One of our major projects to date is the documentary film Between Hitler and Stalin: Ukraine in World War II which premiered in Toronto in September 2003 and now is being translated into Ukrainian (the Ukrainian version is expected at the end of 2004). Oscar-winning actor Jack Palance narrates the film. Eye witness accounts and scholarly analyses are being included to illustrate the tragic history and the valiant struggle of the Ukrainian nation caught between two enemy occupations: Nazi Germany and Soviet Russia. We are exploring the possibility of screening the film at film festivals internationally. VHS and DVD copies are now available. For further information, please contact us at (416) 966-1819 or by email info@ucrdc.org.
It is called the forgotten holocaust - a time when Stalin was dumping millions of tons of wheat on Western markets, while in Ukraine, men, women, and children were dying of starvation at the rate of 25,000 a day, 17 human beings a minute. Seven to ten million people perished in a famine caused not by war or natural disasters, but by ruthless decree. To commemorate the 50th anniversary of this tragedy the Ukrainian Famine Research Committee (former name of UCRDC) gathered materials, sought out eye-witnesses and documented this horrific event. Harvest of Despair is the product of this effort.
The documentary probes the tragic consequences of Ukraine's struggle for greater cultural and political autonomy in the 1920s and 1930s. Through rare archival footage, the results of Stalin's lethal countermeasures unfold in harrowing detail. Harvest of Despair examines why this man-made famine remains so little known. Blinded by radical leftwing ideals, world statesmen, such as Edouard Herriot, Pulitzer Prize-winning journalists and writers such as George Bernard Shaw, all contributed to the regime's campaign of concealment. Even the democratic governments of the depression-hit West preferred to remain silent over Soviet Russia's atrocities in order to continue import and export trade.
In 1932-33, roughly one-quarter of the entire population of Ukraine perished through brutal starvation. Harvest of Despair, through its stark, haunting images, provides the eloquent testimony of a lost generation that has been silenced too long.
The film Harvest of Despair won the awards and honours at the following festivals:
1. Houston International Film Festival - April 1985 - Houston,
Texas
2. Strasburg International Film Festival - April 1985
3. Festival Des Filmes Du Monde - August 1985 - Montreal, Quebec
4. New York Film Festival - September 1985 - New York City
5. Columbus International Film Festival - November 1985 - Columbus, Ohio
6. Yorkton Short Film and Video Festival - October 1985
7. International Film and T.V. Festival of New York - November 1985
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An integral part of the exhibit The Barbed Wire Solution: Ukrainians and Canada's First Internment Operations 1914-1920 is Freedom Had a Price, a one-hour documentary produced by award-winner Yuri Luhovy. Through archival footage, photographs, witness accounts and analyses by contemporary Canadian historians, the film documents the hostile conditions within the internment camps and illustrates how racism and prejudice can be manipulated, particularly during times of war. |
Copies of the films may be purchased.
For more information contact:
Ukrainian Canadian Research & Documentation
Centre
620 Spadina Ave.,
Toronto, ON M5S 2H4
CANADA
tel.: 416-966-1819
fax: 416-966-1820
E-mail: info@ucrdc.org