Recently, a movie Crimea. Maximum-Security Resort, advertised by its creators as a piece of investigative journalism, premiered in the Internet. It is a four-series documentary on the history of the peninsula from 1783 to 1991. And, unusually enough for documentaries of the Ukrainian origin, the story is interesting not only in narrative but in the imagery as well. Almost the entire visual set is composed from some little-known engravings of the 18th-19th-century artists.
According to Ihor Piddubny, film author and director, it has been designed with television and Internet audience in mind. “Jus primae noctis” goes to UA:First channel, so to speak, by virtue of fraternity (Zurab Alasania and Ihor Piddubny both come from Kharkiv). The same weekend the film is scheduled for the broadcast on the regional television. The author also addressed Inter and 1+1 channels with the broadcast offer, but the answer is yet to be received. Our own history, when it is not arranged for someone’s benefit, is not especially interesting for the bosses of Ukrainian TV.
“Actually, we have no documentaries to speak of – if we’re talking about movies that one should not be ashamed of when demonstrating them to a wide audience,” reacts Piddubny. “That what we show in movie on Crimea is an exclusive historical chronicle. Through the personal relationship we have managed to obtain the access to two archives of movies, photo, and video recording – in Moscow and Kyiv. Materials from there might have been very difficult to provide for otherwise. We have tracked the word ‘Crimea’ through various works, and some of the results were surprising. We found a video of Les Kurbas, founder of the theater in Kharkiv, who was executed in Sandarmokh in 1937. I do not think anyone knows in Kharkiv, that Kurbas had been conducting his lessons in Crimea just days before his arrest. Also, the archive of Sahin Giray is now located in St. Petersburg, where it was removed to by Empress Catherine. And it would be nice to find this archive. And if we do that, there will be a real movie about Crimea, which is still unknown to us.”
Speaking of the similarities between the past and the present in regard of the Crimean history, the director says: “Whereas Sahin Giray (the Russian Empire’s protege, the last Crimean Khan, who fled from the popular revolt) emigrated through Kaluga, receiving a generous retirement pension, to Rhodes, I remember another recent emergency evacuation – to Rostov. 1918 saw the blockade of Crimea, similar to that of today. And then the government changed their mind within three or five days and asked to accept Crimea back to Ukraine (the peninsula was under the Soviet regime at the time)... People have never attained any value in the eyes of this state – and it is true for that state in the past as well. The fleet is as important as ever, both then and now the Navy enforces the Russian military presence. And for this purposes arise all the other questions concerning Crimea.”
At the end of the conversation Piddubny said, as if inadvertently: “Many Crimeans, by the way, have seen the movie.” And, after being asked for clarification, he added: “Those Crimeans who live on the peninsula and have their own stance about what is happening.” “In fact, the answer to the question of whom Crimea belongs to is contained there, in the history that spans more than two hundred years,” said Piddubny in an interview for UA:First. And if you see the movie Crimea. Maximum-Security Resort, all becomes abundantly clear.
