Transcripts For ESPRESO 20240704 : vimarsana.com

And in the evening, best regards, my greetings. Today we will talk about how ukraine will culturally influence france. It has been a long time coming. Finally, in october , the Representative Office of the Ukrainian Institute of france will be opened. I would like to remind you that the ukrainian the institute is such an institution that deals with cultural diplomacy, it belongs to the structure of the ministry of foreign affairs. And we will talk with olga sahaydak, who is the representative of the Ukrainian Institute of france. She told us many interesting things, what will be the first steps , what are the biggest challenges, what are they doing in france, how are we going cooperating with the french is a sufficiently important story, and we will also talk about the good russians. How can we do without them . Can we somehow oppose them . Well, now i will remind you about several new scandals that have taken place in our cult world, because you know that in our country every day is a shit that is taken from us. Sometimes it just falls on our shit from the sky and we sit for several days discussing it until it is interrupted by Something Else , but in culture is also stable, something scandalous happens every week, but this week, just a few days ago, something very funny happened, as in my opinion, it was heartbreaking, because you know, very often some of our artists, but some part of our artists took and moved even after the fullscale invasion of russia, but how as a rule, they went to moscow to st. Petersburg, well, they need to make a career, they went there where there is more money. And here are such gentlemen as glib mykhailochenko and damir sukhov, they are actors, you may not know them, but here it turned out that they are now in saransk, i would i had to go to google maps to see where this saransk, the mordovians, is not as far away as i thought, but they went to make a film school here, and there are such ones, they did and opened it. And now they say that everyone from six to 50 years old, we invite everyone, we will teach you the art of cinema about it no one would have found out if it werent for the actor oleksandr zyla because he found it from apostilles. By the way, i wonder why my colleagues didnt see this before, because thats gleb mykhailichenko. He talked about it quite actively on instagram and, well, he obviously had a lot of ukrainian e e followers and somehow it escaped their attention. By the way, it is funny that at the beginning of the full scale invasion, gleb mykhailichenko went to various events in support of zes, and even in the comments he wrote in ukrainian and was very mimimi, and then he moved to russia already are laughing they are joking in the comments that the Russian Prosecutors Office should be informed about this, because you are asking about the story of ani lorak and valery meladze. The Prosecutors Office accuses them of helping to finance and financing the armed forces of ukraine. Well, by the way sukhov, if you watch ukrainian tv series, god forbid, you know him. So he played such roles , mainly negative characters, he was in mariupol at all during the occupation and because he worked there and prepared a film school, because they planned this film school with a mushroom in general, then in mariupol to make and open it in march 2022, but it didnt work out, and even then, when damir left for russia, he began to give various interviews to russian propagandists, and there he talked about the fact that the drama theater there exploded from the middle or that people from liazov came and took it to people who didnt return the car were shot through the wheels, well, its a nightmare in one word well, we hope that this publicity will not give gleb will be able to move to ukraine, stay there in russia, do his film school and so on well, what about one more a scandalous event, well, i dont know if its scandalous, its more like, well, it concerns Svitlana Loboda, lord, this is such a series , and radio svoboda reports that the singer came to refugees in warsaw, one of the largest centers for refugees, and brought some equipment there as a gift and gave them a small concert or they enjoyed it, the audience enjoyed her songs in general. Well, these attempts of Svitlana Loboda to return to ukraine are no longer surprising. See, in contrast to dymir, for example, gleb also wants to return, but every time she is not lucky because of that. That every time she does something wrong and cannot learn from her mistakes , the fact is that the correspondent of radio svobody reports that many people simply left the premises. When she came, some of the people would remain to film her, to ask her some questions, she is not very comfortable. Okay, something she answered, but there were also people who happily took pictures with her and took selfies. Although i dont know , i cant predict the reaction, when will people see this selfie on social networks, lets listen to two women, two of our refugees, whose refugees they recorded radio svoboda, what was their reaction, they decided, they went, they sing, you dont exist , he manipulates this with ostentatious kindness , its really disgusting. Well, lets continue with something that is much nicer. Because our cinema is not financed, but we are financed by television and various tv series and tv content, well, cinema may disappear and our cinematographers will no longer be able to travel to various events, but for now they travel, for example, marina froda went to the festival in lokarno to show her film is steppe, and her mother and aunt are already old , she is dying and he goes to visit her, and there i understand so much, she remembers some of her moments from the past. Marina herself says that the film is not sad at all, on the contrary, it is bright i will also remind you that this is one of the most prestigious Movie Theaters , and if you have forgotten, in 2011, marina proda won the cannes palme dor for the short film cross, and now we finally got a fulllength film from her. If you right now in italy, dont miss the screenings of the vampire dmytro suholytko osupchuk, they will take place, they will take place until august 22. Be sure to watch this film on the big screen, and in general , there were a lot of great ukrainian films being released there luxembourg, luxembourg, mavka, the same panfir, and so on and ah, many of them are already on online platforms, you can watch them legally , but unfortunately it is not always possible to watch it abroad, often there is no access, so take the opportunity, the movie is very cool, i recommend it to you, lets listen to the italian the trailer, unfortunately, and running is the only thing nazar sara n well, and also at the festival in the heart of sarajevo in sarajevo, respectively, and they are going to go with the film crew of three ukrainian films , for the first time they slapped each other. Yes, filipa sandichenko is one of those directors who, socalled , gives his short films enough action were always highly rated by er, well, different ours and connoisseurs of film critics, the Film Community of lapiliosiad and this film about the year 1996 is only a few months away from the abolition of the death penalty, and here some events are taking place, but also ficus avocado and six drazen by martys morchynska, this is a Short Documentary about things that ukrainians had to leave for one reason or another and lose, and we will not fade away. Alisa kovalenko, too, i absolutely recommend when it will be released, this film tells about teenagers who live right on the demarcation line , the film will be shot in 2019 the documentary is also extremely good, the characters are very nice, very cool, and i will definitely remind you about this film, i hope that it will win some kind of award in sarayevo, and preferably for some of the best ones, and it will also be called the sympathy of the audience is also extremely important. Well, now lets move on to the conversation with olga sagaidak and talk about how this cultural influence of ukraine on france, of ukrainians on france , will happen. What about some big exhibition that is really resonant and cool in france, it has been planned and prepared for 75 years, you can imagine it, and some smaller one is three or five. Therefore, we need to be patient if we want it to be of high quality, we will have to wait and prepare for it long enough. After six months, the big exhibition will not take place anywhere. Our interventions will be included in joint projects and in international french. For now, we will study. There will definitely be a big exhibition, but it will be such that they really say wow, the worst thing we can do. It is now to make a dumpling, you know, it is so bad and to disappoint, and the worst thing that can happen is that, you know, everyone later said no, well, we knew that, well, you see , the ukrainians can only do that. We dont have that kind of thing. To give such a chance, that is, what we will do is largescale, it must be really highquality and it must be such that the effect occurs , for this we need time, resources and trust in each other. Again, looking at all the things that are happening in space, i really want to to tell all colleagues that damn we are cool and powerful but we need to trust each other more well , we dont have to wet ourselves, we have to be very careful with each other, and with each other, my first question is about who we are dealing with in general, because i am from i have heard from many people who are engaged in cultural diplomacy that france is one of the most terrible places along with germany. That the french have very strong sentiments of russian culture and it is impossible to break it, and even after a slow largescale invasion, something had changed , and thats why i want to ask how difficult this is in general. Country for the cultural influence of ours, well, on the one hand, this is all true , there is really great sentiment for russian culture , indeed, many french specialists have literally devoted their lives to working with russian culture, that is, for example, there is a group of sorbonne professors with whom we communicate closely, they defended their dissertations there, specialized in the philosophy of dostoyevsky there, or the aesthetics of tolstoy, and this is their specialty, their bread, on the other hand. I think it is important to take into account that just as we are changing very dynamically, so are they they change very dynamically, they change and well, we are still talking about a certain bubble, i cannot assess the attitude of all french people yes, but i am talking about people who work in the field of culture and education there during this time, uh, from the moment of the fullscale invasion, there were very noticeable changes in the perception of both russians and ukrainian culture and, for example, the same people who specialized in russian culture. And now they understand that it will not be a trend in the near future, they are looking for an opportunity to acquire another qualification, other knowledge, and this is an unconditional reason for us to take advantage of such an opportunity , that is, to offer now a different agenda and an alternative, its just one of our main tasks, we are interesting and they clearly realized that well, they are exactly that they speak and articulate that, unfortunately, they did not know anything about us and they discover ukraine for themselves and see that we have an unplowed field there and that it is an area for work and study and research and restoration restoration, that is, they see for themselves the potential of applying their professional knowledge, skills, abilities and this is, again, a reason for us to reach out and give them such an opportunity, because the truth is that the context changes. And we cannot describe it in the same way every time. Positioning of ukrainian culture in the grid of 30 years of independence, we will take this period because i was also there, for example, at one time i interviewed oleg with a violin at oleg skrypkas. Vinochki salo, this is all at the same time as the russians were doing something cool, thats why im asking, what happened in general, the positioning of ukrainian culture separately in france, in paris, what kind of positioning was it, what was wrong with it or maybe there were some good moments that should be continued. Well, in fact, i think that there was no positioning as such in principle, there were manifestations, and mostly they were of such an ethnographic character , that is, what they were able to do with them, they did not go often because it was expensive because in principle, we did not have a state policy of any kind of cultural diplomacy. I think that france is not an exception, we simply did not make any special efforts to tell a coherent story about ourselves, moreover , since we did not have this concept as we we want to look like we didnt agree on this and internally not at the professional level, yes, well, it was obvious that those ukrainians who have been living abroad for a long time are a diaspora. They always have a certain sentiment towards such an ethnographic section, that is, embroidered dumplings and borscht, because they naturally miss it there. And thats why they strengthened their presence here. Accordingly , we looked like an exotic country with such beautiful traditions, unique, etc. And for you to show yourself as a mmodern country or one that is developing in which there are some phenomena, we simply did not make consistent efforts before that, so now we are starting to put time into it. Well, unfortunately, culture is not a field where you can dynamically show something, so really, the russians were very consistent, and since we are now studying the military field, yes, well. I think the specialists there, how and what they did, how they strategized , we should also analyze this cultural intervention, because it was also about a truly very consistent presentation of russian culture. It was about large Financial Investments in presenting it bright well, what is the value of several exhibitions that took place in paris before the war there repin rouge red or i remember in the 19th year i specially went to see an exhibition of rouge in the grand palia i did not arrive in the first week and there were queues of french people standing on the street to get to this exhibition, well, this Movie Theater and away all spheres and of course it was very such a consistent work involving both large state capital and private again what is the history of the question at which he presented a collection of russian art there he conformists, you are the antenground of the center of pomp, yes, that is, there is no truth. Children, we did not make systematic efforts. We have what we have. Well, now we need to correct ourselves. We will also talk about money. How much money is there in the Ukrainian Institute of the representation of france or compete with the russians . And the main thing, of course , is to position us, our er, on our art , our everything, er, when will the opening take place . October, somewhere around the week from october 23 to 27, now the date is being specified and it will be a small office. Well, there will be four people working there, but we already have a very Good Foundation because we have a very large one. I think during this time we have developed a network of partnerships and partnerships in such longterm we are building our policy in a slightly different way now, and it is also about money and approaches. That is, we realize that since the russians we could not then, we definitely cannot now, well, we are really bloodless and the Human Resource is very small and financial thats why we reason and we want to involve the french themselves in the creation of the ukrainian er ukrainian agenda in france , we are betting on an expert environment we want that in every expert environment from different fields there should be literature, music, theater , philology, history, and that they appear in french experts because, again , it is necessary to take into account that the french are a rather selfconfident nation and about their contribution to world culture. They have a more objective subjective but very high reasoning and therefore better than them no one will tell their audience about us well, lets say so, yes, that is, we are creating the conditions to promote the appearance of experts in ukraine in ukraine mysticism among the french. We also think that the actual creation of such networking platforms where institutes can cooperate, where ukrainian and french specialists can cooperate, it will be like this epithelium yes on which will grow this layer of knowledge, experience and need for each other, and if we talk about measures because, well, if we say so, for example, there is the Ukrainian Institute yes, there are analogies with what was done in ukraine there are french institutes, yes, people have seen all these there, the french spring, all these events, there was also a ukrainian spring in france , are there any such events planned, which are designed specifically for french people, for the public and not for specialists, what can it be, what can be interesting for a french person in general with ukrainian culture there, in museums, cinema, anywhere, well, it might be interesting, everyone, how do we package it, yes, but, of course, there will be events for a wide audience and, well, actually , the ukrainian spring was such a good training the site is because we have tested certain formats and we understand that, for example, exhibitions in public spaces, an exhibition of postcards from ukraine , which has already made a tour, it has already visited four cities and we have an application for a fifth city, it started in paris and then it was in nantes and then it was in toulouse, then claymon ferrai will now go to rennes, an exhibition about ukrainian monuments and cultural buildings, what they looked like before the war, what they look like as a result of war damage, this exhibition is in public space, it was discussed a lot people stopped to read the information, it was a good format, we are really proud of it, it is the week of ukrainian drama , precisely because it was antisipative. That is, it was the text of ukrainian dramatists, but they were read by french actors, and accordingly , the audience listened not only to ukrainian drama, but also to i looked at my actors and it was very interesting that the actors, for example , it was such a performative reading, it was not clear in its pure form, that is, the actors were preparing, they did rehearsals, and the actors themselves asked a lot about the context for example, there was talk about mina mazailo, then they asked what ukrainianization is, why it was happening, why this mina suddenly wants to change her last name, and in general, what is the difference in the sound, yes, and what is happening. That is, we told them a lot, and it was such a format that we are also going to scale and continue, of course this and a concert and lecture programs, film screenings, but for now, the ambition is to do some very massive events there for hundreds of thousands of people, it is probably too early to talk about it , again, because we would like to prepare for the french to this actively participated, as the russians actually did, they actually invited a french curator to every largescale project, that is, they invested artifacts, they invested money , but they did it with the hands of the french, and accordingly the packaging was acceptable and interesting for the audience in relation to the influence of the russians, because we also often say this here, especially after the berlinale and even more special after the cannes film festival, where the opening film was a film produced by russians, where normally russians came and bought films, and the impression is that this its absolutely comilfo to continue to cooperate with the russians. Its normal, how much . Actually, this influence is really great. Is it an exaggeration . We should note that the french were one of the first to officially stop cooperation with russian state cultural institutions. That is, we must separate here , if we did not want to think otherwise, we must separate the influence of the state from its cultural politics and the authority of certain artists and, unfortunately, the project of the consulization of russian culture, well, in the form in which we saw it ideally , it does not work. This is obvious. I think the further we move, the less effective it will be in the form that seems acceptable to us. Yes, and we have to rethink this concept, that is, we clearly see that platforms are provided to the socalled good liberal russians, moreover, so long ago there was such a french conference where there were a lot of people, public intellectuals developed 18 points of advice on how to restore ukraine, how to resuscitate ukraine, and among these tips is such a road map that they themselves worked out for themselves, what they can do for ukraine. These were recommendations as much for us as homework for ourselves, an extremely interesting discussion, unfortunately, it was exclusively french and they cant find materials anywhere to teach english to their colleagues, so in this discussion, in particular, one of the points was the work with the liberal russians, what they will provide on the stage to the russians. This is true what should we do about it, we must consistently voice our position, but we definitely need to reduce emotion, look for more arguments, and in particular, well, it seems to me that we should not refuse to participate in events where the russians are present. We should not refuse such venues, which is not the vignon festival or i dont know any other large european and french venues. It seems to me that it is clear that we will not win if we simply this is your opinion to remove yourself. Just such big venues or all of them, because i will explain. We also talk a lot on our broadcasts about all the cases when our artists came to some event, the russians turned out to be there, ours refused, it turned out to be a scandal. There have already been several such cases, they were not loud enough and every time it turns out that, in principle , the position of ukrainians and Ukrainian Cultural figures is very inconsistent, because we agree to go to one event. For example, we went to the Eurovision Song Contest even though there was a russian girl. We went to cannes even though there there were russians, they looked at it and so on, but we refused there, or there are some people there, iryna the whole picture, artem touches, they refused , they wanted to refuse to participate in the american festival, the same with the estonian festival, that is, what should we do with it in general, because this uncertainty this inconsistency stresses many ukrainians as well, they say lets decide what we are going to do , do we agree to sit on the platforms with them or do we not agree on what to do well, look , it seems to me that it is very important to have trust hmm how the social contract gave, at least in this cultural bubble, to have confidence in his colleagues, that is, if it is a principled position of a particular place, he clearly articulates it, especially if he conditioned it to the organizers even before the event, yes, that is, i was in a situation with a complete czech. That is, it was stipulated that no will participate if the game and the organizers simply neglected such a principled position, it was clearly articulated. I believe that it is absolutely possible and legitimate if the decision of these artists, if we agree, and again they can still conduct an effective and convincing fullfledged discussion. And i believe that we should have trust in each other, and this will make us stronger, because if we embark on such a path of total bans or some kind of principled guidance, no, we all do only this way, then we will actually be to do