The Molodist (Youth) Film Festival, which has become a real Kyiv attraction (almost like Pecherska Lavra or St. Sophia's Cathedral) over the 29 years of its existence and always promised to be so multifaceted and abounding, if its organizers are right, this year that it would even be impolite to speak about a certain single “plum” of this fairy-like movie extravaganza. Much to the joy of Kyiv movie fans, the festival program contains a host of films intended for gourmet viewers who cannot only deservedly appreciate an original cuisine but also taste the its subtleties. Molodist this year is preparing to tempt our visual tastes with is a wide range of flavors.
Molodist opened on October 23 showing off With Fire and Sword, the latest and most successful film of JERZY HOFFMAN , the mammoth of the Polish cinema. In Poland, this blockbuster has already been wrapped in a multileveled aura of viewers' delights, but, even more, the film's popularity has revived interest in Ukraine whose history, as it turned out, is not only confined to a short course in eating fatback. The Kyiv premiere of With Fire and Sword was presented in Ukraina Palace by the whole film crew led by Jerzy Hoffman.
Few will know that Mr. Hoffman planned to shoot this world masterpiece in Kyiv, at Oleksandr Dovzhenko Studios, as its director Mykola Mashchenko told The Day's readers. Moreover, Mr. Hoffman even promised to leave behind the scenery used to make Bohdan Khmelnytsky. But, as is common practice here, the master was refused by our own culture officials.
As a result, Mr. Hoffman has made his film, and Dovzhenko Studios has fallen with a thud.
THE JURY. A new thing in the jury system is the official representation of FIPRESSI, the international federation of film critics. This organization's authority also testifies to a new level achieved by the Kyiv festival. In addition, the contest will be judged by the International Jury, Ecumenical Jury (also for the first time), International Jury of the Film Club Federation, and the representative of one of the Ukrainian Orthodox churches. This year the International Jury will be presided over by the Dutch director Jos Stelling whom our spectators know as the creator of such films as The Waiting Room and The Duch Master. He is recognized as a cult director even in the cult- laden Dutch cinema. This time Kyivans will manage to see not only the master's old films but also his latest work, No Planes, No Trains (1999), set again in a waiting-room for airplanes and trains, in a sense, and for a certain never personified Godot.
This year the INTRIGUE at Molodist is going to be tense as never before. As always, the contest of debut films will include four nominations: full-length and short films, students' films, and documentaries. This time the full-length nomination will see not only the pictures from Germany, Japan, France, the Czech Republic, Sweden, and Britain, but also from Ukraine. However, in our biased opinion, the two most serious contenders here are Tuvalu by Veit Helmer and Fucking Amal by Lucas Moodysson. The former film is a most beautiful parable about love in an absurd world, which so closely resembles our reality. The main female role was played by Culpan Khamatova. Tuvalu is a wordless picture, a great and beautiful silent movie. Conversely, Amal abounds in both words and love. The history of two girls languishing in boredom in the sticks has already gathered a host of comments at this season's biggest festivals, including Cannes. Almost every category boasts several films sent Great Britain, whose breakthrough back into the world cinema is undoubtedly an event of the 1999 film season.
MOLODIST RETROSPECTIVES. In the year of Serhiy Paradzhanov, Molodist is holding the fullest-ever retrospective of his films, including his earlier works. An exhibition of his painting works will also be held as part of the festival.
Also noteworthy is the retrospective show of the films by Mark Donskoi whose picture The Rainbow (1943), starring the great Natalia Uzhviy and Nina Alisova, was often called in many Ukrainian references as winner of the only Oscar in the history of the Ukrainian cinema. Let us put the record straight. The Rainbow was indeed awarded in 1944 in the US, not an Oscar but the prestigious US Motion Pictures and Radio Association Prize which was changed in the USSR into Oscar for the sake of simpler pronunciation. But, as they put it, the Oscar is not the hub of the universe. Molodist has also prepared a retrospective show of Alfred Hitchcock films dedicated to the centenary of a man who, as Francois Truffaut said, “impressed better than anyone else the sensation of fear on film.” We have also been promised two spectacular spy thrillers: The Man Who Knew Too Much (1934, the author's remake in 1956) and The 39 Steps (1935). It is for these films that Hitchcock was for the first time run down for violating the laws of verisimilitude, to which the master replied, “To care for the content of a film is the same as to think about the taste of still-life apples.”
To complete the review of personal retrospective shows, one must also add a selection of films starring the Italian actor Vittorio Gassman who participated in the works of such masters as Ettore Scola (The Terrace), Dino Risi (The Monsters, The Overtake), Roberto Rosselini (The Black Soul), and Giuseppe De Santis (The Bitter Rice).
UKRAINIAN CINEMA takes part in all nominations for the first time in the past few years. The national cinematography seems to be regaining hope in women directors. The full- length contest will see the film Ave Maria by Liudmyla Yefymenko, an attempt, as she says, to make a box- office and commercially viable picture. Ukraine also has handsome chances in the shorts competition, where it is represented by a film by Kira Muratova: she shot her first-ever short film A Letter to America, which has already disappointed the Venice movie forum. Documentary debuts feature Status, a film by Serhiy Poznansky, and Oles Sanin's interesting, as far as concept is concerned, picture Sin, a “film about a film” dedicated to Leonid Osyka and his making of the film A Stone Cross.
On October 31 the festival will be closed by Aleksandr Sokurov's film Moloch, which premiered this year in Cannes, where it was awarded the prize for best script, although, as many claimed, that had nothing to do with the script: Moloch could not but be embroidered, for it dealt with the life of Adolf Hitler and Eva Braun.






