Remembering Jewish Culture in Ukraine: ‘In the Synagogue’ film screening and discussion
Date and time:
Monday 17 June, 2019
18:30 - 20:00
Location:
Bloomsbury Studio
15 Gordon Street
London
WC1H 0AH
In the Synagogue is a fascinating short film by young Ukrainian director Ivan Orlenko based on an unfinished story by Franz Kafka. One of few works by Kafka to deal with Jewish culture overtly, the story describes a strange vision of a beast that a Jewish boy experiences while praying in a synagogue. One of Ukraine’s brightest young directors, Orlenko, has adapted Kafka’s fragment into a 30-minute film, shot entirely in Yiddish, and transposed its action to a synagogue in western Ukraine.
The screening will be preceded by a talk by Dr Uilleam Blacker of UCL SSEES on the ways in which the rich Jewish cultural heritage of Ukraine is remembered and reimagined in the country today, and the challenges which this process of recovery faces. The screening will be followed by a discussion with the director.
The event is co-organised by Ukrainian Institute, London and UCL SSEES, with the support of the Ukrainian Jewish Encounter.
This event will be held in English.
£7 standard / £5 concessions
Speaker
Ivan Orlenko
Ivan Orlenko is a film/stage director, script/play writer, production designer and performer, born in 1987 in Vinnytsya. He has worked in theaters of Ukraine, Russia, Germany, Hungary in different roles – director, video director, set designer, dramaturge, performer. His film “In our synagogue” is the first Ukrainian fiction film in the Yiddish language. Ivan is currently working on his first feature film.
Speaker
Uilleam Blacker
Uilleam Blacker is Lecturer in Comparative East European Culture at the School of Slavonic and East European Studies, University College London. His research focuses on Ukrainian, Polish and Russian culture and cultural memory. He is co-author of Remembering Katyn (2012) and co-editor of Memory and Theory in Eastern Europe (2013). His translations of contemporary Ukrainian authors have appeared in Modern Poetry in Translation, Words Without Borders and Dalkey Archive's Best European Fiction series.
