Following the tradition of bringing the newest and best in contemporary Ukrainian filmmaking, the November 22 presentation by the Ukrainian Film Club of Columbia University at U-of-T will showcase “New Films and New Names from Ukraine”. The program presents recent and never before screened in Canada films: Bozhychi, by Anastasia Kharchenko, Prison Mamas, by Taras Tomenko, Heaven, by Nadia Koshman, as well as the critically acclaimed and much talked about Taxi Driver, by the newest Ukrainian cinematographic sensation Roman Bondarchuk.

1. Prison Mamas, director Taras Tomenko, 2006, 22″
This is the latest and third installment in Tomenko’s socially-engaged film series featuring Ukrainian children, left on the margins of society, the previous two being Shooting Gallery and Liza. This time around he goes south to the province of Odesa to a female correctional facility. There, on special occasions like Valentine’s Day, inmates are allowed to have intimate rendezvous with men that sometimes result in the birth of children. These are the so-called “prison mamas”. Their babies grow up in the crèches affiliated to the correctional facilities where their “prison mamas” are serving their terms. These children often prove to be angels for their mothers giving them the much-needed reason to live a normal life free of criminality.

2. Heaven, director Nadia Koshman, 2006, 24″.
This documentary is a touching tribute to Polina Raiko, an artist by the grace of God. She lived all her life in a village in southern Ukraine (Kherson province) by the Dnipro river, like so many other of her compatriots working hard and facing with dignity many hardships of her fate. Towards the end of her life she discovered in herself a gift for painting. Surprising, strange, and impossible to resist, it became her way of speaking, thinking, and making sense of the world around her. Like so many other talents, Polina Raiko is being discovered only now, after her death.

3. Bozhychi, director Anastasia Kharchenko, 2006, 23″.
A look at the revival of Ukrainian folk song tradition that captures the imagination of an increasing number of young people. The Bozhychi, a folk singing group from Kyiv visits different parts of the country, from central and eastern Ukraine to the Carpathian mountains, unearthing and recording authentic folk songs, including those created in the Soviet and post-Soviet period.

4. Taxi Driver, director Roman Bondarchuk, 2006, 21″.
This exquisitely stylized gem of a film is about a strange unrequited love at first sight of a taxi driver who gives a lift to a beautiful and naïve girl on her way to studies at a “cable college”. Certain that in the college the girl will be turned into everybody’s whore, the enamored young man locks her up and proposes to her. Rejected, he desperately seeks ways to win her heart. This at once comical, grotesque, and absurd story develops in a southern Ukrainian town that through breathtaking camera work of Andrii Lysetskyi looks strangely beautiful and apocalyptic in its decrepitude.

Introducing the films and mediating the post-screening Q-and-A will be Dr. Yuri Shevchuk, lecturer of Ukrainian language and culture and the founding director of the Ukrainian Film Club of Columbia University.