Ukrainians in Parma, Ohio feel right at home.
In their small community, a large Ukrainian diaspora lives much as they would if they were still living across the ocean.
Ukrainian holidays and poetry festivals are observed rigorously; the children spend their Saturdays folk dancing and start their mornings in a Ukrainian school with the national anthem.
To a cheerful teenager, Roksolana Toporowych, a daughter of immigrant parents from the Carpathian Mountains’ Bukovyna, this zealous dedication to tradition seemed simply humorous.
Born in the U.S., she didn’t feel obliged to cultivate her Ukrainian background to perfection.
But as a maturing 35 year-old filmmaker living in New York, she has begun to see the community’s devotion to tradition as something deeper, a way to preserve its heritage and identity in the face of the turbulent circumstances of the Communist regime.
As part of the Independence American Film Festival held last weekend, Roxy, as she’s now known, presented her debut documentary “Folk,” a light-hearted narrative of Ukrainian folk dancing in America. It was met by more than 300 people in Kyiv with raving success.
When she first held the camera at 13, Roxy felt butterflies in her stomach, which would later guide her to a professional career in filmmaking. Her first recordings were hilarious home videos that painted kind-hearted caricatures of the way her Ukrainian community lived.
Raised with three brothers by a widowed mother, who worked as a teacher and librarian, Roxy felt natural in her environment.
“I found it funny how serious and obsessed our community was with traditions,” says Roxy, who used to sit through hours-long community meetings on Sundays full of nationalistic tirades.
The mornings in summer Plast camps (a Ukrainian scout organization) started with the Ukrainian anthem and a flag-raising ceremony. And every Saturday was rigidly reserved for folk-dance rehearsals, which is where the seed for herdocumentary “Folk” was planted.
In pursuit of a filmmaking career, she traded the bubble of Parma for New York’s well of opportunities. Integrated in the American world and studying at New York University, she discovered another Ukrainian community in the East Village with its Ukrainian sports pub, restaurant Veselka and folk dancing clubs. Upon graduation, the budding filmmaker hungered for a big idea.
Prior to “Folk” came several short films including “Night Quiet” and “10 Minutes of Heaven.”
A tiny measure of vanity and love for all things Ukrainian led Roxy to enroll herself in a folk dance company Syzokryli in New York.
When she met Roma-Pryma Bogashevska, a legendary Polish-born dancer and choreographer in ballet and Ukrainian folk dance, there was no question she would become the hero of Roxy’s story.
In their small community, in Parma, a large Ukrainian diaspora lives much as they would if they were still living across the ocean.
Magnetic and intimidating, she had a large following in the states and abroad, and permitted Roxy to be a shadow with the camera at the rehearsals.
The young filmmaker watched as doctors, lawyers and paleontologists transformed into vigorous Ukrainian folk dancers by night, working to polish formations and split jumps.
Bogashevska suggested that Roxy trace the history and peculiarity of Ukrainian dancing in North America.
It was the big idea she’d been looking for.
“Starting the film, I didn’t realize what I was tapping into,” says Roxy. In “Folk” she takes an insider’s peak into the life folk dancers in New York and Ukraine, talking to them in informal settings about their Ukrainian upbringing and laughing about their quirky traditions.
It would take eight exhilarating years full of “blood, sweat and tears” to complete the film, which was financially supported by friends, companies and the Ukrainian folk dance community who each put their faith in Roxy.
“I didn’t realize that folk dance was so defining for building our culture abroad,” she says, twirling a trident medallion on her necklace. “We preserved an entire world of information, because we feared it would be destroyed in Ukraine.”
On her first trip to Ukraine in 1998, Roxy was stunned that communities in Parma and New York managed to preserve folk dance tradition better than her people at home.
“The film is simple and is meant to be that way. Simplicity shrinks the distance between the viewer and the director.
At times it reminds a home video, yet, the montage is professional,” says Andriy Alferov, a film critic who contributed to assembling a film collection for the Independence film festival.
In “Folk,” Roxy avoids cliche patriotic sentimentality and seriousness and infuses her narrative with playfulness and mirth. And, she intends to continue that way, refraining from political themes.
Currently, she is working on a sitcom series about a Ukrainian immigrating to New York – a sort of Slavic Seinfeld, the American television sitcom that revolved around the life of comic Jerry Seinfeld.
“Illustrating the Ukrainian diaspora culture with humor, I can reach a wider audience who will actually learn something too,” believes Roxy. After 12 hours in the studio of Ukrainian channel TVi, she recorded the narrative of “Folk” in Ukrainian, coming soon.
Kyiv Post staff writer Mariya Manzhos can be reached at [email protected].
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