Vasyl VITER: Bohdan Khmelnytsky’s figure hides meanings Ukrainians need

On April 20, 2010, the VIATEL studio is to present its own documentary interpretation of one of the canonical (yet as usual, not without some “ideological coating”) personalities of the Ukrainian history — Bohdan Khmelnytsky — at 6.30 p.m. in the Kyiv Cinema Center.

Actually, the audience of the project “The Play of Fate” on Channel 5 has been able to appreciate this interpretation due to a serialized version of Bohdan Khmelnytsky, which was broadcast before the new year 2010. Now VIATEL is to present an almost two-hour-long full-length version of the film. Everyone who will appear at the proper time and venue will be able to see it.

According to Vasyl Viter, the studio’s founder and director, the group of documentary filmmakers spent almost five years working on it. However, this is not the longest-lasting project on VIATEL’s record. Perhaps, the most distinctive of all the films created over the 16 years of the studio’s existence is the trilogy dedicated to three Ukrainian shrines: the Saint Michael Cathedral, the Dormition Cathedral, and the Saint Volodymyr Cathedral in Khersones, which were restored and revived during the 1990s and 2000s. VIATEL captured on film the restoration of these Ukrainian spiritual centers for nearly a decade, 1997 through 2005. The Day began its interview with Viter with a question about the symbolic meaning of these films.

One of the most singular productions of VIATEL studio is the three films about the revival of these Ukrainian cathedrals. The shooting took almost a decade, resulting in a kind of a chronicle of the restoration. Can these films be perceived as parallels to the revival of the state? Did you charge these three movies with exactly this meaning?

“I was mostly interested in another thing in those films: just the same men and women, who now were restoring the cathedrals before our eyes, had been ruining them for decades prior to that. We even might have filmed their grandchildren in the process of reconstruction. This is virtually a case of historical redemption.

“We were mesmerized by the process of restoration and reconstruction. As a matter of fact, in the films which last more than one hour we show how bricks are laid, icons painted, and domes gilded. Nevertheless, the spectators cannot take their eyes off the screen as if spellbound.”

How do you pick the heroes for your films, in particular, for the documentary series “The Play of Fate”?

“First, we made up a list of one hundred names which we believed had to be told about. Then we got together to decide who was the first to appear in the films, and our 100 names grew to 250. For us filmmakers, the main criterion in handpicking characters is in the possibility to make an interesting film story out of a person’s life. Without this dramatic mainspring, everything will fall apart.

“Recently I was astonished to learn that there were as many as 3,000 names of outstanding Ukrainians, including our contemporaries and people of Ukrainian descent.”

These might not be all the names. So much remains unknown. For example, recently at the Museum of Literature an exhibit of works by Paraska Plytka-Horytsvit was closed. She was a Hutsul writer, artist, and philosopher who created scores of manuscripts, which had lain forgotten somewhere in a chest in a Hutsul home...

“On the whole, Ukrainian terra incognita is really vast. I can prove this as we, before starting work on the next film, always plunge into documents. It is good to see such names in the Ukrainian history, for which there is plenty of documentary evidence on their lives and activities. This is where Khmelnytsky belongs.

“However, sometimes you will stumble across such facts or evidence, which change the whole picture in a most dramatic way. For me, even a fable or folk song can be a document.”

What have you been able to find out about Khmelnytsky which might influence the perception of him by society?

“We are used to seeing him mostly as a politician and hetman. His upbringing is hardly ever disclosed. He was brought up in the chivalrous atmosphere of the Sich.

“First he got formal schooling at the Fraternity college in Kyiv, then, a Jesuit college in Lviv. But why was he sent to a Jesuit school?

“Speaking of Khmelnytsky, we have to bear in mind all those ideological bugaboos as well, such as that the Poles are enemies. However, in the documents we find evidence of the contrary treatment of great Poland. All our aristocracy, including Khmelnytsky, favored the royal court.

“That was the time when fraternity schools were just beginning to spring up in Ukraine, and not all the children of our gentry had access to education; besides, it was mostly church schooling. Meanwhile, Polish education was already on the European level.

“In a word, as a director I was mostly interested in the early period of Khmelnytsky’s life.

“It is also said that Khmelnytsky had five children with his first wife, Hanna Somko. For me it came as a revelation that in fact there were nine, but not all of them survived.”

“The Play of Fate” has this peculiarity that the deeds of the outstanding Ukrainians are presented in the light of their private lives. In Lina Kostenko’s Berestechko, according to the author, the whole point is in the victory over the defeat, which Khmelnytsky was able to gain due to a new love. How did you interpret this moment in your film?

“Hanna Zolotarenko fell in love with Khmelnytsky even before the arrival of Helena. For Hanna, her love was a virtual cross which she carried until the end of her life, while Khmelnytsky, in my view, only loved Helena in his life.

“As to Hanna, it was a kind of Khmelnytsky’s private and social maneuver: he relied on Hanna, and also on the elite behind the Zolotarenko family: the Somko clan and Bohun’s group. Khmelnytsky respected Hanna as a friend and advisor, finally, as a person who raised his children. She would always accompany him in his campaigns, e.g. at Pyliavtsi or Bila Tserkva. Meanwhile, no other generals took their wives with them, Hanna was always near. All those close to Khmelnytsky were aware of what she meant to him, let alone the fact that Bohun was in love with her.”

What a remarkable coincidence: first you concentrated on Khmelnytsky, and then, several years later, they started to prepare a new edition of Kostenko’s Berestechko. Yet this is not about Khmelnytsky alone. Recently there have been attempts to reconsider, for example, Mazepa’s figure as well. Do you perceive a certain tendency here, and will it last despite the lack of a favorable political situation?

“Over the recent five years that we have been working on the documentary series ‘The Play of Fate,’ I have come to realize one thing: if you do not speak about history, you do not have society’s attention on this subject. Society has to have information first thing, and then comes the interpretation on the artistic level and the like.

“We have to have something to build our mentality on. It takes many people’s efforts. First and foremost, the efforts of school teachers and university faculty. Then, to a point, the efforts of the state administration.

“However, even if the previous government was loyal towards certain historical interpretations, I couldn’t say that they created favorable conditions for that. Did anyone do anything to promote the reprint of Kostenko’s Berestechko? Or help us shoot the film about Khmelnytsky or Mazepa? Nothing. We did everything without any assistance from the government. So, it is first of all about the curiosity in Ukrainians themselves, as well as in those who are capable of artistic and creative interpretation of historical themes.

“I think the coincidence you mentioned is not accidental. The figure of Khmelnytsky hides many meanings which are being sought by Ukrainians. First, they need them to have something to rely on. Second, to decide where they stand. And third, to answer this question: What is next? In reality, it is a quest for your own identity in the world, resting upon your own land and the Ukrainian mode of existence.

“In creating a film, I have my audience in mind first of all. I don’t think about how my films will be perceived a hundred years later. I want to see my film act today. Maybe, it is due to the specific nature of the documentary as a form of art.

“I can only imagine the feelings of those directors whose works were shelved. Incidentally, I have had a similar experience with my film Pidzemni Vody (Underground Waters). Luckily, it was the time of perestroika and the film was, so to speak, picked up. Even though it was already on the point of being shelved, as it was, essentially, the first Ukrainian film about genocide. It was shot in 1988.”

Could you give some more detail on this film please?

“I met the woman writer Alla Tiutiunnyk and offered to make a screen version of her story What’s the Matter With You? But right on The Day we met she told me about the novel Beyond Arrow Shot she had been working on. It was about Ukrainians who were moved from their lands on the banks of the Dnieper, where water reservoirs were to be created.

“I was impressed by the novel. Of course, you couldn’t take this theme for a feature film under the Soviet conditions, so I suggested making it as a documentary. We disguised the plot as an environmental one, which had just begun to gain popularity. And due to all the environmental awareness movement the script was approved.

“It was filmed at the Ukrtelefilm studios. And it is in Pidzemni Vody that the word ‘genocide’ was pronounced by one of the characters, and everyone instantly understood what the film was really about.

“We took Pidzemni Vody to Moscow, to show it to a specialized commission on films from the union republics for the Soviet Union’s Central Television. The show had the effect of a neutron bomb explosion, a long, awkward silence. My friends from the Baltic, who were present there, said, ‘Vasia, this film will never be accepted in Moscow,’ which meant ‘get ready for what’s coming.’

“I already knew what I had to get ready for — the film was to be shelved. And all of a sudden, a renowned ecologist, Academician Yablokov, came at that time to Kyiv. The environmental awareness movement started simultaneously with the democratic movement. God alone knows how these democrats turned up at our studio and got to see my film. Yablokov then and there announced that he was going to take a copy of the film with him to Moscow. And on one fine day the Central TV showed, immediately following his speech complaining about the environmental situation in the country, the film ‘by young, talented Ukrainian filmmakers.’”

Did they show Pidzemni Vody on the Ukrainian TV?

“Yes, UT-1 showed it in 1989, 1990, and 1991. However, later the film disappeared from the screen. When you see it, you can understand why.”

Documentaries could benefit the Ukrainian society in terms of the interpretation of certain personalities and historical themes. Alas, since the late 1990s, wild capitalism has occupied the boob tube.

“Here one should discuss two aspects, the economic and the psychological, based on the worldview. By the way, such films do exists, they were shot by the Ministry of Culture with the taxpayers’ money. There are around 70 of them. Why they never get shown is a different question.

“First of all, because they haven’t created a relevant clear-cut state program for showing films. I’m convinced that the state must have such a program to promote the Ukrainian values without being obtrusive and resorting to coercion. Here we come in touch with psychology. The viewer has to be absorbed, he has to perceive nobleness and chivalry in his history – all those virtues which our historical characters were indeed blessed with. Besides, there must be an entertaining plot.

“Such a program should be obligatory at least for those mass media which are owned by the state. However, this system does not exist. It means, among all, that no one has seriously attempted to take care of the ideology on the state level in Ukraine. There have been several attempts, but they were based on coercion which, as a rule, only arouses resistance in people.

“As far as the commercial channels go, they, unfortunately, profess anti-Ukrainian politics. I openly speak about this. Ah, there is this law about movies? Yes, there is. Do you want dubbing? Yes, we do. Okay, here are some Russian movies, and we’ll add Ukrainian subtitles. Who is going to read those subtitles? No one, of course. Subtitling is reasonable in case of breaking up the original language of the movie, and only on big screens, where they can be read easily.

“In case of our TV it is sheer mockery and at the same time a simple method of training the youth to speak Russian. Radio, TV, the Russian pop songs... How many Ukrainian-speaking channels do we have in Ukraine? Channel 5, 24, until recently – The First National, and Channel Culture. That’s all.

“Meanwhile, lots of faults are masked by ratings. I must say that today I don’t believe them whatsoever. To rate a program fairly you have to have data from at least several sources.

“They will say, ‘It doesn’t pay to invest in a Ukrainian product.’ From a purely financial perspective, indeed, investing in the production of our own films, with our unfavorable legislation, is several times more expensive than just subtitling and broadcasting a ready-made movie. The expenditure is reduced to a minimum, while the profits are huge. What does the wise legislature in other countries do in such cases? They create such conditions under which investing in national products could be profitable.

“Let us now take a look at our northern neighbor. Favorable laws are passed and immense capitals are invested in such an ‘innocent amusement’ as the national Russian cinema, including documentary projects as well.

“By the way, recently I was interviewed by Russian TV journalists about our film on Mazepa, also from the series ‘The Play of Fate.’ Then a phone call followed. And I immediately sensed a professional manner of interrogation. ‘Did you shoot a film about Mazepa?’ ‘Yes, I did.’ An appointment was arranged. The dialog was roughly as follows: ‘What prompted you the idea?’ ‘Well, I just ventured...’ ‘Are you going to make a film about Bandera, too?’ ‘Well, if I have a good script, why not?’ ‘Mazepa is a traitor.’ ‘Who said that? Even your Pushkin didn’t call Mazepa a traitor.’ But what shook them most (and that was eventually the end of our conversation) was Mazepa’s portrait on our bills. They were very concerned: ‘How is that possible?’ I took out a 10-hryvnia bill and showed them: ‘That’s how.’ Well, those Russian TV guys know their stuff.

“And then such products are broadcast in Ukraine. Meanwhile, our channels, quite consciously and with all the finances available, make our heroes into vampires. I don’t mean to say that all our heroes were perfect, but why emphasize the dark side?

“The Ukrainian TV is packed with alien characters. As a result, Ukrainians come to think that they do not differ from Russians in any respect: they wear the same jeans, drive the same cars, and speak the same language.

“Incidentally, this is perhaps what should worry our so-called businessmen first of all, because first the national identity is lost, and then what these businessmen so selflessly defend will go, too: their fortunes and wealth.”

You have founded VIATEL and devoted your work to documentary films. Theoretically, you might have founded a production company which would turn out soap operas en masse, and made good money from it – but you didn’t. Evidently, besides state preferences, it is also a matter of personality.

“For me it is so natural that I don’t see anything exceptional here. I look up to those masters who have made the Ukrainian cinema famous all over the world. These names are really very many. Now, when movies are coming back from the shelves, it turns out that some triggered the development of the modern cinema in Georgia, or Poland, or even in Russia.

“As far as the state is concerned, it has to be pressured. And here I do wish we were more numerous and had concord among us. Our Union of Filmmakers is famous for its bad lack of cooperation.

“There was a time when I believed that the numbers of future filmmakers graduating every year would guarantee a certain quality. Now, I don’t think this is the case anymore. Unfortunately, these people, even aware of their being Ukrainian film directors, will conform to the low standards of the market and turn into the implementers of other people’s projects.

“They have a professional training and on-hand experience, decent equipment, and knowledge. Many of them are currently working in Russian and other international projects or TV channels. That is why it is not enough to just hope that one day quantity will develop into quality. What we need is an activity on the state level, or on that of some professional associations.

“Together, it is easier to raise funds for a project and implement it. Let us recollect that Taras Shevchenko published his poem Haidamaky at his own expense. What if he had waited for a donor to come along? So, who are we to pin our hopes on? Who is going to do our job for us?

“In conclusion, I will say that a law encouraging the business to create national product is necessary. Yet the principal condition for making Ukrainian films is the desire to make them.”

How would you like the audience to perceive Khmelnytsky in the eponymous film of yours?

“The way I perceived him. For me, he crystallized into a man, first and foremost. Then comes his chivalry. And last, but not least, he is a powerful Ukrainian.

“When the shooting was over, I was envious with myself for being so fortunate to work with such material. Sometimes, communication with a great person arouses in you a feeling of happiness, strength, and certainty about doing the right thing. I want the audience to feel the same pride after sharing the world of our heroes. Just because these heroes are ours.”