A “living” Vasyl Stefanyk

The chockfull Blue Hall of the Kyiv House of Cinema, interrupted applause of the audience, and words of thanks and fascination over the viewed film… There was an incredible atmosphere during the presentation of the film The Road: Vasyl Stefanyk on the life and oeuvre of a writer, politician, public figure, and Galician member of the Austrian Parliament. In the center of attention were, naturally, those who made the film – the unchanging team of the serial Game of Fate: director Vasyl Viter, cinematographer Heorhii Kryvosheienko, producer Halyna Kryvorchuk, film editor Arsenii Bortnyk, presenter Natalia Sopit, and others.

“I will open a secret – it is the first historical figure in Ukrainian culture whose oeuvre was difficult for me to grasp. For this reason, I first had to study him as a personality in order to be able to set forth the material more smoothly, with due understanding of things. I must say honestly that it was very hard for me to grasp Stefanyk’s oeuvre even in school, and here I had to recall his manner and themes – in a word, there were difficulties. But, luckily, we overcame them because other people who worked on this film helped us very much – they consulted, showed, and explained,” says presenter Natalia Sopit, sharing her impressions about making this film with The Day.

The almost hour-long documentary deals with Stefanyk as not only an outstanding writer, but also a caring son, a public activist, just a youth in love, and a man of his time, who experienced and wrote about what he saw with his own eyes.

“It seems to me it is now important for Ukraine to discover Stefanyk. For if you read him, you will understand that is about the present day. For example, emigration, to which one of his novellas, The Stone Cross, is devoted, was a sore point at the turn of the 20th century. Today, emigration is also a burning question in Ukraine because talented young people and the active middle class are leaving this country, for they see no future here, and we are losing the best brains, hands, and our nation as a whole,” Ms. Sopit added.

The film The Road: Vasyl Stefanyk was shot in Rusiv, the writer’s native village, where there is a memorial museum and the estate, as well as in Chernivtsi, Bukovyna, and at Kyiv’s Museum of Prominent Figures.

“The history of our relationship with Stefanyk began long ago. When I was still a baby, mother used to read Stefanyk to help me fall asleep, and this included The News and all the short stories that are universally known now. Naturally, I could not go to sleep for a long time after hearing these works,” film director Vasyl Viter says. “When we were launching the Game of Fate project, we pondered over which of the prominent people who have done something good for Ukraine we will tell about first of all   – and Stefanyk was among the top five. This occurred about 10 years ago. Then, for a number of reasons, we put this figure on hold. And, at last, the script was ready in the fall of the last year. Frankly speaking, I was not sure what kind of story we would be telling about Stefanyk. He is undoubtedly a genius, and he wrote a lot of interesting stories. It was not until I traveled to his village and visited his museum cared for, incidentally, by Stefanyk’s family that I understood that the film would be made.”

The film’s premiere saw a guest of honor, Stefanyk’s great-granddaughter Olesia and her husband. She thanked the VIATEL studios for such a wonderful initiative and pleasant cooperation.

When you watch the film, you understand that Vasyl Stefanyk was a many-sided personality. In the view of Mr. Viter, if the writer had not taken to politics, he would have left us a much larger literary heritage. “But, for some reason, very few films have been made after Stefanyk’s works. Among them is a brilliant film, The Stone Cross, directed by Leonid Osyka, but still Vasyl Stefanyk deserves much more,” Viter said.

Before introducing the film, Serhii Trymbach, chairman of the National League of Ukrainian Filmmakers, said: “I like Vasyl Stefanyk very much, and the key phrase he used to say to the people was: ‘Either we will make a people out of you, or we will fall.’ By all accounts, we can say he was a prophet of life. And now his works continue to create and raise people. The Ukrainian word also continues to create films.”

Dozens of filmmakers, artists, writers, journalists, and many other admirers of high-quality Ukrainian documentaries attended the premiere in a chockfull hall.

“Although I am now a student at the Biology Faculty which has nothing to do with literature, Stefanyk has always been a mysterious and interesting figure for me. In my view, schoolchildren are not quite prepared to perceive this information, this interpretation of life. I came here to know more about Stefanyk. He is a marvelous novella writer, a person through whom you can understand Ukraine, for the Ukrainian language sounds so natural from the mouths of his characters, as befits the language of a nation,” says Kyiv National Taras Shevchenko University student Aliona Lebid, sharing her impressions. “After watching this film, you discover a totally new, ‘human,’ Stefanyk who was a human being like you, who studied to be a doctor, loved, cared, suffered, and, at the same time, created something incredible. After this film, you begin to understand his oeuvre which may have been incomprehensible before. I think if we had been shown such documentary films in school, instead of being told boring information, the studies would have been more interesting and clear.”