Testimonies for the documentary were drawn from the visual history archives of Spielberg’s Shoah Foundation, which houses over 52,000 video testimonies of eyewitnesses to the Holocaust.
Although this marked the director’s first trip to the former Soviet Union, Ukraine is not foreign to Spielberg. “I got off the plane today and said, ‘I’m home!’” he told reporters at a press conference dedicated to the film, which is called “Spell Your Name.”
A descendant of Ukrainian grandparents on both sides of his family, Spielberg became familiar with the culture growing up. “I felt I had a piece of Ukraine in my own home, especially around dinnertime,” he said.
According to Spielberg, the idea for the documentary arose during a meeting with Pinchuk in New Jersey about two years ago, while Spielberg was making the Tom Cruise blockbuster “War of the Worlds.”
“He [Pinchuk] came to me and said, ‘You know, there’s a story that I really think is necessary to tell, and I really think that now’s the time to tell it.’”
Spielberg said a recounting of the Babiy Yar massacre and other tragedies of the Holocaust in Ukraine is long overdue.
In “Spell Your Name,” Ukrainian director Sergey Bukovsky weaves testimonies given by Jewish Holocaust survivors, as well as non-Jews who risked their lives to help others escape Nazi persecution, with footage by three students of journalism preoccupied with transcribing the stories and Bukovsky’s own explorations into Ukraine’s past. The film includes dialogue in both Russian and Ukrainian.
Testimonies for the documentary were drawn from the visual history archives of Spielberg’s Shoah Foundation, which houses over 52,000 video testimonies of eyewitnesses to the Holocaust, making it the largest visual history archive in the world.
“To prepare for the film, we viewed nearly 500 testimonies at the USC Shoah Foundation Institute in Los Angeles. As I watched, I could imagine making a film from every single one,” said Bukovsky in a press release from the foundation.
Although the Shoah Foundation has already made 10 films documenting events of the Holocaust, “Spell Your Name” is distinctive in its presentation of Holocaust events that are little known even in Ukraine, according to the press release.
Unlike what occurred in other Holocaust countries, Jews in Ukraine were not sent to concentration camps in great numbers, but were massacred in their home towns and villages, usually by shooting. Due to the relative obscurity and distinctive character of the Holocaust’s unfolding in Ukraine, the Shoah Foundation believed that it was very important to make the film.
“A film like this is certainly going to bring tremendous attention to the Holocaust in Ukraine, at Babiy Yar and in hundreds of towns and villages throughout Ukraine,” Spielberg added.
At the press screening, Pinchuk told journalists that he was considering further projects to shed light on other Ukrainian historical tragedies.
“I thought about whether this should be a trilogy about Ukraine’s three main tragedies: the Holodomor, the Holocaust and Chernobyl. I am considering what kind of film or films should be made,” said Pinchuk, adding that several organizations suggested the idea of gathering testimonies of these events in the same fashion as the Shoah Foundation. One unfortunate setback, however, is that survivors of the Holodomor are even older and scarcer than those of the Holocaust, Pinchuk added.
Pinchuk was rated Ukraine’s second richest person in 2006, with assets estimated at $3.7 billion by the weekly news magazine Korrespondent (a sister publication of the Kyiv Post).
The film’s premier took place at Kyiv’s International Center of Culture and Arts (formerly the October Palace). Attendees included influential national and international figures, including President Viktor Yushchenko and Prime Minister Viktor Yanukovich. Political, cultural and religious leaders of Ukraine’s Jewish community, as well as six of the Holocaust survivors whose testimonies are told in the film, also attended.
The event included a post-showing Q & A session, during which members of the audience were given the opportunity to address questions to Spielberg, Pinchuk and Bukovsky, who were sitting on stage.
According to the Shoah Foundation’s press release, future plans for the film’s distribution are already well-advanced, but exact details have yet to be announced. The foundation is planning wide distribution throughout Europe and the U.S. Following the Shoah Foundation’s mission to promote tolerance and educate future generations about the Holocaust, the foundation plans to complete a teacher’s guide to the documentary in the spring of 2007, so that the film can be used as an educational tool in classrooms.
According to Nikita Poturaev, a spokesman for Pinchuk, “Spell Your Name” cost $1 million to make.
“But the fact of the matter is that this isn’t the end. There is still the educational program, which means more expenses,” Poturaev told the Post Oct. 24.
He said that Pinchuk and Spielberg had no plans to run the film commercially: “It’s absolutely just for charity.” Ukraine’s chief Rabbi, Yaakov Dov Bleich, told the Post that he hoped the documentary would awaken Ukraine to the need to delve deeper into its history. “Ukraine suffers from a lack of history,” he said in an Oct. 24 interview, citing the Holodomor as another example of Ukrainian history, which he feels the people of Ukraine need to learn more about.
