You're reading: Ukraine, Kazakhstan co-produce movie about iconic Ukrainian poet

The life of Taras Shevchenko, the 19th century Ukrainian poet and iconic figure in modern Ukraine, became the subject of many movies. But the one that is being co-produced now by Ukraine and Kazakhstan promises to be different from every other one.

“Taras. Farewell to the Desert” is coming out in autumn. It pictures Shevchenko during his exile in Mangyshlak, a large peninsula in western Kazakhstan that borders on the Caspian Sea.

Shevchenko was arrested in 1847 for membership in the Brotherhood of Saints Cyril and Methodius, a secret political society that sought Ukraine’s national rebirth and independence. Three years later, in 1850, Emperor Nicholas I of Russia sent the poet to Novopetrovskaya coastal fort in Kazakhstan for an obligatory military service. Shevchenko served seven years, and could only return to the empire’s capital St. Petersburg after the emperor died.

According to the new film’s director, Ukrainian Oleksandr Danylenko, the movie will show a fictional story that “might have happened to Shevchenko” during the last months of his seven-year exile.
Although Danylenko carefully studied Shevchenko’s biography and documents of this period, the movie will not be a biopic, but rather the first Ukrainian “eastern” – an epic film with battle scenes and detective plot line.

“The film is built on the intrigue that the czar seems to pardon Shevchenko, but at the same time his secret police doesn’t want to let Shevchenko out,” Danylenko said. “The main conflict is the price that Shevchenko has to pay for his freedom.”

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Works “Taras Shevchenko and Kazakh boy who is playing with a cat”  and  “Kazakh Katya” painted by Ukrainian poet and artist Taras Shevchenko during his exile in Kazakhstan in 1856-57.

Part of the film was already shot in Kazakhstan’s Mangystau Region in September. Today, the filming goes on in Ukraine’s Odesa Oblast.

The film is produced by a Ukrainian producer center Insight Media, Odessa Film Studio and Kazakhstan’s Tanaris Production Film Company.

Danylenko said that the plot of the film was inspired by paintings and poems written by Shevchenko during his exile in Kazakhstan. Although Shevchenko was forbidden to paint or write in exile, the commanders in the Novopetrovskaya fort allowed him to sketch landscapes around the coast of the Aral Sea. Historians say that during his exile in Kazakhstan. Shevchenko painted more than 100 pictures and wrote most of his Russian-language novellas.

The movie takes place in the historical period when Russian Empire was seizing territories of Kazakhstan and Middle Asia, therefore “Shevchenko’s ideas (about independence) were affecting the Kazakh people and other nationalities too,” Danylenko said.

“Kazakh people call Taras ‘akyn’ – the voice of the people,” Danylenko said, adding that Shevchenko was among the first artists who featured Kazakh people and their traditions in his paintings, and some of his works are exhibited in Astana even today.

“Taras is not a prophet, but a genius,” Danylenko says. “He doesn’t play a poet. He doesn’t recite poetry in every other scene. But I hope that I showed his soul.”

Danylenko thinks that Shevchenko knew the Kazakh language. Otherwise, the director says, he wouldn’t be permitted to visit some of the sacred places in Mangystau.

Shevchenko’s connection to Kazakhstan showed in the fact that one of the first monuments to the poet was built in Kazakhstan. It was installed by the commander of Novopetrovskaya fortress in 1881, 20 years after the poet’s death.

Ukrainian actor Borys Orlov plays Shevchenko. The movie also stars famous Soviet and Kazakh actor Nurzhuman Ikhtymbayev. The leading female character Katya, an inspiration for Shevchenko’s painting “Kazakh Katya,” is played by young actress Akniet Oryntai from Almaty.