A revolution of volunteers

Today Ukrainian society is in such a state when no simple ways are left for any good initiative. Realization of every project based on some civil and patriotic things faces financial difficulties and bureaucratic hindrances. And when no other variants are left, the ability of people to unite for the sake of a specific goal comes to help. Such moments are the best proof that Ukrainian society has solid islands of living tissue – and there are lots of them.

Recently the House of Cinema in Kyiv has held the launch of the first series of the documentary Ukrainian Revolution. The movie was directed by Ivan Kanivets, graduate of the Kyiv-based Karpenko-Kary National University of Theater, Cinema, and Television.

The way how Ukrainian Revolution was created is actually an example of the struggle of a civic initiative against unfavorable circumstances. This movie was created owing to people’s enthusiasm and help, which involved not only actions, but also donations made by the members of the shooting crew. Nearly 300 people on the whole have worked on the movie without being paid. Incidentally, People’s Artist of Ukraine Bohdan Beniuk read the narrator’s lines, and Bohdan Ivanko played the leading role, UNR Army General Vsevolod Petriv. Meanwhile, the director could have accepted more profitable and less problematic commercial proposals than a movie about Ukrainian history.

However, it is not the story of creation of Ukrainian Revolution that makes it interesting, rather it is the end result – without anguish, unnecessary emotions, and too much lecturing. The movie tells about the process of Ukrainian civil society’s taking shape in the early 20th century and why it failed.

The Day spoke with Ivan KANIVETS on the creative ideas and director’s moves and whether young Ukrainian cinema has any prospects.

The movie Ukrainian Revolution is based on the memoirs of UNR General Vsevolod Petriv. Why did you choose namely his memoirs, not Volodymyr Vynnychenko’s, for example?

“I have read numerous memoirs about this period. As for me, Petriv’s memories are the most interesting in terms of literary description of the events. Neither Vynnychenko, nor Makhno wrote in such a vivid and interesting language. When I was reading Petriv’s memoirs for the first time, I could hardly tear myself away from the book. Most importantly, what Vynnychenko is lacking (which is logical, taking into consideration his political views) is the answer to the question: how come Ukraine, where there was no national awareness, according the czar’s police reports, and the national movement was limited to songs and embroidered shirts, managed to create a state government and efficient army in a matter of several weeks? The reconstruction of this psychological mechanism exited me back when I was working on the movie Neptune’s Trident: where did the power of Ukrainianism, which was demonstrated during the Ukrainian revolution, come from?”

Where did it come from, in your opinion?

“Petriv describes a couple of similar examples. His own destiny gives understanding of how come Ukrainian army had so many professionals. Those were people who took high positions in Russian and Austro-Hungarian armies. For example, Petriv was colonel of Russian Army Headquarters. Out of more than 350,000 officers in 1917 only 3,000 were officers of headquarters. So, they were candidates to the highest military positions. After 1917 almost all of them played an outstanding role either in the White, or in the Red Army. If Petriv continued his service in Russia, he would have made a good career on any of the sides. But he decided to serve Ukraine, because in spite of the fact that he was educated as a professional Russian soldier, deep in his heart he was a Ukrainian, because he was born and grew up in Kyiv region. Many other soldiers who went to fight for Ukraine had nearly the same story.

“As I read the materials of that time I come up with an impression that a Ukrainian was living deep inside in the heart of every Ukrainian, but never showed up, because under the conditions of czar’s empire this could have had a negative impact on his career, freedom, and other aspects of his life. And when Ukrainians saw that there were many people like them around them, it inspired them to establish Ukrainian organizations and after all fight for their rights and their state. It seems to me, this is a very important mechanism, described in Petriv’s memoirs. Unfortunately, I did not see any possibility to convey the whole depth of this psychological transformation in our film, but since very beginning I had a thought: if we make a good movie, almost everyone who sees it will come up with a desire to read Petriv’s memoirs.”

Although this is a documentary, you use many non-standard moves to arouse interest in the audience. For example, everything that the narrator is telling is being reproduced on screen with the help of reenactment clubs’ participants. And the off-screen voice of the narrator is superimposed on the dialogue of the heroes. At the launch of the movie Neptune’s Trident Vasyl Viter said that you are an innovative director, very strong in terms of technology. What methods have you used in your work on Ukrainian Revolution?

“Ukrainian Revolution is both a creative and technical experiment. The thing is not about my desire to use innovations (though of course, I want to apply them), but the fact that it would have been impossible to make the movie without innovations. Our movie widely uses computer graphics. It is used practically in every scene. The graphics has various levels of realism, which depends on the complexity of the scene. At the same time computer graphic does not exist separately from the cameraman’s art. Practically every scene should be shot with correspondence to certain technical demands, so that later we could apply necessary computer graphics to it. Therefore we needed to hire cameramen who could shoot cinema, not ‘wasting the takes.’ The work of the director of photography Volodymyr Kashtanov and camerapersons Svitlana Kulchytska, Rustam Khodzhiev, and Orest Pona has given us much in terms of that.

“The creative concept of the movie was quite unusual: we were trying to show the events in the way they could be shot by the cameramen of the video footage at the beginning of the 20th century. Since before starting to work on Neptune’s Trident I had seen dozens of videos of the World War II period, I had a clear vision of what shots the cameramen of that time took and how those shots were edited. And while the shooting we were trying to work in the same way, even used corresponding lens, if we had such an opportunity. So, we were trying to draw the picture closer to the traditional stylistics of video footage of the early 20th century. Again, as a result we had to make some interesting technical-creative moves. For example, the videos of that time were cut into short scenes, whereas not many different shots were made, so the episode lasted 20, 15, sometimes 30 seconds. As a result the episodes in our movie are very short, which has enabled us to squeeze a long story into a 25-minute series.”

Your attitude to recreation of the epoch is quite captious, which cannot be said about present-day directors who shoot historical, non-action movies, or it is not true?

“I would say I have a paranoid inclination to correct recreation of everything that will be shown on screen. It will hardly succeed to 100 percent, but the level of historical realism in my movies compared with what we usually see on TV is very high. For example, I have had regular consultations with military-historical re-enactors concerning the details of uniform, folkways items and tried to find either objects from that time or modern objects which resemble by their appearance and materials of the objects from that time. As for the UNR Army, my main consultant was Vladyslav Kustenko, and Yevhen Ivanov helped me to recreate the looks of Russian officers. Tymur Barotov, who is also the executive producer of the movie and performs one of the leading roles, has seriously helped us to find the props. And owing to Volodymyr Pravosudov, while we were shooting in Lviv, we got props which had not been able to find in Kyiv. Moreover, we approached very seriously the reconstruction of all the aspects of our movie. For example, we used a geoinformation system to show correctly the route of our heroes from Belarus to Ukraine. For Petriv does not give any precise information about this, just names the populated centers Kost Hordiienko Regiment passed on its way.

“One more example: the soundtrack to the movie includes the songs of that time. I looked for the songs, which could really be sung by soldiers. And in this I was helped by Taras Kompanichenko who has been collecting authentic tunes and lyrics to them. In his archives we found a lot of such songs. Actually, Taras Kompanichenko and his band Khoreia kozatska performed the soundtracks for our movie.

“On the whole we did not use the sounds from available sound libraries, we looked for our own, which is much more complicated and requires much more time and efforts. Andrii Parkhomenko was the movie’s sound producer. He composed the main theme of the movie, which is performed by the National Brass Academic Orchestra of Ukraine. It took him a while to compose the song, but during this period we managed on the project level to adapt it to different episodes of the movie in order to achieve necessary dramatic tension. And the version, which was ready for being performed by the orchestra, corresponded well to the cutting structure of the movie.”

What is the budget of the movie?

“It is hard to calculate it, because the movie has been created by volunteer work of more than 300 people. And many of them have worked on the movie for months. Therefore to calculate the budget one needs to know what honoraria one would have had to pay to these people. Speaking about the money involved, it was big for me but from the angle of commercial cinema, where one can shoot approximately 30 seconds of material for this money, it was tiny. I would say the main budget of our film is people who were working for the sake of the idea. And frankly speaking, I have no idea how to calculate this contribution.”

Did you have any sponsors?

“We appealed to people who could have financed this movie, but unfortunately we met with a refusal in all directions. Then we started the work based on our own finances. Nearly 80 percent of all the money spent is the money of our shooting crew. Speaking about the non-material help, I would like to make a special mention of the participation of the Sevastopol Organization of the Union of the Officers of Ukraine, military-historical clubs, as well as employees of many museums. While shooting the episode about Ukrainian sailors in Kyiv, which will be part of the second series, I was lucky to involve the students of the military-marine department of the Academy of Armed Forces of Ukraine. They played the sailors. Although the episode is rather short, it will add realism.”

Is it possible for a young film director in Ukraine to find funding for his movie?

“It depends on the movie. While I was working on my latest movie, I have received a couple of proposals, interesting in terms of money. For example, the French wanted to shoot a movie in Ukraine and they needed a Ukrainian producer. They addressed this proposal to me. On the whole, the idea was quite interesting: this is a full-length movie about love between a French man and a Ukrainian woman. But compared with the Ukrainian Revolution, it seemed to me this topic was not worth my attention.”

What would you advise to a young director to do after graduation, if he is eager to realize his creative ideas?

“An army commander could say approximately the following thing: we have a task and in all likelihood we won’t come back alive, therefore I cannot order anyone to fulfill it, I need volunteers. The same thing refers to young Ukrainian directors. For whichever sphere you are involved in, be it commercial films or not, the state of moviemaking in Ukraine envisages a very complicated life, compared with the life of your colleagues abroad. And only a person who came to work as a director with full awareness can stand this.”

It is not a new opinion that shooting films about the events of Ukrainian past could be really spectacular.

“Sure.”

But why don’t either producers, or production companies, which could have made profit on this, take any interest in these topics?

“First of all, I doubt that one can make money on these plots. For, as Firecrosser has proved, it is hard to make enough profit from cinema screenings of this kind of movies to recompense the expenditures.”

But the screenings took place in a very inconvenient time.

“Of course, there have been various problems, but the movie is quite tolerant in terms of perception. I mean it is so much depoliticized that people of different political views will perceive it in an approximately similar way. If one takes Ukrainian Revolution, people who hate Ukraine will hardly perceive this movie in a positive way. Therefore, if we make a full-length movie, it seems to me the box office earnings will be even lower. And in all probability this movie will cost more. Correspondingly, the prospect of making money on this seems quite dim to me.”

We have a strange situation. If we show, conditionally speaking, Brave Heart in Ukrainian movie theaters, it will bring profit, but the screening of a Ukrainian historical blockbuster won’t.

“The reason is that foreign movies are depoliticized concerning Ukraine. There are no political forces or parties who would support or who would be against these screening. No one will obstruct the screening of such movie. If we shoot films about Ukrainian history, someone will put spokes in your wheels.”

If one abstracts from the financial side, speaking about the creative side of the matter: do we have any directors or actors whose level would make it possible to shoot a full-scale fiction historical epopee.

“The answer to this question consists of two parts. Concerning the notion like directly creative potential, we do have it, because we have corresponding topics, many of them: tens if not hundreds. There are people who can help to show these topics in a proper way. There are people who can find appropriate technical decisions. So, on the whole we have some creative potential to make world-level cinema in Ukraine. But taking into consideration that the number of movies shot these days is very low, and the movies that are made have a low budget or no budget at all, we have no such notion as direct technical practice. Correspondingly, if we start to shoot high-budget movies in Ukraine tomorrow, I am sure that unfortunately it will have many technical drawbacks. But this is a matter of time, because after working on three or four pictures, people will acquire needed experience, which will help them to improve these drawbacks.”

As far as I know, you are distributing this movie free of charge on the Internet. How reasonable is this? Does not it teach Ukrainians that they don’t need to pay for Ukrainian production?

“From the viewpoint of the project’s goal, it is more than reasonable. For in fact the past 18 months, in spite of all our optimism, were very hard for me and the members of the shooting crew. We were working so hard for people to learn their own history. Taking into account the situation with screening of Ukrainian movies, we cannot expect that we will reach everyone. Correspondingly, we need to give the people an opportunity to show initiative. We have given all possibilities for this. The movie is available in open access. We have uploaded it to our website (http://ur.kvideo.com.ua/), where one can download it as a single high-quality file, which can be screened with the help of any projector. I know that our country has thousands or even tens of thousands cinema clubs which can screen Ukrainian Revolution for their members without coordinating this with us. It seems to me that distribution of the movie in this way will be much faster and efficient than if we made personal agreements with every person.”