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Where there is no law, but every man does what is right in his own eyes, there is the least of real liberty
Henry M. Robert

Oleksandr Koval: “Documentaries are destroyed by those loath to reveal the truth about the time”

13 November, 2012 - 00:00

Oleksandr Dovzhenko, the great Soviet Ukrainian cinematographer, called documentaries the “ombudsman of the Ukrainian people before the rest of the human race, a kind of interpreter and commentator of Ukraine.”

Indeed, a talented documentary film director can make black and white newsreels into a highly creative, powerfully emotional epic (e.g., Mikhail Romm’s classic documentary Ordinary Fascism). Documentaries also reflect the epoch, as an impersonal historical account of what is actually happening, a ruthless expose of the times. In Ukraine today the powers that be do not seem interested in having such documentary accounts of their doings. The following is The Day’s interview with Oleksandr Koval, Director of the Ukrainian Documentary Film Studio.

Q.: You joined the studio 35 years ago as an electrician. Now you are its manager. Back in the 1970s-1980s, the Ukrainian Documentary Studios used to release about 300 films and newsreels, keeping Ukraine’s “screen annals.” How is the situation now?

A.: We made four documentaries in 1997, all of them productions dating to previous years. We had to stop making newsreels. The studio is in a catastrophic condition. Here is an example. Our Ministry of Culture and Art asked us to make a film about Leonid Kadeniuk, the first astronaut of independent Ukraine. We scraped up the resources, furnished the equipment, but never finished production, because the Ministry did not pay us a single kopiyka. This year we were told we would receive Hr 6 million from the state budget. Now we hear that this amount has been reduced by 57%.

Q.: We know that you had about 50 film directors and almost as many cameramen. How many remain on your payroll now?

A.: We have not been paid for several months. Our people are starving. Literally. I am ashamed to come to the studio. Our film directors and cameramen have to earn a living working as night watchmen, peddling beer and cigarettes. Some were lucky enough to get jobs with television studios, while others left Ukraine.

Q.: You have been in contact with your counterparts in other former Soviet republics. Is the situation there any different from what we have in Ukraine?

A.: They have their own problems, but the situation in Ukraine is unmatched. Take Russia. They have their law On Support of the National Cinema, making it a strategic priority. I met with colleagues in Kazakhstan. They are assisted in preserving their film-making industry, receiving subsidies, training creative personnel. In Ukraine one is paid an average of Hr 230 for a documentary scenario. In Kazakhstan, it is $1,200. Here a short documentary budget cannot exceed Hr 188. In Kazakhstan, it is $950.

Q.: Have you ever tried to get sponsors?

A.: Our clever government makes such sponsorship taxable, not tax-exempt as a charitable project. Of course, we have tried and every time received no in response. Actually, our studio should not depend on sponsorship. Documentaries and their production are supported by government programs all over the civilized world. Our Ukrainian Documentary Studio should be sustained by the state budget. A long time ago I suggested that the studio be reorganized as a cultural study center, incorporating the Theatrical Art Institute’s Cinema Department, which would save considerable budget spending - sustaining this center would cost Hr 410,000. Peanuts, compared to existing costs. No one listened to or cared for this project.

Q.: Joris Ivens, the world-famous documentary producer, said that the documentary was the conscience of cinematography, it being every people’s historical memory perpetuated in film or video tape. Why do our authorities fail to realize this?

A.: I have approached them on more than one occasion, on behalf of Ukrainian documentary makers. I mean Premier Pustovoitenko in the first place. I have asked him to prevent the ruination of our documentary film-making. Now I am convinced that he and others like him are not interested in such documentary accounts, because such testimonies would expose them as architects of a genocide against their own nation. Try to find a single documentary about the 1932-33 Holodomor man-made famine. You won’t. We have an age-long tradition of keeping silent about certain events and this tradition seems inviolable. I am strongly reminded of 1933 watching what is happening to Ukrainian culture and science. Every day I get to the studio walking up Cherepanova Hill and every time it is my road to Calvary. I don’t know what awaits me there. Maybe the place is closed, the entrance sealed. Maybe I will come to learn that the studio has been legally declared bankrupt. One thing I know for sure: however much our authorities want it otherwise, our documentaries will survive!

Photo:

“MAKERS OF DOCUMENTARIES ARE SUPPOSED TO COIN THE IMAGE OF THEIR TIME,” OLEKSANDR KOVAL BELIEVES

 

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