Ukraine: Documentary, Jul 3

Life has picked up considerably. Spent two days interviewing warsurvivors and some of the stories are really heartbreaking, althoughfew are related to the Holocaust (even though the survivors areJewish, they survived because they fled as the Germans advanced; theirmemories are of living in Tajikistan or Kazakstan or Siberia until theend of the war).

One woman I met with today, though, was Ukrainianand hid Jews during the war. I know of a Fulbright Scholar in Lvivwho is also going to tell me about her main subject of research: apriest who hid dozens of Jewish children during the war. So at leastI am going to balance some positive with the negative of theHolocaust.

And in other positive news, the more I interview various people, themore interesting commanalities come to light. For example, I havethree different Ukrainian girls on camera saying that Jews make thebest husbands and they'd love to marry one. I also have six or morepeople, including the antisemites, saying that Jews are extremelysmart and three people saying that's why there's distrust and dislikeof them. Jews being an educated group is not an amazingly newstereotype, but how much it's mentioned here, I realized that togenerations of non-educated Ukrainian farmers, that would stand outparticularly. Also, I have a few Jews (possibly too proudly for theirown good) also saying how smart and talented Jews are compared to therest of the world. I honestly would have thought of "jealousy ofeducation" as being a laughable excuse for antisemitism at best but ithas come up so frequently that Ihave to consider it as a possiblemotivation.

I'm about a week and a half into shooting and I have about 8 hours offootage, about a 1/3 of it useable and some of it very beautiful. I'malso learning that I have a lot more to learn about how to do thiswell, especially with limited equipment and only myself or on occasionmy friend Marina as crew. Take today, which turned out well but wasfrustrating at the time. The lesson: how difficult it can be to getgood sound out of someone you're interviewing on the fly because youcan't interrupt them to get a mic onto them. I had a camera that hadthat handled: it could handle a camera-mounted shotgun mic and awireless lavalier mic on two channels. I accidently broke that camerathe day I was supposed to fly to New York. Insurance should becovering it (keep fingers crossed), but I'm using the back-up camerawhich doesn't have the mounts or inputs, so either I have a handheldmic, the on camera mic (which sucks) or a lavalier mic.

Today: I'minterviewing the caretaker of the Jewish Cemetary in Zhytomyr, whichhas a lot of broken gravestones from skinheads defacing the place, buthe's not keen on doing an interview at first (I have learned inUkraine that asking for an interview will get you a "no". Turning thecamera on and starting to ask questions seems to be the best way togo) so getting the lavalier on him is not going to work. Marina isholding the shotgun mic near enough to him and we're getting greataudio but then he gets excited about showing us (everyone seems torelax after the first few minutes and then they get into it) and takesoff and starts pointing things out and is now out of mic range. Soshe's running after him to clip the lavalier on him but doesn't get itswitched on and he doesn't seem to get that the transmitter should beon his belt, so he's waving it around while he talks. She finallygets it on, but meanwhile I'm switching the inputs between the twomics and loose a good good chunk of everything he has just said.

Oy.Still, got enough to get the gist: skinheads breaking tombstones, copsdoing nothing, cut to still shots of broken tombstones. Done.

Another point of pride: the director of the Zhytomyr branch of MAUP,the private Ukrainian university that is infamous for printing anddistributing antisemetic literature in Kyiv, didn't want to talk to usabout it and said to talk to the main people in Kyiv. But on Friday,and you should enjoy this, the Ministry of Education pulled MAUP'saccredidation. Their reasons were for technical violations, not dueto the hate material, but everyone knows that is why (the authorotieshave been trying to get them to stop printing the antisemiticliterature for months now; see, there is hope!). So I cornered himin his office today and he said that it was all for PR and that theschool would continue as normal. I asked for an interview on this newdevelopment and he declined. Then I refused to leave his office andhe was late for a meeting so, flustered, he promised me one next week. Possibly he didn't mean it, but I then went and talked to hissecretary and I'll get her to schedule it. He did promise, afterall...

Going to another city tomorrow that was the site of the first plannedmassacre of Jews during the Holocaust (23,000) and then will be goingto Odessa tomorrow night or the next day to shoot some footage of thenew mass graves they discovered there.

I declined the New York job because I wouldn't be back in time,but then they said I could still have it provided I got to New Yorkbefore August 20th. Since that is very doable, I accepted. I'm notsure why: it will mean a flustered move and housing search, shittywinter weather and longer working hours and that will all cut intoediting the film.