Ukraine: Nearing the End

So life has been pretty interesting in the month or more since I last posted. I've visited a number of other cities, from really antisemtic Lviv in the west (covered in swastika grafitti and some 80 percent of people interviewed on the street had something bad to say about Jews) to pretty-inclusive Poltava, where people stopped on the street railed about what little antisemitic graffiti there was up (of course it was up; you can't escape it in Ukraine, save, perhaps, in Odessa). But ironically it was there that I talked to not one, but two rabid antisemites. Both pulled out books to show me. One was by Vasiliy Yaremenko. The other was by David Duke. Small world. I had contacted David Duke by email to get his permission to use excerpts from his radio broadcasts in the documentary. He wrote back and agreed. Former Klu Klux Klan member, former Representative from Louisiana, he's authored some bestselling (in Eastern Europe anyway) books about a Jewish conspiracy to control the world. He's also recieved a doctoral degree from MAUP, a university in Ukraine infamous for publishing literature of similar themes. He is ardently anti-zionist, some would say antisemetic, although that kind of talk gets you sued. The week before I had interviewed Yaremenko on camera, who is also a director at MAUP and he spoke for a long time about how Jews are in complete control of Ukrainain politics and finances and responsible for the millions of Ukrainian deaths in a famine manufactured under Stalin in the '20s. He told me, at interview's end and when the camera was off, that if I said he was antisemtic in the film or misrepresented his words, he would sue me. It's not an empty threat: MAUP has sued pretty much anyone who has said it or Yaremenko is antisemitic for slander. I'm not worried: I have no intention of saying he is antisemtic or misrepresenting him. I'm just going to put what he said in the film and let people make their own decisions. I did get thrown of MAUP's campus later, though. I was interviewing students, all of whom (of course) said positive things about the university and all (but one) admitted they didn't read the publications that MAUP is so infamous for. Then security escorted me off. I was on the sidewalk getting interviews from students and had every right to be there, but security kept bugging me to leave and was intercepting me from talking to students. So I got some shots of a kiosk of theirs selling books about the "Jewish question" with them continually asking/telling me to leave but hamstrung by the fact that they could not actually make me do so on the sidewalk. Part of it is on tape, although when they told me to turn the camera off I did because, I don't know, I'm not a complete jerk and I sympathize: they don't want me interviewing their students without permission and its the response most universities would have. It's made me think a lot lately. I could so easily put forth all this stuff about MAUP making it look bad and then toss in, without commentary, these three guards, pointing me off campus and people would go: "look, they're scared becaues they know they're antisemetic" and, really, that's too easy and facile. These issues are so touchy, especially here, that I'm really commited to making as serious and balanced a work as I can without resorting to Michael Moore type tactics (which I say with all respect considering his films started my interest in documentaries, but if you ever deconstruct "Bowling for Columbine" you realize how easy you can lie or mislead via editing).

Still, those books that the antisemites (and they proudly labeled themselves antisemites, so no worries about libel there) had seemed to have left an impression. Both, one on camera and the other off, vehemently went on about Jewish control in Ukraine. The off camera one's suggestion was to "do something" but was unsure what. The on camera one had less ambiguity: "kill them all." I brought up a Jewish woman I had interviewed several weeks before: she had just been attacked with her husband in Zhytomyr, and she was left in the hospital for two weeks. She has 8 kids. Did he really agree with that kind of violence. "Yes," he said. "She hasn't done anything to you," I said. "She's raising 8 more Jews who will likely become Zionists." Even he agreed, though, that his views were in the extreme minority in Ukraine, but only because Ukrainians hadn't yet "woken up" about it.

With his interview, I finally felt I had enough sides: official and street, Jewish and anti-Jewish, to give a depiction of the status of Ukraine today. I still have some stuff I'm shooting here and there and couple more interviews lined up, but I've even been closing off the tap of interest in talking to me because I'm at risk of overflowing and my main job now is get rid of everything I don't need.

Both sides have threatened to sue me, though, including the head of the Union for the Council of Soviet Jewry for Ukraine. He's a great guy, actually, but he's just as worried about being represented as everyone else. It's nice to know I've got everybody worried, though. I once heard that a perfectly balanced journalism piece on a controversial topic is one that pisses off both sides. If one is happy, it's because you leaned too much their way.

Possibly I should have just made a film only about antisemitism in Ukraine. It wasn't where I originally started and I don't know that many people would find it interesting divorced from the story of the Holocaust in Ukraine. Especially, as everyone points out, if you want to do a story on antisemtisim in Europe, go to Russia. But the holocaust story in Ukraine has been the most frustrating because historical footage and photographs have been extremely hard to get a hold of, at least in the quality I need for showing in a film. The archives in Ukraine are a beaurcratic nightmare and the one in America is obscenely expensive ($15 per photo, and don't get me started on film). Someone explain to me why I decided my first film should be an historical one in a foreign country and requires the use of four languages?

I've been milking the networking. The path of the holocaust is well-trodden, at least by museum exhibitors. It's a matter of getting their permission and materials. I thought I had a good thing going at the Lviv museum. Three days spent having coffee with the curator and together we got permission from the director. But all those photos are on a hard drive she didn't have access to because the person was on vacation. And now they don't want to mail them to me and I think said currator is avoiding my phone calls. I think I'm going to have to make another trip there to try and get those materials. That's okay, there's also a crazy rabbi there to interview. They tried to set his door on fire, among other things, but he also talks nonstop in a stream of conciousness way (he once went on for half an hour on the phone with me, me not saying a word, about the numerical importance of the sabbath. The question I had asked him was "when did this happen?" refering to the door-on-fire incident. He actually never answered that question.

I also have a contact through a contact with the Kyiv archive and another contact through a contact for the Zhytomyr one (although that one tried to milk me by trying to sell me "archival" footage, which turned out to be bootlegged DVDs of BBC documentaries on the war dubbed in Russian. I did pick up some of them off him both for goodwill and to use the footage as temp footage during editing until I get access to higher quality. I'm hoping he'll come through on photographs). All of this stuff is public forum, even by Ukrainian law, but it's a matter of getting good quality scans.

It all should be wrapping up soon, though. Editing is coming along well, but slowly, and my intention to completly edit in Ukraine has been changed by changing visa laws. I was all set to get on a train to Poland last night to stay for as long as it took me to walk back over to Ukraine. Why? Because Americans get a 90 day stay for free. People had been leaving and coming back every 90 days to work in Ukraine (as had been my intention) when not one, but two people tipped me off at dinner AN HOUR before I was to get on the train that they had just changed the visa rules that if you came in under the 90 day thing, you had to leave for 6 months before you could do it again. So I might have gotten off in Poland with only a change of clothes and a tooth brush and had not been able to get back in again, with all my stuff still in zhytomyr. As is, I talked to the American embassy and the best bet is to do what other people have done: overstay the 90 days and pay a fine on the way out (between $18 and $140 depending on the border guard, but legally it can not be more than $140). I ate the ticket to Poland and went out with friends to a latin-themed dance club.

But I also don't like staying in the country illegally, so I'm going wrap things up and be out by the end of September. My ticket between Budapest and New York is moveable to when I want, but the New York to Orlando ticket is October 4th, moveable at $30 a time, so I might as well make that the target date.

Right now I'm babysitting a scanner in Kyiv, scanning orginal documents left by the Nazis. It's about 50 large leaflets dealing with Jews in '41-'42. Announcements to go the the ghetto and how much they could bring, announcements that aiding Jews would bring a death penalty, announcements proclaiming to Ukrainian that the horrors of the Soviet Unions were due to Jews, and announcements for "relocation" and for Jews to gather for it, which is when they would take them outside the city and shoot them. Little of it is of use in the film, it's all in Russian or Ukrainian and has nothing visual, but since I came upon this small cache of documents at a small institute in Kyiv (friend of a friend thing again) I've decided I want to preserve it. A lot of what I've found and will get is going on the web, so others can have less trouble finding and using these materials. I hope to create a small, free online archive of sorts of scanned original materials so that people can use them in research or documentaries.

Anyway, in all liklihood I'll be back in Orlando October 4th, laden with hard drives laden with stuff. Wish me luck!