The Day offers an interview with the highest achiever in Ukrainian cinematography in all the years of independence: the 32-year-old graduate of the Cinema, Theater, and Television University Ihor Strembytsky, who recently won the the Short Films Palme d’Or for his 10-minute black-and- white documentary Wayfarers at the Cannes Film Festival. His film rates a separate feature, which will soon appear in our paper. Right now, let’s hear what this rising national filmmaking star has to say.
Ihor, the first question that comes to mind is, “Where did someone like you come from?”
I.S.: I was born in the village of Paryshche, in Nadvirna raion, Ivano- Frankivsk oblast in Prykarpattia. I lived there until I was 16 and then enrolled in a technical college in Chernivtsi. After graduation I’d visit my village and stay there, sometimes for half a year, but never for more than one year. I lived in Chernivtsi, then I was drafted, then I ended up in Kyiv and later in Odesa.
What about that technical college?
I.S.: Its official name was Chernivtsi Industrial Technical College and I graduated with a major in Silicate Refractory Materials and Products, meaning sand and clay and everything that can be made out of them.
Has this knowledge ever come in handy?
I.S.: I worked until I was drafted. I spent half a year at a brickyard as a casting floor operator. After the army I did odd jobs in Russia and Moldova, alternating between construction and farming.
Did you earn a lot of money?
I.S.: I didn’t care much about money at the time, because all I wanted was to be away from home. I had friends and things were good. I wouldn’t bring my earnings home, either; well, maybe some $300 a season. That was in 1994, when I stayed home for half a year.
What about your army service?
I.S.: I served in the “Desna” unit in Chernihiv oblast and Zhytomyr.
Did you make junior sergeant?
I.S.: Desna had a personnel training center, but somehow I wasn’t even promoted to sergeant. I was a very bad serviceman. I hate taking orders from anyone and I shuffled my way through the service. First they made me a mechanic, assuming that I should know something after that technical college. They were wrong, so they assigned me to the warehouses. I gave my condensed milk rations to the commissioned officer in charge so he wouldn’t send me back. I was eventually returned to my company and left alone, provided I kept a low profile. Well, my army service was interesting, jolly.
What made you take up a filmmaking career with its uncertain prospects?
I.S.: I used to watch movies in a local theater when I was at the technical college. I liked them and I remember thinking even then that making a film would be a thrilling experience. Then I spotted an ad for Moscow’s State Institute of Cinematography and its film director faculty. I was 24, finished with the army, and I thought it was time I started doing something worthwhile. I went to Kyiv to give it a whirl. The year that I got into the institute they weren’t taking students for feature films, only documentary films, but there was stiff competition. I completed master classes with Serhiy Bukovsky and Volodymyr Kukorenchuk.
Wait a minute. They took you on just like that, a young guy with no connections?
I.S.: They did, don’t ask me how. I don’t know. I know that all of us newly enrolled student formed an interesting group. We were so different, aged 22-24, some with employment records, others with post-secondary educations; each with ambitions and views, so that whoever wrote something first would be exposed to criticism or an approving pat on the shoulder from the rest.
Why documentaries?
I.S.: Before enrolling in the institute I took a preparatory course. There were 25 of us and I was the only one who got in. Bukovsky and Kukorenchuk attended our classes and told us about documentary filmmaking. They made it clear that being a documentary filmmaker wasn’t the road to success, far from it. A box office motion picture can give you a lifetime guarantee of success, but documentaries mean earning your daily bread with backbreaking work. You have to lug around the camera and equipment, you have to act as your own cameraman, you have to establish contact with your future heroes, drink vodka and risk alcoholism. There’s nothing spectacular about this career. We were also shown lots of films. In the end I told myself, “You’ve made up your mind, you want to make documentaries, and these professors will teach you better than anyone else.” I’m happy to have studied under their able guidance. Too bad they refused to give another class after us. Bukovsky says that teaching students under such conditions is a criminal offence; there’s no teaching base, so trying to teach anything means simply crippling the young students. In other words, he can’t accept students without being able to turn them into professionals — i.e., most students feel sure they’ll become top-notch film directors; they’re ambitious, so trying to teach them under these circumstances is tantamount to psychologically crippling them. He refused to give another class. Four of us graduated from his course.
Do you remember the first time you handled a camera?
I.S.: That’s an interesting story. Volodymyr Kukorenchuk is our cameraman. He told us, “You’re documentary filmmakers, so take my advice, go buy yourselves some inexpensive cameras (Zenit cost 30 hryvnias at the time) and start shooting. Whatever you have on your mind, I say go and shoot, each and every one of you.” So I did, I’m still very much into photography, although there’s very little time left for this hobby. I even thought that if I failed at documentaries, I’d try my luck as a press photographer — I know I can do this reasonably well. I remembered my early footage and thinking, “Why did I waste so much time and energy? I served in the army, studied, and worked in a factory; I could’ve taken so many pictures.” I had to start using a video camera as a compulsory rather than voluntary option; I had to submit a term paper in my first year at the institute, otherwise I’d be expelled. So I used my video camera for half a night and came up with a documentary (I didn’t edit the tape before submitting it because I’d done the editing when I was shooting by pressing the camera’s “on” and “off” buttons.
Is this documentary in the archives?
I.S.: I got a credit for it in my first year, but nothing was transferred to the institute’s archives; also I did the shooting at my own expense. The video cassette got lost. My first 3.5-minute documentary was called “Faces of the 20th Century,” using portraits and photos, showing how man’s appearance changed during that century. Those were images rather than portraits. It was meant as a cinematographic sketch.
Many people think that it’s no use enrolling in a higher school like your university. After all, we know of many famous film directors who have never taken any special training courses. Is enrolling worth the trouble?
I.S.: Let me put it this way. People who can afford to make films without taking any training courses, and who actually feel they don’t need such training, are right: they don’t need it. I needed this training because I didn’t know how to go about doing it; I didn’t know anyone in the field, I couldn’t come to the studios and say: ‘Here I am, put me on the payroll.” Nor could I borrow a camera; there were no cameras or VCRs in my village. I knew about things like editing, film directing, but I had no idea of how to do any of this. As for the institute, it was definitely horrible, I mean the way they were “crippling” the students. Bukovsky used to say that the Institute of Culture and Karpenko-Kary University were competing to produce the best specialists in their fields. I think that all this is of minor importance because we have nothing to learn from — and even worse, no one from whom to learn. Yes, we have our “masters” (I’m not going to name them) who are very good at crippling their students; some of them have produced three classes of graduates. Horrible, yes. So what? A professor must either teach well or let his students learn better without interfering. A student who produces footage amounting to nothing but garbage ought to be advised to quit. A student who comes up with something noteworthy should be allowed to pursue in the same vein; even if his professor would want that student to do it differently, according to his professorial way, he can’t give him a -C, let alone have him expelled from his class, because this student has worked on his project as best he could.
Are your parents living in the village?
I.S.: Mom’s there, and Dad is doing jobs all over the place; he’s a good gas and arc welder, he has jobs in Moscow, Kyiv, and other places.
How do they feel about your filmmaking career?
I.S.: They follow the Soviet stereotype: the main thing is to have a higher school diploma. My Mom was worried sick about my not having this diploma, even though I finished school two years ago. She couldn’t understand why; is it that difficult to shoot those ten minutes and receive a diploma?
Do you have any vivid and lasting memories of your rural childhood?
I.S.: I remember when my great-grandmother died. I was a kid. People her age came over to pay their last respects, old men dressed in black, wearing boots, that’s the way it is in western Ukraine, you know. It was snowing and there was that black coffin, and everybody was wearing black clothes. The scene is vivid in my mind. I can still smell the varnish (coffins are varnished black where I come from) and the damp earth. Even now I can smell death whenever I smell varnish, and funereal images jump into my mind like a film sequence. I mean there are several images living inside me. Sometimes memories spring up in a certain kind of lighting: when I’m riding on a bus, on the way to my place in Troyeshchyna. The bus ride is long and bumpy, across an almost empty bridge in cold winter, with a small dim red light above the bus doors. I seem to remember a similar scene that has nothing to do with any bus rides. It’s an altogether different sensation, something remotely familiar, I’m somewhere outside of Kyiv and heading somewhere far away. Such visions happen quite often, but I can’t remember any clear childhood images, only parts of them that appear quite cinematographic, but not good enough for a story. It was too late, once I found myself in an environment that allowed me to tell my own stories.
What were the biggest problems of working on Wayfarers?
I.S.: Most of them had to do with me. I had to decide whether I wanted to embark on a documentary film career. When I shot my first footage, it was simply awful. I saw at once that I was good for nothing. The footage wasn’t even standard. I hadn’t wanted to shoot it that way, to make it look so stupid, so why did I? I dumped it and didn’t try anything more for a long time. All I had was a defective 15-minute film, and I had to turn it into adequate 10-minute footage. That was when I realized that I had to shoot without retakes; that I had to shoot precisely what I liked because there was nothing left I could dump; I had only 5 minutes of film in reserve. Then I tried to figure out what and whom I wanted to portray, where the emphasis should be, what scenes to single out. I walked around, taking pictures, talking to people I saw as my future characters. I spent hours with them, asking how they’d want to see themselves on the screen. I didn’t tell them what to do. The problem with us students is that we’re withdrawn. If you’ve watched any student films, you must have seen all those dorms with dirty johns and scenes in the rooms or on the roof. This makes it even more difficult for a documentalist. I went to the countryside, met people, and found myself becoming genuinely interested. Apparently there were other subjects besides dorms.
They say you didn’t even have any decent film stock.
I.S.: The largest reel I had was 120 meters, and the smallest was 40 meters. Don’t forget that a length of film must be clipped at the beginning and at the end to test its developing capacity, meaning that I was left with less than what I had at the beginning. I couldn’t shoot long panoramic views or long dialogues because all I had was 120 meters of film. I left the songs on the soundtrack; the rest was edited using snippets here and there. It’s true that the film I had was defective, past its stale date, but you can still see something (laughing). One section of film had a stale date of 1998, and another one, 2000. That was probably my freshest.
Why did you use the Svema logo in the closing credits?
I.S.: It was an ironic gesture, since we mostly see Kodak logos these days, but I actually used Svema film, meaning I provided valid information, without gypping anyone or telling any lies.
Let’s get back to Wayfarers. How would you explain its absolutely nonlinear story?
I.S.: I didn’t want to give preference to anyone. If I had dwelled on the psychiatric hospital, the film would’ve been about that hospital; the Veteran Actors’ Home would also have made a separate story. I was more interested in people than history. Honestly, there was no film left to reconsider the plot. I knew that other subjects should be used for such documentaries, and that a 15-min film made it impossible to dwell on certain pages from history, certain characters, let alone reveal their personalities. So I decided on the structure I did because I wanted my audience attracted by things other than plot as such.
What things?
Well, maybe an author’s insight. I think it’s rather individual. True, there is no plot, just feeling. When I was editing the film, I could see what was happening off screen. Like I said, there’s no story, but there’s something else instead.
What was most important when you were working on the film: the quality of scenes or an insight into the characters?
I.S.: Now this took different approaches. When it came to pure documentalism, I was an impartial observer recording certain facts. I tried to use the camera without pressing the on and off buttons too much, trying to produce a continuous composition. And when I was editing, it was from fade-in to fade—out. I turned the camera off and I left it like that in the film. It wasn’t formalism. I didn’t want to hear accusations of playing around with my material and capitalizing on it. So I left all the fade-in/fade-outs, so everyone could tell when I turned the camera on and off, so it would be obvious that I had left nothing out and added nothing — that takes care of documentalism. But there were certain emotionally charged components, visual reflections. To me the whole thing was a visual picture, so there are scenes that look like photos. I knew I was making my last production, using the only film I’d ever have. For where else in Ukraine could I expect an opportunity to make another documentary? I thought I’d graduate from the institute and then try to get a job at a TV channel. So I put together all my ideas and considered presenting the story against a general background or maybe focus on portraits. In the end I decided that one line would be the portraits; that they could somehow add to my scenes with people. So this probably explains what looks like a haphazard story on the screen. Perhaps because I tried to place everything in a single small package — my own sentiments, my characters, everything that had happened to me.
Was the social factor important to you?
I.S.: No. What really mattered was the ethical factor; I wasn’t sure if I had the right to shoot this. There is no social factor as such. Of course, I was personally convinced that people who consider themselves normal isolate those patients from themselves, so that they don’t prevent them from living a normal life and don’t wreck their mood. I absolutely understood this at the mental hospital, although I was careful to leave all this out of my documentary.
How would you explain the selection of your “cast”?
I.S.: In my case, “casting” was almost coincidental. After I realized that the footage I had was practically good for nothing, and after I dumped it, I knew I had to meet with people and talk to them, so I could figure out whom to shoot. I also knew I was stewing in my own juices. I had an unfinished term project while I was in the third year at the institute. The film was about the Veteran Actors’ Home. It showed an interesting character, a man walking down a corridor and reciting a poem. I spotted him and knew I would have him in my film because the man was an interesting figure — provided he was still alive at show time. I visited him again and shot more footage. Walking back to the car, I remembered that there was a psychiatric clinic across the road. I decided to visit it. I asked to see the chief physician, and he asked me whether I was sure I wanted any of his patients as heroes of my documentary. I said I was and he said, of course he had such heroes. He led the way to the second floor (the documentary shows this). After I started shooting, I realized that I was being drawn into that social aspect, so I turned off the camera. Otherwise I’d have a documentary about a psychiatric hospital, and I didn’t want to capitalize on infirmities. After that I had another idle period of 2-3 months; I wanted to figure out the documentary’s pattern — what and whom to shoot and where.
Was it difficult to win those people’s confidence?
I.S.: They were willing to communicate, but I didn’t turn on my camera right away, I walked through the hospital and took pictures. Then we sat and talked in the garden. I made sure they knew me, so we’d say hi to each other. Those people were open-hearted; they trusted me, so I couldn’t shove my camera into their faces. That was when I realized that making a documentary using those people wasn’t right. So I walked around and used my photo camera now and then. In the end I told them, “How about making a film about you people here?” They agreed.
Your images — photos, that kid, old people’s memories, poems about love — made me think that your film is about wasted time. Am I wrong?
I.S.: I’m not sure. I haven’t considered this particular aspect. No, not so much about wasted time as about what we constantly have around us. Everything that’s happened leaves certain fragments imbedded in our memories; we live with them for as long as we’re destined to live. I wanted to show that man has to live with this, be it good or bad, and that living with this motley crowd is good; being alive comes first.
You also have scenes that are obviously rehearsed and directed. Why?
I.S.: This brings us back to stable images. You see that kid running across a field before the end of the film. This is an image from my childhood. I remember a field like that, and my mother returning home from work, and I’m rushing out to meet her — I did this in winter and summer. As for this kid running across the field, we don’t know whom he is eager to meet; the main thing is the scene with this running kid. I clearly remember it visually. I decided that I should keep that scene on film, since I had my own vivid memories. Other scenes like that form precisely the line of thought, memories crossing the photographs. In fact, I was planning to do a documentary based on portraits.
Can a documentary with dramatized scenes be considered as meeting established standards?
I.S.: It’s like that proverb about the three blind men trying to figure out what an elephant looks like by touching different parts of the animal’s body. Now how would you define documentalism?
Actually, I was about to ask you to define it.
I.S.: Some will say that Discovery is all there is to say about documentaries — we can watch and learn so much about animals. Others will say that they want documentaries about places of birth, footwear sizes, and exact addresses. I believe that there should be documentaries about people living in their natural habitat and going about their daily chores; that a documentalist should only watch and shoot them like that. In my case, it would be stupid to say that I kept my camera running without interfering in what was going on. There are scenes showing that the camera is at a different angle and in a different kind of lighting. Yet all this boils down to documentalism — I think it’s when you have to cope with realities, when you digest them and then let them be seen on the screen. That’s the kind of approach without which no films will ever be made. I also believe that documentaries will continue to be made by using such vivid and genuine images.
Are you working on another project?
I.S.: Before the New Year, the Goethe Institute held an anonymous contest for best postwar script (e.g., reverberations of WW II). The project was called “Reconciliatory Gestures” and it cost ?5,000 per video [cassette]. Natalka and I won and received 5,000 euros. I’ve been shooting for two days, and I don’t know what will come of it, because the shooting process has been very difficult, and my tight schedule leaves very little time for examining the sites. I’m used to visiting a site and people for three or four days, so I can get my bearings, size up the characters, hang around the site, and watch the daily routine. I haven’t seen the material available.
Do you have a universal theme that you would like to show on the screen?
I.S.: I’m interested in ordinary people who are not very well known, who have nothing special about them. But I’d like to do this in an inspiring way. Maybe I’ll make another documentary consisting only of photographs.
The final, logical question: What’s next?
I.S.: Nothing. I don’t expect anything good to come out of this project. This isn’t the first time Ukraine has won prizes. Stepan Koval won the Silver Bear, and so what? I see no prospects. I can only hope to use my camera to shoot videos here and there. Of course, I won’t be shooting for the cinema. No one will finance such filmmaking projects in Ukraine. I accept this as part of our realities. What are we supposed to do? Sit on our hands and keep telling ourselves how brilliant we are and that all we need to implement our talent is money, which we lack and are eager to grab. These arguments sound funny at best. In a word, I’m not trying to consider what lies ahead.
