Ukraine List

I have been following the film dubbing debate recently where language politics are playing out through the film industry. Essentially, the government, courts, and distributors are battling it out on how best to promote and regulate the use of Ukrainian language in films. The arguments can be quite heated at times as it brings up […]

_______________

“If it is necessary to choose between truth and beauty, I’ll choose beauty.” — Olexandr Dovzhenko
I’ve recently been intrigued by the Ukrainian filmmaker, Olexandr Dovzhenko. He was active from the 1920s into the 1940s and is often grouped in the trio of great Soviet filmmakers along with Eisenstein and Pudovkin. The most known of Dovzhenko’s […]

_______________

I’ve had a draft post about Gogol Bordello languishing since the beginning of January, so I thought I would finally polish it off. And since Eugene Hutz is one of the co-stars in the movie Everything is Illuminated, I thought I’d just combine the two topics.
Anyhow, I went to see Gogol Bordello in mid-December at […]

_______________

I saw on the Late Show with David Letterman last week an interview with Vera Farmiga who is in the movie The Departed (Отступники), which just received five Oscar nominations. You can see the movie trailer here, and there is also an interview with Vera on iFilm that you can watch.
On Letterman, she talked about […]

_______________

Apparently, real Kazakh journalists are having a hard time getting interviews in the US due to the mokumentary Borat: Cultural Learnings of America for Make Benefit Glorious Nation of Kazakhstan. Everyone is worried about looking stupid I guess. NPR reported on one episode this morning citing a Cleveland Plain Dealer story.
Anyhow, a Kazakh journalist […]

_______________

A couple of weeks ago, a friend of mine recommended Everything Is Illuminated, which is a comedy directed by Liev Schrieber. The film came out in 2005 and is based upon a novel by the same name. Anyhow, I thought I would look into it a bit more, but let me first say that I […]

_______________

The Molodist Kyiv International Film Festival will be taking place from the 21st through the 29th of October. Molodist means ‘youth’ and the festival is primarily dedicated to film debuts and student films. Of course there will be a lot of student films and short films being shown, and you can see a complete listing […]

_______________