Literature and Art

On October 9, 2014, a group of thirty-three Ukrainian students, serving internships in the Canadian Parliament, got a chance to travel to Montreal for the Okean Elzy concert. This was Okean’s first performance of the 2014 world tour, which will take them to Boston, New York, Chicago, San Francisco, Los Angeles, Frankfurt, London, Minsk, Barcelona, Roma and Paris. The Band celebrates its 20th anniversary this year. It becomes more meaningful and symbolic in light of the events in Ukraine, in which Okean’s leader, Svyatoslav Vakarchuk, played a significant role. While the...

The theatre room at St. Vladimir Institute (more commonly known simply as “St. Vlads”) was full of hustle and bustle. Next to a large sheet hung on the wall, a production line of paper mache “bricks” was in full swing at one end of a long table. As I carefully made my way around the drying bricks and past a pile of multi-coloured tires, I noticed mismatched dinnerware set out at the other end of the table. A few crew members were gathered around, deliberating how the audience’s dinner table should be set in order to best emulate an authentic Ukrainian family dinner (“Blue plates or white ones, patterned bowls or...

For over 40 years, Bohdan Medwidsky was honoured as an academic, builder of the Ukrainian Folklore program, community activist, fundraiser and philanthropist. The Friends of the Ukrainian Folklore Centre honoured him with a celebration aptly named “An Evening with Bohdan Medwidsky,” attended by nearly 200 people. Dr. Medwidsky was born in Ukraine, spent his adolescence in Toronto, and was a professor at the University of Alberta for thirty years. The evening program included a book launch of Proverbs in Motion, containing essays, academic articles, memoirs and greetings about Dr. Medwidsky, by him, and dedicated to him (edited by Andriy Nahachewsky and Maryna Chernyavska, CIUSPress, 2014, 348 pp.). The program also marked the 35th Anniversary of the Bohdan Medwidsky Ukrainian Folklore Archives (BMUFA). A special new...

In this final part of our three part interview series with Babylon’13 cinematographers Phillip and Andriy Rozhen, we discuss their film tour across Canada, information reliability issues in Ukraine, and their impressions of the Ukrainian Canadian diaspora. UE: You’ve spent the last few months travelling across Canada, tell me about it! What made you come here and what have you been up to? A: Right after we shot the revolution we realized how powerful live shows are. We realized that uploading movie clips on YouTube was good, but that it’s not...

In Part II of our three part series, Ukrainian Echo talks to Babylon’13 cinematographers Phillip and Andriy Rozhen about the project’s current work, the international presence at Euromaidan, and the transformations they witnessed in Ukrainians as a nation. UE: Where does the Babylon’13 project stand today? Are you still filming? A: Yes, almost every week you will find new videos from eastern Ukraine. We shot when Crimea was being annexed, when the war began, and we continue to shoot now. Babylon’13 will likely exist until these major problems in Ukraine don’t exist anymore. UE: What is the Babylon’13 project now trying to...

Last week Ukrainian Echo sat down with Phillip and Andriy Rozhen, a director and producer from the organization Babylon’13, a “cinema of civil society.” Thousands have watched their videos on YouTube (https://www.youtube.com/user/babylon13ua), which give audiences around the world a firsthand look at what has been happening in Ukraine since late 2013. This summer, Phillip and Andriy were on a cross-country tour of Canada promoting the work of Babylon’13 and the case for Ukraine. Many would agree that their videos are captivating, invaluable tools for information dissemination, and like their videos, the creative minds behind Babylon’13 are no less interesting. UE: What were you doing before Euromaidan revolution began? P/A: We are cinematographers. I am a director and Philip is a producer. Our father is also a professional cinematographer, script writer, and director. UE: How and when did you first...

The digital age has made it harder and harder for people to be immediately drawn and subsequently impressed by music. This however, was not the case on Friday, March 7th during the Zozulka concert, when three remarkable women came together at the University of Toronto to represent the lyrical ethnic songs of the Ukrainian Poltava and Polissia regions. The diverse crowd vibrantly experienced the musical passion these women brought to the North American world from the deep rural steppes and woodland villages of Ukraine. The Zozulka trio: Eva Salina-Primack, Willa Roberts, and the Petro Jacyk Post-Doctoral Fellow Maria Sonevytsky brought forward the folklore...

Few national poets command the reverence of their people as Taras Shevchenko does among Ukrainians. His grave on a mound above the Dnipro River is a pilgrimage site, and more than 1250 monuments have been erected in his honor in Ukraine and nearly 130 more around the world, including capitals such as Washington, DC, Ottawa, Buenos Aires, Moscow, Warsaw and Tashkent. Shevchenko combined the vernacular with folk rhythms of Ukrainian songs to capture and embody the sufferings and deepest strivings of his people. His poems are alternately frightening, funny, despairing, hopeful, sacred and sacrilegious, but always illuminating and entertaining. His semi-autobiographic verse serves not only as a guide to long submerged, even prohibited elements of Ukrainian history, geography, personalities and folklore, but also to universal themes of love, envy, oppression and freedom. In addition, Shevchenko’s poems...

“The Board of Directors is proud and very pleased to have the expertise of jurors who are award winners and highly regarded in the literary world. Their choices for the Kobzar shortlist reflect their literary expertise as they diligently selected submissions that best suited our criteria.” stated Andrew Hladyshevsky, Q.C., President of the Shevchenko Foundation. The Kobzar Literary Award was created to foster cultural development through the literary arts and create opportunities for all Canadian writers to explore Ukrainian Canadian themes. The Kobzar 2014 Literary Award shortlisted finalists will be...

On Saturday, November 3, over 200 people gathered at St. Vladimir Institute in Toronto to attend the opening of ‘Icons Unite Us’ a joint project between SVI and the Ukrainian Catholic Education Foundation. The guest speaker Bishop Borys Gudziak, is the Rector of Ukrainian Catholic University (UCU) in Lviv, and the newest hierarch of the Ukrainian Greek Catholic Church, representing France, Switzerland and the Benelux countries. The idea of a joint icon exhibit and sale sprang from a discussion that addressed the desire for SVI to showcase the talent of its iconography students and the need for UCEF to raise awareness of UCU’s School of Iconography and its mission. ‘As SVI’s marketing committee chair and a member of the UCU development team, it just seemed natural to bring the two together.’ stated Christine Kuzyk, MC for the event. ‘We are always looking for unique ways to raise funds in support of our programs, and felt that an icon exhibit would be an excellent venue.’ The community was...