Ukrainian Cinema: Searching for a New Identity in Wartime

• In Event: Identities Across Media and Languages

Abstract

The paper discusses two modes of cinematic response of Ukrainian filmmakers to the ongoing Russian aggression against Ukraine: anti-colonial and postcolonial. The former is understood as an echo and mirroring of the colonizer by the colonized. The latter is the result of “deconstruction of colonialism, the unmasking and taking apart, and simultaneously the productive re-use, of the cultural structures of colonialism.
Two feature films are chosen to exemplify each mode: The Cyborgs (2016), directed by Akhtem Seitablaiev and Atlantis (2019), directed by Valentyn Vasyanovych. The former is an example of anti-colonial response. Taking cues from the Russian discourse on Ukraine, such as “Ukraine is a fictional nation” or “Ukrainians are an invented identity” with the intention to debunk them, The Cyborgs repackages and reinforces them in the mind of the viewer. The film deploys three imperial stereotypes of Ukrainians described by Andreas Kapeller: 1) the Little Russian; 2) the Mazepynets, and 3) the Khokhol and rearranges them in a neocolonialist hierarchy of values, giving new legitimacy to the Little Russian as the sole carrier of a new political, as opposed to ethnic, Ukrainian citizenship. At the same time, it depicts the program of Ukraine’s decolonization as narrow-minded ethnic nationalism that should have no future in an independent Ukraine.
Whereas in The Cyborgs Ukrainians are defined by Russian colonial tropes, Atlantis presents an alternative and essentially post-colonial vision of Ukraine and its citizens, who define themselves on their own terms and outside the cultural hegemony of the colonizer.

Author

• Yuri Shevchuk, Columbia U