I missed Damyan Kolody's documentary film on the Orange Revolution, The Orange Chronicles. Drat!
Everyone I spoke to said it was awesome and that it touched them to the core ... if you ever get the chance, go see it! (And try not to get the flu the day of the screening!) It's also available on DVD at the film's website.
In the meantime, here's the trailer.
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
Featured Post
Ukrainian Food Flair became a best seller today!
So thrilled to see this today! Thank you to my dear friend and writing mentor, Marsha Forchuk Skrypuch , and best-selling children's a...
3 comments:
Unfortunately, the Orange Revolution has been seriously sidetracked. I wonder what color of government we will have on its third anniversary.
As a Maidaner, I want to believe that Yushchenko will have the wisdom and decency not to do shyrka business with the Yanchurian candidate.
I think people in democracies who are politically aware and active all place hope in their chosen leaders. And invariably someone will end up disappointed.
The thing to remember about the Orange Revolution, or at least the western perspective of it, is that it is not so much the politicians who captured the imagination of the west ... altho certainly they were, ahem, colourful enough to. Rather, it was "Maidaners" like yourself.
From the Ukrainian perspective, disillusionment and impatience are certainly understandable! But as I've pointed out before (I think?), Ukraine is quickly catching up to the rest of the democratic world. Very quickly, I'd say.
Those of us in the diaspora who still romanticize the Orange Revolution are looking beyond the politicians and their shenanigans. We're used to that! In any democracy, the politicians will come and go and there will always be shenanigans ... political soap operas are grist for the media mill.
That's just the regular workaday reality of a democratic government. Eventually Ukrainians will come to realize that, and that they have more individual and personal power than they think they do to effect change.
What isn't regular workaday reality is throngs of people, who little more than a decade ago lived in a totalitarian system, boldly and peacefully exercising their right to freedom of assembly and expression.
That is democracy in action, and a reminder of how precious it is (despite all its imperfections).
I daresay that those of us who remain enamoured of the Orange Revolution recognize what a great gift to the world it was, and still is.
One thing is certain: the Orange revolution will remain in Ukrainian national history. Much as I respect the Orange political forces (rather, what's left of them today -- hopefully for the best!), the Maidan came as a totally unexpected occurrence. This is precisely what makes it a historical phenomenon about as singular as Mozart in music. What happened afterward should have been expected, what with the political ambitions of the key figures. They failed to make a solid team (remember the old Ukr. joke about two Ukrainians making three hetmans?), and worst of all, Yushchenko is not a politician (no one is in the post-Soviet countries, professionally speaking, for they are all products of the Soviet system and its political mentality: do your utmost to climb up the ladder and and watch out for those behind you, for they'll use every dirty trick to get ahead of you. Regrettably, this mentality will vanish only when no one havivng it is among the living. Of course, I realize that much of this applies to the West, but in what they call the "post-Soviet space" all this has reached a grotesque Kafka-like scope. For some reason Ukraine proves most susceptable to all this, what with its intrinsically peaceful, obedient, and hard-working population (something that underlines the singularity of the Maidan phenomenon).
Post a Comment