YTNF :: SVITUkraine

In the city of Kharkov, Ukraine, 10 volunteers representing 8 countries met for Dobre Razom 2 workcamp presented by SVIT Ukraine (www.svit-ukraine.org). This project was a sequel to Dobre Razom, a project which taught the negative effects of stereotypes and how to overcome them to school children in Lvov and Kharkov, Ukraine. The goal for this year’s project was much different yet very simple. With one professional camera, 10 active volunteers with the help of countless people from Kharkov would film material which would become a video to be shown all over Ukraine to reduce the level of racism and xenophobia. This was accomplished and more.
The workcamp started with 2 days devoted to the study of the topic of racism. The discussions mostly focused on the origins and escalation of racism and different faces that discrimination can take. After begin filled with knowledge that would later help with the creations of the documentary film, the volunteers partnered with a local film student who wrote a racism themed script. The volunteers needed filming experience and our local director needed actors. The volunteers committed four days to acting in this film and the director and cameraman shared their knowledge and experience on filming. The film has romance, comedy, love, hate, almost murder and a harmonica. Coming to an indie film festival near you.
After the first filming was completed, the project began to focus on the shooting of the documentary film. We discussed what we wanted to create, compared it with what we could accomplish, and agreed with the idea to ask 15 people 10 questions about living in Kharkov and recorded their responses. Africans, Asians, Europeans, South Americans, an American and Middle Easterners were interviewed. Some examples of the questions are, “Do you feel safe walking at night?, Do people stare at you on the street?, How does the police treat you?, Have you ever been physically attacked?”. The answers varied, with trends that correlated with the areas of the world from which the interviewees were from.
Workcamp is over, but there is still work to be done. The 10 hours of raw material recorded by volunteers must now be analyzed and turned into a documentary. This required obtaining funding and finding the right person to edit the film. The finished project will be shown schools, universities, NGO’s, and government institutions all over Ukraine.

By Brian Couzelis

On August 20th, a group of 10 volunteers from Italy, Austria, Germany, Switzerland, Czech Republic, Belgium, USA and Ukraine met in Kharkiv, in order to continue our investigation on racism in Ukraine. The idea of the project was developed during international study visit “Dobre razom”, which took place in summer 2007 in Kharkiv, Lviv and Kyiv. This year, the goal for the project is to go deeper in the problem, research situation in detail and compare with other countries, think of possible solutions. As a result, participants will make a short film of educational/documentary character, on racism and xenophobia in Ukraine. Details...

During two weeks in August 2008, a group of twelve international volunteers and three to eleven local volunteers from Chernovtsy cleaned together the Jewish cemetery in ul. Zelena, Chernovtsy. We worked all in all ten days from nine in the morning till two or three o ‘clock in the afternoon with around one hour lunch break. The result of our work is a cleaned field section 33 and two rows of field section 34 that follows behind field section 33. The field section 33 is located behind the “ceremony hall” and the grave field of famous Jewish personalities of Chernovtsy. We assume that we cleaned 2-3 % of the total area of the cemetery, a drop on the hot stone as the director of the Christian- Jewish cemetery said during a television interview. Details...