Ukraine List

Well, for those who have seen the BBC travel shows that feature Michael Palin, he is back with a travel series called Michael Palin’s New Europe. The series starts on 16 September on BBC One and the show covering Ukraine will air on 7 October. You can get the schedule on the BBC website or […]

_______________

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 […]

_______________

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 […]

_______________

I thought this was an excellent photo of an accordion player playing in the Kyiv metro. It was taken by Neil Navneet and is on TrekEarth.

Of course this accordion has keys, but many musicians in Ukraine play what’s called the bayan — or button accordion. This site, says that the accordion originally came from Germany […]

_______________

I guess Homer is sort of Ukrainian by association. The creator of the Simpsons, Matt Groening, is of Ukrainian Mennonite heritage and in fact the namesake of Homer Simpson was Matt’s father, Homer Groening, who was Ukrainian Mennonite and spoke Plautdietsch (Mennonite Low German). This was the language spoken by Mennonites in what was then […]

_______________

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 […]

_______________

I just noticed that The Kyiv Beet is back after two years. It is basically a faux news source much like The Onion. The new issue isn’t yet archived on the original geocities site, so I will post the issue here until I locate the correct URL associated with the The Kyiv Beet. There is […]

_______________