Yuri Shevchuk, Senior Lecturer in Ukrainian, appeared on the London Telegraph’s podcast, “Ukraine: The Latest” [interview begins at 32:15]. He discussed the legacy of Russian imperialism and its influence on Ukrainian filmmaking from Soviet to contemporary times. “I found [the] representation of Ukrainians on screen to be in harmony with the analysis of the Holodomor, the manmade famine,” said Shevchuk. During Holodomor, there was a “physical depopulation of Ukraine and resettlement of Russians in the depopulated area … And I thought, this is exactly what’s happening in dozens of Russian and Ukrainian films. Ukraine, as a national [land]scape, is depopulated, devoid, derailed from its Indigenous population, Ukrainians, and repopulated either by Russians or by these concocted, construed, caricature-like, racist stereotypes of Ukrainians that have nothing to do with Ukrainians,” he said.
Listen to the Interview