Carol of the Bells: Back to the Origins

Hundreds of years ago, pre-Christian Ukrainians welcomed New Year with the tune that sounded like a swallow’s song. Today, its tender bells chant for Christmas in European concert halls, jazz concerts and Hollywood movies

Learn to Listen to Yourself

Composer Cai Caslavinieri talks about Ukrainians in Poland, commercialized music culture, and freedom of musical choice

Ukraine Finds Its Place on the European Bookshelf

Ukraine was a Guest of Honour at the Festival of European Literature held November 15-18 in Cognac, France

Sophie Jullien: Ukrainian literature is rich, versatile and deserves to be known

The Ukrainian Week talks to Sophie Jullien about this year’s LITTERATURES EUROPEENNES COGNAC festival and Ukraine as its Guest of Honour.

Anna Shevchenko: It’s important for me to show people that history tends to take revenge

The Ukrainian-born British writer Anna Shevchenko talks about her debut novel Bequest and history for the mass audience

The Louvre Welcomes Johann Georg Pinsel

The exhibition of Johann Georg Pinsel, a master of Ukrainian baroque sculpture, is the first cooperation between the museum that is well-known throughout the world and Ukraine.

Linguistic Insights into Ukrainian History

Professor Kostiantyn Tyshchenko speaks about the role of modern linguistics in our identity and the rebuttal of the cradle-of-three-brotherly-peoples theory

An Unembellished World

Josef Winkler talks about contemporary Austrian literature, historical memory and linguistic virtuosity

20 Facts from the Life of Ivan Firtsak

The twist-filled plot of the film Ivan Syla (Power Ivan) is based on a real person, Ivan Firtsak, a Ukrainian from Transcarpathia who was a famous circus athlete and boxer and performed in 64 countries of the world. He became a legend in his own lifetime.

What Makes James Bond so Popular?

How the British agent became a global hero

The Art of Resistance

The theme of Ukrainian insurgency as a component of mass culture

Tender Ukrainization

Antin Mukharsky, a TV host, theatre actor and artist, told The Ukrainian Week about Russian mass culture in Ukraine, nouveau riche and booboisie art

Sharp Pencils Shape Politics

American readers and editors prefer more edgy cartoons these days

Ukrainian Paris

Must-sees for every Ukrainian tourist who visits the French capital include the Eiffel Tower, the Louvre, the Luxembourg Gardens, the Musée d'Orsay, the Musée de Cluny, and so on. But Paris also has many places linked to Ukraine…

Cultural Industry. Art in Kryvyi Rih

Ukrainians seem to see Kryvyi Rih, a city of almost 700,000, in light of its not being an oblast centre and being limited to metallurgical giants.

Literary Infantilism

Ukraine lacks adolescent books by local authors and those writing for teenagers avoid controversy and depict the world through rose-coloured glasses.

Oliver Stone: I guess there is an inborn rebel in me

American director talks about Savages and the nature of human violence

He Who Became a Strongman

The end of August saw the start of the filming of Strong Ivan, the currently little-known story about Ivan Firtsak, a Ukrainian who was recognized as the strongest man in the world in 1928

Foma: An Internal Traveller

Serhiy “Foma” Fomenko speaks about the Kyiv school of rock, music exports and his willingness to work with the opposition

White on White

Normandy in Painting: an art history guide and escape from an industrial estate

A Melody Revealed

Taras Filenko speaks about Mykola Lysenko’s contribution to studying and systematising folk melodies and his impact on the world music process

Eternal Questions on Film

A feature documentary by director Oleksandr Balahura is a summary of the past 15-20 years in Ukraine of sorts

Dagmar Ostrzhanska: “People need something to identify themselves with. What should it be? Language of course!”

Dagmar Ostrzhanska, director of the Czech Centre in Kyiv tells The Ukrainian Week of Czech-Ukrainian cultural relations, the Ukrainian art underground and the language inactivity of our compatriots.

The Hero, the Son of a Hero

Serhiy Havrylov, scriptwriter and creative producer, on Mykyta Kozhumyaka, the first Ukrainian full-length 3D-cartoon

The Best 8 Roles of Bohdan Stupka

For now, Bohdan Stupka is remembered as the actor who conveyed the entire range of human emotions, feelings, actions and characters on the screen, transforming from Bohdan Khmelnytsky into Ivan Mazepa and Leonid Brezhnev, a Ukrainian guerilla fighter or a KGB officer, a priest or an atheist father.

Graphic Novels

In spite of the rapid development of comic books in Ukraine, the genre rarely captures wide public attention. The Ukrainian Week takes an insight into why this is the case