Identification of Shevchenko… for half a million hryvnias

The contest for the best non-fiction film projects dedicated to the life and work of Taras Shevchenko organized by the Ukraine’s State Cinema Agency has come to an end. The project of the film director Serhii Proskurnia Taras Shevchenko. Identification won the pitching stage [presentation of a film project aimed at attracting investors willing to fund the project. –Author]. The film project competed with other 12 projects from Ukrainian film directors: Oleh Pavliuchenkov, Taras Tkachenko, Kostiantyn Konovalov, Oleksandr Zhovna, Irena Rudina, Valentyna Shestopalova, Natalia Korostiakova, and Dmytro Lomachuk.

“Under the rules of the State Cinema Agency, first the jury looked through the written applications,” Serhii PROSKURNIA, director of the winner film project, commented for The Day. “Besides, film directors, editors, and producers had to defend their applications before the experts right at the pitching. Each film had 10 minutes – five minutes for a presentation and another five minutes for questions and answers. The discussion on the film Taras Shevchenko. Identification lasted almost half an hour – the experts could not stop asking questions and constantly discussed controversies between them. Already this fact gave me the feeling that we would have a high rating.”

Intuition did not fail the film director. The film scripted by Volodymyr Arieiev and Shevchenko researcher Mykhailo Nazarenko will be shot by the “Ukrkinokhronika” state film studio (chronicle and documentary films). The total budget of the film is little over 1,498,000 hryvnias.

“We shot the first frame that starts our film on November 7,” said Proskurnia. “A truck brings clay in the studio of a sculptor, which he will later use for creating a sculpture portrait. This is one of the storylines that we will see through the film. All in all, there will be five storylines. Now our filming crew is in Cherkasy region, where they shoot landscapes from Taras Shevchenko childhood – Moryntsi, Kyrylivka. We have already filmed some scenes in Smila, Zvenyhorodka, and Mezhyrichia.”

Along with Ukrainian Carpathians landscapes, views of wells in Donbas and landscapes of Chornobyl zone, the filmmakers plan to introduce also scenes shot abroad in their documentary. In particular, there is an idea to shoot some scenes in the study of Sigmund Freud in Vienna, on Times Square in New York, and in the Harvard University.

“There will be no poetry of Taras Shevchenko in our film, there will be no attempts to reconstruct his personality and his life,” said Proskurnia. “We are using film, photo, and video archives, which are interwoven into a real discussion with our experts. It is not a matter of worship and far from being fetish. This film is rather a discussion on Shevchenko’s identity in modern people. That’s why the geography of filming is so wide. We want to show the entire Ukraine through symbolism of West-East-North-South.”