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10 Things Everyone Should Know About Ukraine are 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.
Producer/Director: Nicola Roper | Producer: Olesya Khromeychuk | Researcher: Maria Montague | Archivist: Serhiy Zakharchenko.
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.
With special thanks to: Cambridge Ukrainian Studies, Uilleam Blacker, Virlana Tkacz and Yara Arts Group, Lesia Scholey, Anna Morgan.
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.
With special thanks to: Lesia Scholey, Anna Morgan.
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.
With special thanks to: Sasha Dovzhyk, Martin Lohrer, Lily Kahn, Lesia Scholey, Anna Morgan.
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.
With special thanks to: Lois Oxley, Virlana Tkacz, Lesia Scholey, Anna Morgan.
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.
With special thanks to: Samara Pearce, Lesia Scholey, Anna Morgan.
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.
With special thanks to: Daniel Fedorowycz, Vincent Hiribarren, the MAPA: Digital Atlas of Ukraine, Ukrainian Research Institute at Harvard University, Serhii Plokhii, Kostyantyn Bondarenko, Lesia Scholey, Anna Morgan.
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.
With special thanks to: Volodymyr Radko, Oleh Yaskiv, Lida Shyhymaha, Metropolitan Sheptytsky Information-Cultural Centre, Ukrainian Catholic University, Lesia Scholey, Anna Morgan.
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.
With special thanks to: Dmytro Stus, Stus Centre, Lesia Scholey, Anna Morgan.
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.
With special thanks to: Oleksandr Dovzhenko National Film Studio, Lesia Scholey, Anna Morgan.
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.
With special thanks to: Sergii Proskurnia, Lesia Scholey, Anna Morgan.
‘10 Things Everyone Should Know About Ukraine’ is made in partnership with the Ukrainian Institute and H.S. Pshenychnyi Central State Film, Photo and Sound Archive of Ukraine.
