Thursday, March 5th, 2009 The Holodomor on Film

Description

The series will present THE LIVING (2008), Serhiy Bukovsky’s new feature documentary on the Great Famine in Ukraine in 1932-33. The non-commercial free-of-charge screening of the film will be a de-facto Canadian premier of this critically acclaimed film by one of the most accomplished documentary filmmakers Ukraine has today.

Film synopsis:
They were children when everything was taken away from their parents. Children of farmers who lived on and tilled the world’s most fertile soil and who were thrown into the grip of hunger to die a slow agonizing death. Those who survived were destined to serve as an obedient army of slaves... Only now are these people beginning to talk about their experience. How their parents were whipped and driven towards a “bright future”. How every last possession was taken away. How whole villages were dying. And how they survived, despite it all... “I wish our generation had never been born,” says one of the witnesses.

Ukraine failed to win its independence after the end of World War I, although it briefly had a chance. The results of that loss became clear at the end of 1920s, when Ukrainians found themselves face to face with the Bolshevist Empire.

The film interlaces the Holodomor tragedy with the global upheavals of the early 1930s: the collapse of economy in the USA, Hitler’s coming to power in Germany, Stalin’s war with the peasantry. This last group was defending private property, so they either had to acknowledge defeat, or die. But in 1933 peasants were left with no choice. The Ukrainian problem–any display of independent national policy–was meant to be solved at the same time.

The film also tells the story of Gareth Jones, a British journalist, whose investigative reporting was not heard in the West. Jones acts as a guide in this journey through history. Governments of numerous countries showed indifference to the suffering, even though they were informed about the situation in Ukraine. This is evident from numerous documents shown in the film. Stories of people who survived the Great Famine are interlaced with these documents and fragments of Gareth’s diaries, which he kept during his trip to Ukraine in March of 1933.

“What is your dream, baba Nastia?” Sergiy Bukovskiy asks one of the survivors. Her answer is short: “Death”. But these aging men and women, who survived hell on earth, are so real, so living and natural... They bring an agricultural society back to its feet and make it master of its own land. Only the living can rise again.

“The Living” is the best documentary film on the history of Ukraine I have ever seen. The filmmakers have achieved what no one before them was fully able to do-–to combine true historical facts and a genuinely emotional experience, and to present Ukrainian history in the context of world history. The result is not only a monument to those who perished [in the Holodomor] and a tribute to the survivors, but also a fervent, dignified missive to their descendants.”
Serhii Plokhii, the Hrushevsky Professor of Ukrainian History, Harvard University

The film was funded by the International Charitable Fund “Ukraine 3000”