Recovering family histories
Date and time:
Tuesday 25 May, 2021
18:30 - 20:00
Location:
What does it mean to decode your family history, to discover a family you never knew you had? What are the ties that connect people to their homelands even when they live far from them? How can discovered family stories be told creatively?
At this webinar, we will hear from three people who have pieced together their family histories to share them through film, theatre and literature. Theatremaker Matthew Zajac created an award-winning play (also later adapted into a BBC documentary and book) that tells the unlikely story of his father, who grew up on a farm in Galicia (then in Poland, now in Ukraine) and ended up a tailor in the Scottish highlands. British researcher and film-maker Michael Sagatis, who has Polish and Belarusian roots, made a short film about the discovery of his great grandmother’s letters, written from a Soviet labour camp in Kazakhstan. Author and doctor Dennis Ougrin together with his daughter, Anastasia, wrote a moving memoir that traces the history of their family who lived through tumultuous events in Galicia, and Dennis’s own bold journey that led him to East London.
This event will be held in English. Tickets are also available on Eventbrite.
£5 standard / £3 student
Speaker
Matthew Zajac
Matthew Zajac grew up in Inverness and studied drama at Bristol University. He has worked as an actor for 39 years, appearing in theatres throughout the UK and in numerous film, TV and radio productions. Matthew has been Artistic Director of Dogstar Theatre Company since 2004. From its early tours in the Scottish Highlands, Dogstar now tours across Scotland and internationally with tours to festivals and theatres in thirteen countries to date.
In recent years, Matthew became increasingly curious about his Ukrainian and Polish roots, and dug deeper into his family history to discover that his father’s past was a great deal more complicated than he had ever imagined. Matthew created the one-man-show The Tailor of Inverness, exploring his father’s journey from war-torn Ukraine and Poland to the Scottish highlands. The show premiered in 2008, and has since toured internationally, including to Ukraine. Building on the success of the theatre production, Matthew created a BBC documentary with filmmaker Brian Ross (released 2021) and published a book, further exploring his search for the truth about his father’s past, and his experience of travelling to Ukraine, where he both shared his theatre production, and was able to track down family he never knew he had.
Speaker
Dennis Ougrin
Dennis graduated from a medical school in Ukraine in 1998 and came to England to undertake his postgraduate training in child and adolescent psychiatry. Dennis is a consultant child and adolescent psychiatrist and a reader at the Institute of Psychiatry, Psychology and Neuroscience. Dennis is one of the leaders of the Ukrainian Medical Association of the United Kingdom (UMAUK), which develops ties and information exchange between academic and professional healthcare organisations in the UK and Ukraine. Dennis’s main professional interests include prevention of Borderline Personality Disorder and effective interventions for self-harm. Dennis is the author of Therapeutic Assessment, a novel model of assessment for young people with self-harm. Outside of his work in medicine, Dennis is an active member of the Ukrainian community in London, including supporting the Ukrainian scouts. In 2020, Dennis, together with his daughter Anastasia, co-authored One Hundred Years in Galicia: Events That Shaped Ukraine and Eastern Europe, a family memoir and history of their native Galicia.
Speaker
Michael Daniel Sagatis
Michael is an independent researcher and filmmaker born in the UK from Slavic and Baltic heritage. He has travelled and lived in former Soviet republics to premier his documentary exhibition performance Józefa’s Letters - Extraction From Oblivion, which tells the story of Michael’s great-grandmother, who was exiled to a Soviet labour camp in Kazakhstan at the beginning of the Second World War. The project explores how the traumatic legacy of the realpolitik, pursued by former empire powers in the Eastern European borderlands, is carried and felt by successive generations. Michael produced and co-scored this documentary, which has received 9 official film festival selections, and won 'Best Short Film' at the 2020 Eurasian Film Festival.
Moderator
Olesya Khromeychuk
Olesya Khromeychuk is a historian of 20th century East-Central Europe, specialising in Ukrainian history. She has a PhD in History from University College London. Olesya has previously taught at King’s College London, the University of East Anglia, University College London and the University of Cambridge. She also runs a theatre company, Molodyi Teatr London, that stages documentary pieces exploring urgent social and political themes. Originally from Lviv, Olesya moved to the UK in 2000, since when she has been actively engaged in the life of the Ukrainian community in London and beyond. She is the author of Undetermined’ Ukrainians. Post-War Narratives of the Waffen SS ‘Galicia's Division (Oxford: Peter Lang, 2013) and A Loss. The Story of a Dead Soldier Told by His Sister (Stuttgart: ibidem, forthcoming). For more information visit www.olesyakhromeychuk.com.
