Ukrainian Film Club at Columbia University shows "Friend of the Deceased"

[Diana Howansky]

The Orange Revolution has triumphed. A new democratic, freedom-loving
Ukraine is just around the corner, right? Not quite so fast. Enter reality.

Today, Ukraine is afflicted with corruption, degradation of human
values, and decline of culture and morality, and sucked dry by criminals
in high places. The enormity of the challenge of doing away with this
legacy is beyond imagination. The next event of the Ukrainian Film Club
at Columbia University invites the public to take a sober view of
Ukrainian society as it enters the first days of the Yushchenko
presidency. The event will showcase “A Friend of the Deceased,” a film
by Viacheslav Khrystofovych (1993). Made more than a decade ago, the
film portrays a society that bears a disturbingly close resemblance to
today’s Ukraine.

What do you do when you are a young, well-educated, urban Ukrainian man,
who cannot find a job -- any job -- and whose beloved wife is openly
cheating on you and would not even divorce you out of pity? You hire a
contract killer, and pay him to kill . . . you. Tolia, an all-Ukrainian
resident of Kyiv is trapped in a lawless, hypocritical and cruel
society. He is about to give up fighting and commit suicide by proxy.
But at the very verge of the abyss, he peers down, steps back and
fights. Will Tolia win? Will Ukraine win? It is anybody’s guess.

“A Friend of the Deceased” is a crime story that brings to high relief
the sick post-Soviet Ukrainian society where one has to lie, cheat,
betray and even kill in order to be successful. Where human virtue is
worthless and murder is just another type of business, well-paid and
even respectable. Call it film-noir Kyiv style. “A Friend of the
Deceased,” based on the novel and screenplay by the acclaimed crime
writer Andriy Kurkov is not all gloom and doom, but is definitely anti
poetic in its stark, wry, and shocking realism. It is also strangely
optimistic in its implied unspoken belief in the triumph of humanity.

Introduction by Dr. Yuri Shevchuk, Lecturer of Ukrainian Language and
Culture, Columbia University. True to the Film Club’s established
format, the screening will be followed by a discussion.

The place: Room 717, Hamilton Hall (seventh floor)
Time: February 10, Thursday, 7:30 PM
Language: Original Russian language version with English subtitles

For more information or to RSVP, contact Diana Howansky, Ukrainian
Studies Program, at ukrainianstudies at columbia.edu or (212) 854-4697.


--
Diana Howansky
Staff Associate
Ukrainian Studies Program
Columbia University
Room 1209, MC3345
420 W. 118th Street
New York, NY  10027
(212) 854-4697
ukrainianstudies at columbia.edu
http://www.sipa.columbia.edu/ukrainianstudies/

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