CINEMA & THE EMERG OF MOD UKR

This course examines Ukrainian cinema from Yosyp Tymchenko’s invention of the cinematograph in the 1890s to the present as both a transforming mirror and a maker of modern Ukrainian identity. It explores how film shapes collective self-representation, memory, and political imagination, and how Ukrainian filmmakers have negotiated questions of language, history, ethnicity, religion, and political belonging in a society shaped by prolonged colonial domination. The course examines cinema as both an instrument of imperial power and a medium of self-expression and resistance, focusing on the ways Ukrainian filmmakers have reproduced, negotiated, challenged, and sought to overcome inherited colonial legacies. An interdisciplinary course, it draws on history, literary studies, linguistics, theater and art history, and theories of national cinema, colonialism, and postcolonialism to examine the complex interactions among film, language, literature, politics, and historical memory. A comparative dimension situates Ukrainian cinema alongside other national cinemas shaped by imperial and colonial domination.

There are no prerequisites and the course assumes no prior knowledge of Ukrainian language, history, and culture.