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Telling It as It Is – Interview with Ariadna Ochrymovych About Her Documentary Holodomor: Voices of Survivors

Sep 5, 2017 | Community, Featured

Kalli Paakspuu for NP-UN.

Challenging the onslaught of fake news and media, Canadian filmmaker Ariadna Ochrymovych has stepped up to the plate with her paradigm shifting documentary, Holodomor: Voices of Survivors, unearthing never told before stories of the Ukrainian famine genocide from Canadian-Ukrainian survivors. The film will be screening at the Carleton Cinema as a presentation of the Toronto Independent Film Festival on Wednesday, Sept. 13th at 7:30 PM with director Ariadna Ochrymovych, performer Luba Goy, historian Valentyna Kuryliw and famine survivor Mykola Latyshko in attendance.

“Holodomor: Voices of Survivors” has Ukrainian survivors telling stories they never told family members. What drew you to collecting these stories of the Holodomor (death by starvation) engineered by Soviet dictator Joseph Stalin? How did you succeed in getting the survivors to tell them to you?

I think that by 2008, which was the 75th anniversary of the famine most Ukrainians had become aware that it was very urgent to preserve the stories of survivors. Though some work had been done in the 1980’s many, many survivors had never told their story publicly. And they were now in their 80’s and some in their 90’s. Everyone felt the importance of preserving these stories and the survivors felt it was their duty to Ukraine to tell them. It was difficult to recall these horrific experiences and many said they still had nightmares about the past. Some would not appear on camera, afraid for their relatives.

Fortunately, I obtained a grant from Multiculturalism Department, Canadian Heritage, through sheer serendipity and was able to travel across Canada to film interviews with them. The Ukrainian Canadian Congress came on board with some funding and the Ukrainian Canadian Documentation and Research Center partnered as consultants.

Can you tell us something of your process of making this film and how your documentary combined archival materials with artistic drawings and contemporary interviews?

Well, I first needed to do some fundraising and this was ongoing over 4 years. The documentary is an independent production by Black Sea Media, supported by the Shevchenko Foundation, private donations, Buduchnist Credit Union and the Ukrainian Credit Union. Markian Radomskyj was a very dedicated and invaluable partner as cinematographer and editor throughout the 4 year process of the film and the prior interviews.

There is very little archival material, neither actual film or photos from that period, no photographers were allowed into the towns or countryside – they were literally barred – so I relied on drawings – Yuri Rybalka was a very talented young artist who perfectly captured the dramatic moments in the survivors lives. I described to him the moments I wanted and he was very sensitive to these stories. Also, there were other painters in Ukraine whose images I used. The Morgan Williams collection has preserved many of these and can be seen online. Some footage is taken from documentary films showing Stalin’s industrialization of the Soviet Union, some from dramatic films of the era.

French philosopher Alain Badiou has argued that the greatest evils are the simulation, betrayal or authoritarian imposition of truths; while the greatest virtue is to ‘keep going’, to maintain the power of historical truths in challenging the status quo. How does your film, “Holodomor: Voices of Survivors” challenge the status quo?

In today’s political climate of fake news and media controversy the film presents a little known genocide that was very deliberately hidden from the world. A Pulitzer prize winning New York Times journalist Walter Duranty received his prize for his reports on the Soviet Union. He was bribed by the Soviet authorities and was only showed model farms. He hid the truth of what was happening and deliberately wrote a story declaring that “there is no famine”. Others, like Malcolm Muggeridge and Rhea Clyman, managed to get into the countryside and wrote the truth of what they saw and were expelled from the Soviet Union.

Your selection of photographs and drawings vividly shows the Ukrainian people as disempowered and in need of intervention. How has your film generated interest in Ukraine’s long history of colonization within Russia and in its present day challenges?

The film exposes the truth of what happened with its strong emotional content and historic facts that the West has not known. Ukraine is greater in size than France with a population of 43 million and a rich history. Eastern Europe’s great suffering and sacrifice in World War II and beyond was not acknowledged until Harvard Prof. Timothy Snyder wrote his great book Bloodlands on the subject. He devoted a chapter to the Holodomor.

How would you say the consequences of the Holodomor reverberate with today’s Ukrainians?

During the Soviet era and the Holodomor, Ukrainians had been indoctrinated not to trust, not to speak openly, not to voice their opinions – that became a mind set that continued into the 21st century, for fear of imprisonment or even death. A few survivors I interviewed in Canada in 2008 were still afraid their relatives could be persecuted if they spoke about the Holodomor.

It is a genocide that the world did not know about and Ukraine suffered deeply because of it. That is why today the new generation is willing to give up their lives in this war with Putin. They want democracy for themselves and their children. They are no longer afraid! A whole generation of young men has sacrificed their lives or come back wounded and scarred from this war so that Ukraine can once again be proud of its heritage and history.

Can you tell us of your some of your challenges in making this film? What kind of exposure has it received in Canada and elsewhere? What have been the highlights for you as a filmmaker?

The visual material was definitely a challenge and took a long time to find and finalize. Also raising the funds took time. I had the interviews already so that was a blessing. It was also emotionally draining and exhausting – hearing these stories was very painful and working with these images and the brutality of what happened changes a person.

“Holodomor: Voices of Survivors” has won awards at Chicago Peace on Earth Film Festival, Yorkton Film Festival and at the Polish International Film Festival. It has screened in festivals throughout North America and Europe. One highlight was showing the documentary to a classroom of children in Regina. It was an eye opener. They did not know that the Soviet Union had existed. This was ancient history and few students had heard of Stalin. They were flabbergasted that something like this could ever have happen.

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