THE THINGS WE DO...

by Orysia Paszczak Tracz

"My Mother's Village": What was left unsaid

"In a documentary spanning two continents and several generations, acclaimed director John Paskievich delves into the experience of exile and its impact on the human spirit. Almost 50 years after his family fled Ukraine for freedom in Canada, the filmmaker visits his parents' homeland. It's a place both familiar and foreign. Drawing on his years growing up in Winnipeg, Paskievich explores how children of refugees and immigrants are caught between two worlds. While they struggle to put down roots in a new country, they must also preserve traditions of a distant land they have never known. Paskievich's journey through Ukraine is interwoven with stories of displacement from other prominent Ukrainians - authors George Melnyk and Fran Ponomarenko, broadcaster Bohdana Bashuk, [film] director Halya Kuchmij and dancer Lecia Poluyan. A rich tapestry of memory and history, 'My Mother's Village' brings to light the humor, anger, joy and complexity of living between borders."

- National Film Board of Canada

I so wanted to like the film "My Mother's Village," to have it be about my parents, and me and my generation. I wanted someone to tell our story, how we got here from across the ocean after the war, and why. Of course, it could not be my story exactly, because my family came to the United States, not Canada, but the DP (displaced persons) experience was practically the same.

Instead, this film has left me uneasy. I want it to be different from what it is. Obviously, this is unfair and presumptuous of me, because this is not my film, but John Paskievich's. It is, ostensibly, his story. But if it were just a bit different, it would have, could have told the story of so many more of us. Instead, while called a documentary, it is more a very personal, very subjective telling of how Mr. Paskievich lived the DP experience, and its effect on him.

And yet, even that it is not, because he actually tells us so little about himself in the film. The blurb from the National Film Board of Canada at the beginning of this review, most probably from his words, reveals something about the filmmaker. "... Children of refugees and immigrants are CAUGHT [my emphasis] between two worlds ... they STRUGGLE to put down roots in a new country ... they MUST also preserve traditions of a distant land they have never known ... [these are] stories of DISPLACEMENT..."

Already we sense that Mr. Paskievich himself is not comfortable with his Ukrainian DP experience or even in being Ukrainian. He is the one "caught" between the two worlds, the one struggling with displacement (and not just being displaced as a DP). His personal experiences in growing up as a child of a struggling single mother (the father left them soon after their arrival in Canada) have had their effect on the adult Paskievich. Maybe he was also affected by the cruel attitudes of some other DPs, the very class-conscious intelligentsia who looked down their noses at the "prosti," the people of peasant stock, and the earlier immigrants. This did happen in many communities and organizations, and had a long-lasting impact on some families, especially the children.

Perhaps the film should have been two films instead, one in his mother's village with those left behind, and one here in Canada with the children of the people who experienced the war while escaping Ukraine or as forced, slave laborers in Germany.

The villagers, including Paskievich's relatives, tell us about their own experiences during the war, and this is amazing, strong, riveting material. It is photographed beautifully, and the people, young and old, are striking. This is documentary material at its best, and I do not know if these scenes and stories have ever before been shown to a mainstream North American audience. We hear from them of their lives under both the Nazi and Soviet war occupations, the executions, the hiding, the escapes, the survival, the everyday, hour-to-hour struggle between life and death, the post-war and Soviet years.

Mr. Paskievich said that after a prescreening, someone at the National Film Board commented that what these villagers said was not to be believed, that it was more like fiction. If this film carries the story of these Ukrainians to the people in the NFB "establishment," and they remember and acknowledge what they heard, it already has accomplished much. In the film, Fran Ponomarenko talks about the double standard of the West, that while Nazi crimes are condemned, "the outrage against the crimes of communism just is not there." She says we must get the Ukrainian story out to the mainstream, that "we owe this to our parents."

The title of the film in Ukrainian, "Mamyne Selo," is so much more poetic than the English. And this is one village of thousands, with the people in each having their own survival stories. In spite of all, they persist, and the traditions once secretly practiced are now celebrated openly. These are magical scenes, and Mr. Paskievich filmed them so well. The score, by Julian Kytasty and Richard Moodie, is perfect. Combined with the singing of the villagers, young and old, the film score would make a wonderful album.

What is missing is some explanation of what is going on, either with voice-overs or with subtitles. What is a non-Ukrainian supposed to figure out, seeing villagers in the winter taking bottles and pails of water from a frozen river? Or kids splashing themselves with water from plastic soda bottles? Or the family around a table, all ceremoniously eating something out of one bowl? Of course, these are "Yordan," "Oblyvanyi Ponedilok" and "Sviat Vechir" (eating kutia) - but without an explanation these actions are confusing to the non-Ukrainian viewer.

I wonder if the filmmaker researched the history well enough, because some details are sketchy, and others just plain wrong. For example, the UPA (Ukrainian Insurgent Army) is given in the subtitles as the Ukrainian Patriotic [sic] Army. Mr. Paskievich starts out on his journey to Kamiana Hora on the train, as if he just materialized in the countryside outside of Lviv. It would have been more informative, maybe even interesting, to show the start of that train ride in Lviv. The non-Ukrainian viewer would then have seen the vibrant Ukrainian city, contrasted with a small, out-of-the-way village still decades away from the modern world.

The film alternates between the village and stories told by the DP Ukrainian Canadians. Sometimes it is difficult to follow, because the filmmaker's technique has village scenes with voice-overs from the interviewees. I could not always tell who was speaking, and was confused as to why particular comments were carried over unconnected scenes.

As for the five now adult children of the DPs interviewed in this film, I wonder if all of them are satisfied with their stories as shown here. I also wonder how Mr. Paskievich selected them out of the 30 to 40 he filmed. I was told that each person spent about five or six hours being interviewed on film. Of this, each of the five appears in the documentary for about five to 10 minutes. Considering what each told about his/her parents' experience during the war, coming to Canada, and the interviewee's experience growing up in a new place, I was left with my first thought of "nedoskazane" - what was left unsaid, or incomplete. It probably was said, but was left on the cutting-room floor by the filmmaker. I wondered why, out of five to six hours, these parts of the stories were selected for the film, while so much else apparently was not included.

Of all things, why was there not more about what the children remember their parents going through, while there is so much about present and former spouses, both Ukrainian and non-Ukrainian? To me, in the context of the purpose of the film, this was not relevant (and none of my business, really). I am sure that during the interviews, the people may not have even expected some of their comments on their personal lives to be included. I know most of the interviewees, and suggested some of them to Mr. Paskievich when he was still planning the film. Deep in my heart I know that they had said so much more that would have been more important, more telling than what was selected out of their hours of reminiscences. The interviewees were used by Mr. Paskievich; he selected segments from their interviews to tell his own story, to convey his own perceptions, more so than theirs.

I do not understand why, as the filmmaker told a Winnipeg Free Press reporter, he specifically did not want to interview the parents, the actual DPs. Thus, the whole middle of the story is missing. The villagers talk about what happened in Ukraine after their parents escaped during the war, or were taken as forced laborers. This is not the DP story. The time during these years is what our parents wondered about and could not know about until correspondence was permitted after Stalin's death. The interviewees talk about their own childhoods, and fleetingly about their parents' lives in Europe and in Canada. How much more dramatic and significant it would have been to also include one or two individuals remembering their own wartime, DP camp and emigration experience - instead of just having it retold by their children. That was left unsaid.

There are some poignant moments: Halya Kuchmij describing her father's "spratsiovani ruky" (work-worn hands) and how she appreciated him too late; Bohdana Bashuk talking about her father's Auschwitz tattoo, and her mother's reaction to Bohdana cutting off her braid; Ms. Ponomarenko describing her father, a survivor of the Great Famine, not smiling the way Canadians so freely did, and her parents seeking out any person from the same village or even region, because he or she could be surrogate family (my parents did the same); Lecia Poluyan talking about longing for home, as an actual place.

One interviewee whose contribution to the story is questionable is George Melnyk. I found myself getting more irritated and angrier at him as the film progressed. And the more I thought about him and his comments, the sadder I got. He seems to blame his life and his failures on growing up Ukrainian. His great trauma of childhood, that turned him off on all things Ukrainian, was reciting a Shevchenko poem on stage at "Ridna Shkola" (the school of Ukrainian studies) and forgetting the words. It caused his stuttering later and other miseries in his life, it seems.

Maybe Mr. Melnyk's Ukrainian background did cause him difficulties in life. He recalls how he was told he did not get a government job because his name was "Melnyk." Perhaps. I am surprised that with all the angst his parents and his Ukrainianism caused him, he has not become George Miller by now. What about the rest of the people in the world, or just in Canada, living unhappy or unfulfilled or unsuccessful lives? Is all this the result of their ethnic backgrounds? What about the supposed establishment? Are they all happy, successful, non-stuttering, and unashamed of their parents?

Because this turned out to be such a personal film rather than a documentary, Mr. Paskievich's childhood experience must be acknowledged for what it was. For some DP kids, the pressure of conforming to being "Canadian" (whatever that is) combined with parental pressure to be Ukrainian was too much.

Because I never felt the conflict between the two worlds (or don't remember ever thinking like that), I did not know when I was growing up that being Ukrainian was a "burden," as one interviewee said. If I even thought about it, it was more a willing obligation. Our parents were so afraid of their children becoming lost in their new Canadian world and forgetting their heritage that they did "force everything Ukrainian down their kids' throats" or, as Mr. Paskievich says, wanted us to be "obligated to remember this [far-away] place." How many kids were turned off completely by this we don't know. But how many survived this perceived abuse and are now proud and active members of the Ukrainian Canadian and Ukrainian American communities?

In the early 1950s, my father was so afraid of the American "contamination" of his little "donia" (daughter) that Ukrainian and English books could not occupy the same shelf. I don't remember this, but my mother told me about the time I came home from playing outside (I was just 4) and spoke to Mama in English. She said she almost froze inside. After all she had lived through, to have her child speak to her in English was too much. She says she told me that I can speak English to others, but to Mama and Tato I must speak only Ukrainian. I do not remember this being terribly traumatic for me. But because of this, I know Ukrainian, as do my sons; when I travel to Ukraine or anywhere else, I can communicate with my own people.

My parents also instilled in me - they did not force it upon me in any way - a pride, an interest and a love of my heritage. I probably picked it up through osmosis. My parents were not of the intelligentsia, but they were patriotic Ukrainians from the countryside. If times had been different, further education could have been in their future. But forced labor in Germany, the DP camps, and settling in a new country were their teenage and young adult education instead.

I am sure there are that many more assimilated former DPs than I know. If they are out there being just "Canadians" and "Americans," that is their life and their decision. I wish them well. I just do not understand the ones who are so bitter or angry with their parents for trying to keep that tenuous connection to that distant land the kids had never known. I do know there are some DP kids who wallow in their misery of being Ukrainian, and yet use it so effectively in their careers. Their "burden" has been turned into a lucrative crutch.

"My Mother's Village" has prompted much discussion in the Canadian cities where it was shown. This is good, because people are sharing their experiences, telling their parents' and their own stories to each other. I hope they will be prompted by this to record them in film or print. From a number of descendants of the earlier immigrations to Canada (the pioneers and the mid-war generations), I heard comments about the discrimination experienced by the DPs mentioned in the film. This was nothing new, as the earlier immigrants certainly bore their share; this was not just a DP experience.

The viewer gets from the film what she or he sees in it. The comments of the interviewees can be taken as just stories (although out of context) or as observations of what it was like growing up as a DP kid, with no judgments attached. We can take them at face value, as they were presented, or we can read into the comments what was left unsaid or what we think they meant.

In any circumstance, what is and is not said, or what was edited out, makes the film fall short.

The film left this writer sad and empty, because while there were a few acknowledgments by the interviewees of how hard their parents worked in this new land, the filmmaker left out what I am sure was said somewhere in all the hundreds of hours of interviews. Our parents, in spite of their horrible lives during the war and the cruel, difficult beginnings in a new country, instilled in us the Ukrainian spirit, and pride in our heritage and culture.

Very many of us are not "caught" between two worlds. We are in two worlds, we are grateful that we have those two worlds and that we are not "just" Canadian or American. We want to "preserve traditions of a distant land we have never known. So many of our children, the grandchildren and great-grandchildren of the DPs born in Canada and America, are proud and happy to be Ukrainian and are good citizens in our countries. That pride was left unsaid.

I guess Mr. Paskievich has not worked out the turmoil of his own childhood, selectively editing the film to project more of that, rather than a broader spectrum of the DP experience. This is his story, beautifully filmed. I hope there are other films to be made, to say what was left unsaid here.

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A biography of John Paskievich released by the National Film Board of Canada notes that he is an award-winning documentary filmmaker and stills photographer. His films for the National Film Board include "The Gypsies of Svinia" (1998), "The Old Believers" (1988), and "Ted Baryluk's Grocery" (1982). He also co-produced with the NFB "If Only I Were an Indian" (1996) and "Sedna: The Making of a Myth" (1992). Mr. Paskievich directed and produced "The Actor" (1990) with Zemma Pictures. He wrote, directed and produced with Michael Mirus, "The Price of Daily Bread" (1985). He also wrote and narrated "Cityscapes - Winnipeg" for the CBC. Mr. Paskievich served on a five-person directorial team for the 1987 IMAX production "Heartland."

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To order the 101-minute video "My Mother's Village," call 1-800-267-7710 (Canada) or 1-800-542-2164 (United States) or check the website www.nfb.ca.

Copyright © The Ukrainian Weekly, July 7, 2002, No. 27, Vol. LXX

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