Valse Brillante
The VIATEL studio presents a documentary marking the 150th anniversary of Olha Kobylianska. The premiere screening will be held in Kyiv on April 18
Our readers are likely to recall that the Red Hall of the Cinema House was fully booked in 2010 when the VIATEL premiered its full-length documentary about Bohdan Khmelnytsky. Many things will be similar now, including the film’s length, members of the filming crew, and the screening venue, but this time, the Red Hall will host the discussion of the new film about the talented Ukrainian writer Olha Kobylianska.
In November 2013, Ukraine will celebrate the 150th anniversary of this girl with just four years of schooling, who spent all her life in the remote Austrian-Hungarian province of Bukovyna, but still managed to gain not just all-Ukrainian, but pan-European prominence as author. Indeed, the VIATEL’s film is an attempt to draw public attention to the anniversary. “I think we have chosen a great title for it, Valse Brillante. Kobylianska wanted to write a story entitled so, but never did it; however, it seems to us that she told it in her letters,” the film’s executive producer Halyna Kryvorchuk says.
A few of the writer’s works were adapted into feature films Land (1954), The She-Wolf (1967), Valse Melancholique (1990), and the TV series The Princess (1994). However, the documentary’s filming crew is sure there are quite a few more Kobylianska’s works which deserve adaptation.
The driving force behind the documentary was Natalka Sopit, the presenter of the Fate’s Game series. She came from Bukovyna, too, and helped to write the film’s script. It covers Kobylianska’s life and fate, love story of this early Ukrainian women’s rights activist of the late 19th century, and the only story which she intended to write, but never did, called Valse Brillante. The filming locations were Chernivtsi and the nearby village of Dymka, where the writer had lived and is commemorated in personal museums, as well as at the Mykola Lysenko Museum in Kyiv.
Thus, you are welcome to come to the Red Hall of the Cinema House on April 18 at 6:30 p.m. to meet the filming crew, including the director and chief producer Vasyl Viter, the executive producer Kryvorchuk, and the presenter Sopit. Admission is free. We advise you to put some warm clothes on, because it may be rather cold in the hall.
