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03 April 2009 17:19

Kateryna Yushchenko Takes Part in Stockholm International Documentary Film Festival Opening Ceremony

April 2, 2009, Head of the Supervisory Board of the Ukraine 3000 International Charitable Foundation Kateryna Yushchenko took part in the opening ceremony of the Stockholm International Documentary Film Festival, held at the Stockholm Ethnographic Museum. Also present were wife of the President of Poland Maria Kaczynska, Swedish Riksdag deputy Cecilia Wikström, Ambassador Extraordinary and Plenipotentiary of Ukraine to the Kingdom of Sweden Yevhen Perebiynis, and Ukraine 3000 Foundation members.

Stockholm International Documentary Film Festival is a special event, aimed at starting discussions on urgent topics. In 2009, its major topic was Humanity in the World. The festival presented 13 films from 10 countries, including Serhiy Bukovsky’s The Living, made on commission from the Ukraine 3000 Foundation.

Addressing the audience, Mrs. Yushchenko described Ukraine’s cinematic traditions. She spoke in more detail about the Ukraine 3000 Foundation’s structural unit, the Ukrainian Cinema Foundation, aimed at supporting and representing the Ukrainian cinema in the world and initiate legislative changes in the film production field in Ukraine.

“Wise use of the cinema, in part, documentary, allowing to paint a clear picture of culture and history, can help us better understand the world around us,” Mrs. Yushchenko said. “The documentary cinema can trigger fruitful and positive discussion, inspire right decisions and actions.”

Mrs. Kateryna focused on The Living documentary, representing Ukraine at the Stockholm International Documentary Film Festival. The film by Serhiy Bulovsky is dedicated to the Holodomor manmade famine in Ukraine. The film is set in the 1917-1937 and has two major plot lines. The first one is based on witness accounts by our compatriots, survivors of those horrible events. The other is a view from the outside, through the eyes of Gareth Jones, a British journalist, who had related the truth about the Ukrainian tragedy but had never been heard by his contemporaries. Mrs. Kateryna retold the history of the film’s creation and narrated about Holodomor in Ukraine.

“We are glad that today the cinema art allows us to rediscover the truth and help the society understand its past and build its present and future,” Mrs. Yushchenko said. “Ukrainian cinematographers striving to come to a new level of honesty, morality, and responsibility they and their predecessors had never had before.”

The Stockholm International Documentary Film Festival opened with the world premiere of Radegast by Borys Lankosz (Poland), dedicated to Holocaust.

After the opening ceremony, Mrs. Yushchenko and Kaczynska attended a reception at the Polish embassy, dedicated to this event. At the reception, Mrs. Kateryna talked to the festival participants.

Mrs. Kateryna Yushchenko and Ukraine 3000 Foundation representatives are staying in Sweden for a working visit.