extreme conditions of the Soviet Gulag.
With Dr Bohdan Tokarsky, URIS Fellow at the University of Basel and the 2020/21 Prisma Ukraїna Fellow at the Forum Transregionale Studien, Berlin.
How the experimental director, Les Kurbas, radically transformed Ukrainian theatre and was at the cutting edge of theatre innovations across Europe.
With Dr Mayhill C. Fowler, Associate Professor, Director of Program in Russian, East European and Eurasian Studies, Stetson University.
Why Ukrainians, in spite of their divisions, are always ready to come out onto the streets and stand up for their rights.
With Dr Ola Onuch, Associate Professor in Politics (Senior Lecturer), University of Manchester.
How over the centuries, the territory of Ukraine has been home to a huge diversity of languages and literatures, with unique and dynamic interplay between different cultures.
With Dr Uilleam Blacker, Associate Professor in the Comparative Culture of Russia and Eastern Europe, University College London.
How Taras Shevchenko (1814-1861) went from being a serf to becoming Ukraine’s most important poet, giving a voice to the Ukrainian people.
With Dr Rory Finnin, University Senior Lecturer (Associate Professor) in Ukrainian Studies, University of Cambridge.
Short films that bring to life ten familiar and yet unknown stories including that of the serf who became an artist and a poet; a writer who rewrote European classics from a woman’s point of view, a theatre director who thought that revolutionary art could change the world, a count who chose to become a priest, an author who wrote more than 300 poems in his prison cell, and film directors who gave a voice the silenced.
They tell the stories of Ukraine as a battleground of murderous regimes fighting over the territory and its people, Ukraine as a melting pot of languages and cultures each influencing one another, Ukraine as a place where revolutions happen in order to bring about peace, Ukraine of many stories told in many voices.
IMDb: A Welsh journalist breaks the news in the western media of the famine in Ukraine in the early 1930s.
Decider: Stream It Or Skip It: ‘Mr. Jones’ On Hulu, A Harrowing Stalin-Era Political Thriller That Feels Eerily Timely
Atlantic Council: “Mr. Jones” film exposes the fake news campaign behind Stalin’s Ukrainian genocide
The Ukrainian film “Atlantis” by Valentyn Vasyanovych will be featured at the 49th annual New Directors/New Films festival that will be available nationwide via the FLC Virtual Cinema, December 9–20, 2020.
Find out more about Atlantis.
A debut of remarkable formal precision, Valentyn Vasyanovych’s Atlantis is an urgent yet highly controlled dispatch from the wartorn Donbass in Eastern Ukraine. Set five years into the future, this all-too-real dystopia uses a series of distanced, compositionally rigorous frames to follow Sergiy, a Ukrainian soldier suffering from PTSD as he tries to restart his life amidst these scourged, uninhabitable lands. Rather than foreground the in-the-moment battle between Russia and Ukraine, Vasyanovych instead powerfully depicts the inevitable aftermath, marked by economic and ecological degradation. Yet somehow, through a new volunteer job exhuming the dead, Sergey finds an unexpected path back to humanity.
Find out more about the festival lineup.
Get tickets here. Special offer from the Ukrainian Institute of America: use promo code NDNF20 to save 20% on the 49th New Directors/New Films in the Film at Lincoln Center Virtual Cinema!
Копродукційний українсько-американський художній фільм 2000-го року кінорежисера Олеся Янчука. Відзнятий на кіностудії “Студія Олесь-фільм” за сприяння Українського конгресового комітету Америки (УККА) і за участю Національної кіностудії художніх фільмів ім. О. Довженка.
“По завершенню Другої світової війни ведеться нерівна на теренах Західної України боротьба на два фронти: спочатку проти німецьких військ та диверсійних загонів НКВС СРСР, а потім – самотужки у лютому герці з усією каральною силою СРСР. У Карпатах продовжують збройну боротьбу частини та невеликі боївки Української повстанської армії. На чолі армії – талановитий командир, славетний генерал-хорунжий Роман Шухевич, знаний серед воїнів УПА як Тарас Чупринка.”
An investigation into America’s increasingly bitter, divided and toxic politics.
Part One of the documentary traces how Barack Obama’s promise of unity collapsed as increasing racial, cultural and political divisions laid the groundwork for the rise of Donald Trump.
Part Two of the documentary examines how Donald Trump’s campaign exploited the country’s divisions and how his presidency has unleashed anger on both sides of the divide.
