Serhy Mykhalchuk looks within to fight off urge to abandon struggling Ukrainian film industry
Serhy Mykhalchuk may not be a household name now ,but for Ukranians it may soon be- if he doesn’t trade in his Ukrainian passport for a Russian one, that is.
At a time when all else has faded to black in Ukraine’s beleaguered film industry, the news that this young cinematographer and cameraman has won a major international film festival award represents one of the country’s last chances to allow the credits to keep rolling.
At the 50th installment of the prestigious San Sebastian International Film Festival in Spain this September, Lutsk native Serhy Mykhalchuk won the jury award for best photography in the Russian silver screen drama “Lyubovnik” (The Lover).
“I can’t believe it,” Mykhalchuk said in disbelief. “Next year, film making school students who are just 10 years younger than I will study my name in their cinema history textbooks.”
Mykhalchuk is known in former Soviet Union film circles as a director of photography (DP), basically a cinematographer and cameraman wrapped into one. He is the first DP in the history of Ukrainian cinema to win an award at a “Class A” festival. Some experts rate the San Sebastian festival, which has showcased such notable film makers as Bernardo Bertolucci and P.J. Hogan (“My Best Friend’s Wedding”), as being on par with the Cannes or Venice film festivals.
One of Russia’s top film production companies, Raccoon-Film productions, has been trying to entice the 30-year-old to leave his native Ukraine and take up Russian citizenship. Mykhalchuk has been working for Raccoon-Film for two years now, but continues to make his home in Kyiv even though he spends much of his time traveling between Ukraine and Russia.
Illia Neretin, who produced “Lyubovnik” for Raccoon-Film, said that Mykhalchuk is burying his talent by staying in Ukraine, where the film industry has been languishing for decades. Top Ukrainian film makers and specialists usually leave the country as soon as they’re discovered; funding cutbacks and thick layers of bureaucracy relegate the careers of many a talented Ukrainian filmmaker to the cutting room floor.
“Ukrainian cinema? Sorry, I don’t know what you’re talking about. Ukraine has several film makers and a school that graduates them, but no cinema,” Neretin said. “The difference between the film making scene in Ukraine and that in Russia is like the difference between cinema in Russia and in France.”
“Don’t worry, we’ll snatch Mykhalchuk from [Ukraine] as well,” quipped Valery Todorovsky, director of “Lyubovnik,” in a TV interview.
But Mykhalchuk is holding onto his ties with the motherland – at least for now.
“I don’t want to leave Ukraine, and I’m not going to, so far. There is a lot that keeps me here,” Mykhalchuk said. “I love Kyiv. My friends are here as well as many intangible, non-material trifles that I would hate to lose simply for the sake of a successful film making career.”
Sweet success
That makes his award in San Sebastian especially sweet for the Ukrainian film industry (even though several news reports in both Russia and Ukraine – as well as the San Sebastian film festival Web site – referred to Mykhalchuk as Russian).
Mykhalchuk’s award at San Sebastian makes him only the third person in the history of Soviet and post-Soviet film making to be so honored. His predecessors include such acclaimed directors of photography as Sergei Urusevsky (“The Cranes are Flying,” 1957) and Vadim Yusov (“The Black Monk,” 1989).
“Mykhalchuk is an amazing cameraman with a rare finesse in vision and sense of composition, masterfully working with light,” Neretin said. “He thoroughly knows the technical side of the profession, and is ideal in communication – tranquil and self-reliant.”
The Lutsk native has compiled quite an impressive resume. Since graduating from the Kyiv Theatrical Institute in 1995, where he majored in so-called special photography, [which included the science of filming from moving cars, helicopters and crane-mounted cameras], Mykhalchuk has filmed 14 movies as a DP since 1995, including both features and documentaries.
The bulk of Mykhalchuk’s work has been in Moscow, where he currently works for Russia’s leading special photography company, Filmotekhnik, in addition to putting in time at Raccoon-Film. One of his better-known works with Raccoon-Film is a popular police drama TV series “Zakon” (Law).
While in school but before working full time on films, Mykhalchuk dabbled in TV journalism, working as a reporter for Inter news, Novy Kanal and ICTV.
“TV journalism is quite rough. Channels air a lot of bad news, because these have the highest ratings with the audience,” Mykhalchuk said. “Or sometimes it’s an interesting topic and a nice interviewee, but you show up, make a superficial report and never see the person again. I don’t like it that way. Cinema is much deeper.”
Feeling the eastward pull
As devoted as Mykhalchuk is to his homeland, he’s well aware of the advantages of uprooting and going to Russia permanently. In Russia, he would have a chance to be immersed in creative work, whereas in Ukraine film makers often have to fight for this right.
“I don’t want to wage an endless war with the system, overcome numerous obstacles that are far from my profession and beyond normal human logic,” Mykhalchuk said.
He jokes that having already shot four state-sponsored films in Ukraine, he has accomplished a “civic feat.”
One of his latest works, “Mamay,” due to be released in January 2003, provides just such an example. The project, sponsored by the Culture Ministry, was so terribly under-funded that it took almost two years to complete instead of seven months as originally scheduled. At one point, all the filming equipment was stolen from the Dovzhenko production studio and the crew had to start from scratch.
Meager film budgets and a lack of equipment aren’t the most serious problems Mykhalchuk has faced. The most talented actors, directors and technical personnel have all been leaving Ukraine for Moscow and elsewhere.
But what nags Mykhalchuk the most is the massive bureaucracy that still plagues the Ukrainian film industry. He says an older generation of 30- and 40-something film makers is stifling the growth of younger generations.
“They have perpetrated genocide on the cinema,” Mykhalchuk said. “An entire generation has been lost; I have very few associates my age [in Ukraine].”
Love over logic
But Mykhalchuk and his friends are not yet ready to let the curtain close on the local film scene quite yet. “Mamay” was just one example of that commitment. Mykhalchuk collaborated with award-winning Ukrainian film director and fellow Lutsk native Oles Sanin on “Mamay,” an emotional story based on a blend of Ukrainian and Tatar epics, a tale of love and freedom set on the Great Steppe during the 15th to 17th centuries.
Sanin said that “Mamay” is radically different from recent state-funded projects like “Zinovy Khmelnytsky” and “A Prayer for Hetman Mazepa.”
“‘Mamay’ is an example of how, with scant funding and human resources – and without costly special effects and scenes involving thousands of extras – one can produce a high-quality film,” Sanin said.
“Mamay” strikes a blend of masterful cinematography, natural acting ability and something else not quite tangible that can only be understood by seeing Mykhalchuk work with the camera. And although the story itself portrays a type of legend, everything going on behind the scenes feels very real.
“It’s a heartfelt movie. Everything in it was done honestly and sincerely, and it touches even ourselves,” Mykhalchuk said. “We are incredibly proud of this work.”
The next project Mykhalchuk and Sanin have planned together is an adventure documentary set in Africa in collaboration with Equites Team, a crew of three Ukrainian travelers.
Mykhalchuk’s love of travel – he has trodden half the globe, from the Libyan Desert to the North Pole – is another reason not to move to Moscow, where he would be bound only to cinema.
“Africa is my cherished dream from childhood,” Mykhalchuk said.
As a child he avidly read adventure books, and British explorer David Livingstone fast became one of his favorite heroes. Last summer during a research expedition in Tanzania with Equites, Mykhalchuk’s whole crew fell ill with malaria.
“Livingstone had malaria twice, and it was even pleasant for me to be, in a way, like Livingstone,” Mykhalchuk said, smiling.
Having recovered and realizing that a second bout of malaria can be fatal, as it was for Livingstone, Mykhalchuk set his mind on gathering the best photographs he made during this African expedition and created a series he calls, “A portrait of the world in people’s faces.”
Still photography is one of Mykhalchuk’s passions, and he resorts to it to escape the inevitable pressure and distractions that success brings with it.
“A goal is a far-away reference point you strive for, and when you are officially recognized abroad, there comes with it a strange feeling of emptiness,” he said of the time since being honored in Spain.
A highly modest person, Mykhalchuk becomes embarrassed every time he receives praise. But there is one compliment he would never want to hear. “When people say ‘it’s so beautiful, like a postcard’ then that’s the end,” Mykhalchuk said. “When you start making sugary-sweet pictures, like a court artist working from a golden cage, the only thing left to do is go and hang yourself.”
There is a saying that an artist needs to be hungry in order to create. But maybe not, Mykhalchuk says, because an artist should be independent. He does believe that an artist should be scared – and the more often, the better.
“Both photography and cinema should first of all contain life, a nerve,” he said. “When you shoot in a thunderstorm or with frost-bitten hands, when you suffer for it, then you capture the real thing.”
