Sergiy Bukovsky

Director and Screenwriter

Born in 1960 in Bashkiriia, the autonomous republic of the former Soviet Union. That same year his parents, film director Anatoliy Bykovsky and actress Nina Antonova, moved to Kyiv, Ukraine. Bukovsky studied directing at the film department of the Karpenko-Karyi Kiev State Institute of Theatrical Arts (workshop of Volodymyr Nebera) and then worked at the Ukrainian documentary studio for more than 10 years. In 1995-1998 Bukovsky headed the TV and documentary film department of “Internews Network Ukraine”. His 20-minute film “Tomorrow is a Holiday” (1987) brought him professional recognition and public success.

During his 25-year film career, Sergiy Bukovsky has made more than 50 documentary and fiction films. Some of them have received awards at prestigious film festivals. Among them “Tomorrow is a Holiday” (1987), “The Roof” (1990), “Dislocation” (1992), “The Hyphen” (1992), “To Berlin!” (1995), “Vilen Kaliuta. Real Liight” (2000), “Terra Vermelha. Red Land” (2001), and the 9-part documentary series “War: The Ukrainian Account” (2003), which was awarded The National Taras Shevchenko Prize of Ukraine (2004). One of the latest films directed by Sergiy Bukovsky was also a success – a documentary about the Holocaust in Ukraine entitled “Spell Your Name”.  Bukovsky has been recognized as a National artist of Ukraine since 2008.   

Reviews

“From the Kiev documentary school of “nonfiction anthropology”, leading director Sergiy Bukovsky proves that in documentary film we can see not only external (physical or social) reality, but also internal, intimate human reality. In the film “Tomorrow is a Holiday”, the common subject matter of Perestroika (the “difficult conditions” of women working in a poultry farm) serves as a starting point for an in-depth exploration of “homo soveticus,” or the Soviet worker at a historical crossroads.

 “Sergey Bukovsky continues this research in his next work, “The Hyphen,” in which a first person text acts as an objective document of the epoch–a genuine testimony of its time. The film creates free associations through  editing: remembrances of his grandmother who died in Odessa blend into images of Vera Holodnaya as an embodiment of eternal feminity, moving rapidly after that to the urgent problem of women military service. This new way of treating recorded reality is embodied by the name of the film–the hyphen–which connects the dates of birth and death.”

 “The Director’s close relatives–his father and father-in-law–became the heroes of his next film, “To Berlin!”, as Bukovsky brings them to city they conquered in 1945. Bukovsky is not just the director of this emotional story, but also a participant, whose presence is invisible, though we can feel his connection with the heroes.”

(Victoria Belopolskaya “Modern history of domestic cinematography. 1986-2000”.)

“It’s difficult to talk about this film (“War. The Ukrainian Account”).  Its appearance is not only an unprecedented TV or cinematographic event. In Bukovsky’s film, Ukraine has discovered its own history of World War II for the first time. History, which is not rolled into ideological asphalt for military parade. History which is not sewed with political threads. It’s a real documentary epic, in which history shows its real face: a tragedy for millions of people, crashed by the tumult of war. It’s a history of total treason. A history of a people betrayed by their government.  A history of a people betrayed by their own past.

(Anna Sherman “Telekritika”/08.11.2002)