Will sadness save the world?

The Cinema House recently hosted a press conference on Malenke zhyttia (A Small Life), the writer Oleksandr Zhovna’s debut as a film director. The budget is tentatively estimated at 410,000 hryvnias. Aware of the current filmmaking hardships and undercurrents, Georgi Digama, the director-general of the Foxtrot Group, doubts this budget will be the final one. The film is getting support from the Ministry of Culture and Art.

Zhovna is a writer whose stories have been turned into three full- length motion pictures. The main theme of his works, and now his film, is what he describes as “grief that my works are meant to evoke.” He believes that sadness rather than beauty will save the world. Choosing between joy and sorrow, the latter should be preferred because joy does not stir one’s heart as much as sorrow does. His mournful sentiments may have something to do with the fact that his work won a competition for best script organized back in the 1990s by the Ukrainian Ministry of Culture, but work on the project started only this month.

Zhovna says that he conceived the plot of Small Life when he was examining the icon of St. Panteleimon. At a certain moment it seemed to him that the icon was painted by a child, with unsure and at times clumsy strokes, but with great sincerity and love. This was how the plot about his little Pylypko came to be.

The cast is made up of actors from a number of Odesa drama companies and some residents from the film maker’s home town of Novomyrhorod, among them Kyrylo Sosnytsky (Pylypko) and the chairman of the former collective farm, who plays the role of the hegumen.

Roman Balaian, who directed the movie Nich svitla (Bright Night), based on Zhovna’s screenplay, admitted that he tried to talk Oleksandr out of directing: “I told him: ‘You’re a good writer, why are you trying to be a bad film director?’”

Zhovna was not deterred, and he is convinced that his film will be a success. We hope this is the case by the end of the year, when the shooting ends. In the presence of journalists Georgi Digama signed a memorandum on cooperation between the Ministry of Culture and Tourism of Ukraine and the Foxtrot Group.