After the suggestion to perhaps contact some people who are in the know when it comes to Ukrainian cinema, I decided to write to Yuri Shevchuk at Columbia who seems to run its Ukrainian film club, which has access to many Ukrainian films with English subtitles. This, in the end, turned out to be a fruitful decision. I first wrote to them before Christmas and basically summerised that I was an English student who was studying languages and had developed an interest in film. As I had a Ukrainian partner, I wanted to watch some films from her country but it had proved almost impossible thus far as there is very little available and even less that is of reasonable quality or with English subtitles. I noted that I'd be delighted if they could help me get hold of some films in any way or at least point me in the right direction. They forwarded me on to someone (Ivan Kozlenko) at the Dovezhenko Centre in Ukraine, which is essentially their national film institute, and told me that they should be able to provide me with some DVDs.
Kozlenko told me that they could happily send me some films of Dovzhenko, Illienko and Mykolaichuk, all of which would be English subtitled, and that I'd only have to pay for postage. He also told me about the further set of other silent Ukrainian films on which he was working and that this would be ready in the new year and would be available to purchase. In the end we were both going to be in Lviv over New Year so we had arranged to meet, but unfortunately we were unable to as the Ukrainian silent films set was behind schedule so he had to stay and work on it. I was happy to wait until this set was finished so he could send them to me all at once but, in truth, I did get a little anxious though as this all seemed to good to be true.
I needn't have worried, however. At the beginning of April he sent three sets to Lviv with a friend, who I had my partner meet as I wasn't there. They were the Illienko, Mykolaichuk and Silent Ukrainian sets. I wrote to Kozlenko thanking him for everything whilst at the same time asking about the Dovzhenko DVDs. He apoligised and told me that were no more of these available. I, of course, was both very happy but also disappointed as I'd have loved to get ahold of some of Dovzhenko's rarer works on DVD. My fiancee showed me the sets over Skype and they did indeed look great, although I was very excited to get here and have a look myself as it still seemed too good to be true. About a week later it got even better. An unexpected parcel arrived in Ukraine with another copy of the Illienko and Mykolaichuk boxes... in addition to the Dovzhenko set. It seems wires got crossed at some point and he had instructed a colleague to send me the disks while he was away at the Berlinale and hadn't realised that his colleague had actually done it. As the postal system took its time to take the parcel from Kiev to Lviv, the parcel was sent a while before his friend came to Lviv but arrived much later.
Anyway, I'm now in possession of four boxsets of Ukrainian films, all of which have English subtitles... and one of which is
the much fabled Dovzhenko set! As you'll see below, the fact that they were just referred to as "some DVDs" in the e-mails at times really undersells them. All of them are excellent quality boxsets.
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First of all, the Oleksandr Dovzhenko set:
I'm sure a few people here will have seen this set in various places online. Essentially it contains his entire surviving oeuvre. Ten discs in total, nine of are his films, as well as a tenth disc that features documentaries on the man and his work. All of the films have English, Russian, Ukrainian and French subtitles, have been restored and are in their OAR etc. Look on Wikipedia or IMDb if you wish to see a complete list: he made 16 films in total, 15 are here.
Vasya, The Reformer is lost, while
The Diplomatic Pouch is missing the first reel or two. The set has two versions of
Zvenigora,
Arsenal and
Earth, with them being shown silent at their original run speed and with the soundtracks for their re-releases in the 1970s which were slowed down. Each disk has brief linear notes included for the contained films. Then there are two thick books: one of which is a bibliographical timelime of Dovezhenko's life (100 pages per language); the other is the book Dovzhenko wrote for
Ukraine in Flames and has speech by Stalin on Dovzhenko and Soviet film (couple hundred pages). There are another two pamphlets with the screenplay for the lost film
Vasya. All of this is bilingual English and Ukrainian.
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The second set is the Mykolaichuk set:
All eight films on this set have both Ukrainian and Russian tracks, as well as Ukrainian, Russian and English subtitles. The only exception to this is
Shadows, which only has a Ukrainian track. All the films have been restored and are in their OARs. No written material this time but a beautiful set on the whole. Each beautiful foldout digipak has a brief summary of the film in English and Ukrainian.
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The third set is the Illienko set:
This time, five of these films have the Ukrainian track and both Ukrainian and English subtitles. The two exceptions are
The Forest Song, Mavka and
The Legend of Princess Olha. Both of these films seemed to have had a difficult time with the Soviet censors of the time and the Ukrainian track for both of these films didn't make it past them.
Forest has both a Ukrainian and Russian track, although the Ukrainian one uses the Russian where parts have still not been found.
Princess Olha has just the Russian track as the Ukrainian one is completely lost. Both of these two releases have Russian subs alongside the Ukrainian and English ones. Again, all the films have been restored and are in their OARs. Each beautiful foldout digipak has a brief summary of the film in English and Ukrainian.
These Mykolaichuk and Illienko sets are quite amazing considering the majority of these films are barely available in the West -
Shadows is pretty much the only exception to this - even as torrrents on private trackers, and if they are then they are either cropped, of very poor quality or they tend to only have the Russian audio, which isn't the intention as these are very much Ukrainian films with Ukrainian-speaking Ukrainian people.
Both of these sets, and the Dovzhenko one too, were commissioned by Ukraine's Ministry of Culture and Tourism and were made for cultural exchange or gifts and, hence, were not be sold commercially. As a result all have on screen messages that appear once or twice during the films noting that these discs were part of a non-commerical set etc. and to buy or sell them is illegal. I stress that, thankfully, the text is small, much smaller than the subtitles in fact, and it isn't particularly distracting at all, and is really a minute price to pay to be able to own these films.
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The fourth and final box is the Ukrainian silent films set that was alluded into in previous posts. I believe it will be available for purchase eventually, although I was just given mine along with the others:
There are six Ukrainian/Soviet silent films all of which have had new scores recorded. Some are a little wacky and avant garde; some are a little more traditional. The six are grouped thematically: Psychological Drama, Revolutionary Epic and Non-Fiction Film. The films, respectively, are
Zvenigora (original version) and
Perekop,
Man with a Movie Camera and
In Spring, and
Two Days and
Night Coachman.
Two Days also has its original soundtrack, as well as
Man with a Movie Camera having its In the Nursey score. All films have Ukrainian interitles, in place of the original Russian - although it's important to reflect on how Russian would have been all but mandatory back in the day and Ukrainian wouldn't have been a choice - and English, French, German, Spanish and Russian subtitles. From the point of view of flavour the two languages are very, very, similar anyway. In the box there are also nine beautiful poster postcards and an generously thick book detailing the project, the films and the directors and actors involved. It's over 250+ pages thick and in both English and Ukrainian.
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All four sets are truly fantastic and are as good as anything I own, especially when you take into account how difficult it would be to see these films otherwise. Any of them would be release of the year contenders if they were released over here. I was hoping to just get pointed in the direction of some decent quality video files, or perhaps some DVD-Rs(!), when I started looking into this. Never did I expect to be sent all of these sets for only taking the time for some e-mail correspondence!
