Taras Kuzio’s Blog

New Documentary Film on the Orange Revolution

It proved not be an easy task to watch a new documentary film on the Orange Revolution. This has been as difficult as obtaining articles and book chapters back from the publishers, which were written in earlier more optimistic times, with the publishers words in red “Please Update”. My optimistic texts on Ukraine written in 2005 and even early 2006 will have to be re-written, as Prime Minister Viktor Yanukovych advises, because its time to move from Euro-Romanticism to Euro-Pragmatism.

On Thursday of last week a Washington-based film company that had been working on a new Orange film for nearly two years invited a select group of film experts to its studios in Georgetown to critically discuss the pre-edit version. Besides myself, only 3 others had some Ukrainian connection. One of these was Andriy Shevchenko, a former Channel 5 presenter who is now a deputy from the Yulia Tymoshenko bloc. Andriy, who was in Washington for a US-Ukraine Policy Dialogue organized by the US-Ukraine Foundation that is supported by the US State Department, is interviewed in the film.

The film will undoubtedly become the best Western production on the Orange Revolution. The producers have made a spectacularly good film on the Serbian revolution in 2000. Hopefully it will tour North America and Ukraine.

A key area of discussion after the film was whether to include events following the Orange Revolution. I recommended that, “If you are covering the post-Orange Revolution era you will be chasing events (as we know from the summer events can change fast and take us completely by surprise, as with the return of Viktor Yanukovych which nobody expected). These events are too close. The film, I believe, should be about a specific important historical event – the Orange Revolution. Let another film deal with the post-Revolution era”.
Although I attempted to put aside events since the Orange Revolution while watching the film this proved more difficult than I had imagined it would. Watching those historical events through the prism of the post-Orange Revolution era inevitably clouded what you saw on the screen. Watching Sergei Kivalov on 24 November 2004 declare Yanukovych duly elected, after the film documented widespread election fraud, made my stomach turn knowing that he today heads the parliamentary committee on legal issues.

After the film Andriy Shevchenko, myself and some others joined the remainder of the group of Ukrainians in Washington for the US-Ukraine Policy Dialogue. We met at a well known Irish pub which on Thursdays hosts the Scythians, an Irish-Ukrainian band (http://www.scythianmusic.com/).

The Scythians will always get their audience to dance and sing along. But, in between joining in with the crowds, the Ukrainian contingent sat and discussed politics. And, this is where the atmosphere was more sober and less uplifting.

One issue that was raised, and is continually raised in talks and discussions I give or attend, is if the Party of Regions is a post-Kuchma new political force or is it merely Kuchma-revived?

The Party of Regions is the only party in parliament which hired a US Public Relations film for the 2006 elections. One first bit of advice seems to have been to Mr. Yanukovych to switch his turtle neck under his jacket for a shirt and tie. The turtle neck sweater under the jacket became a sign of fashion with former President Kuchma and his allies but it simply made them look like hoods.
Yanukovych now says that the Orange Revolution was a sign of how Ukrainians of all colours wanted change. But, can we really believe him and his opportunistic Party of Regions?

In the Orange Revolution film we saw a Yushchenko who seemed to be dynamic in seeking to be elected president believing that he needed to block the election of Yanukovych. Following the Orange Revolution this dynamism seemed to have been displayed only in Yushchenko’s international travel.

Perhaps I am therefore right to recommend to the film director to only deal with the Orange Revolution. As Andriy Shevchenko said during the post-screening discussion, the post-Orange era is “Part Two”. We know how the Orange Revolution (“Part One”) ended, but we do not know how “Part Two” will end.