Harper College to host Three From Ukraine film series

Harper College continues to bring different areas of the world to campus by way of a movie screen. The college’s Communication Arts department is presenting Three From Ukraine, a series of screenings of films made in Ukraine – including a coming-of-age story (Stop-Zemlia), a 3D-animated fairy tale (Mavka: The Forest Song) and a comedy/drama hailed as one of the best Ukrainian films ever made (My Thoughts are Silent).

All screenings are free, open to the community and take place at 6:30 p.m. on Fridays at Harper, 1200 W. Algonquin Road, Palatine. Stop-Zemlia (April 25) and My Thoughts are Silent (May 9) will both screen in Ukrainian with English subtitles at the college’s new, state-of-the-art Film Lab, Building E, Room E109. Mavka: The Forest Song will be shown in English at Harper’s Performing Arts Center, Building R, as a co-presentation with the college’s Office of Student Engagement.

“Harper is very much an international campus. It’s our goal to internationalize the cinema offerings on campus as well,” said Brian Shelton, associate professor of mass communication and series coordinator. “I personally believe that you can learn a lot about a culture by watching their films, studying their art. The more we know, the better we might understand.”

Three From Ukraine comes on the heels of Harper’s South Asian Film Series and Spanish Film Festival, all of which are designed to represent identities within the college’s students, employees and community. Shelton noted the growing number of Ukrainian students at Harper, in part due to the war in Ukraine. He reached out to Ukrainian students to ask for recommendations for this series.

Although Shelton shows Soviet-era Ukrainian classics in his film history courses, he is excited for the opportunity to share some modern depictions of the country via this series. In the case of 2019’s acclaimed My Thoughts are Silent, Shelton received specific permission from the movie’s director, Antonio Lukrich, to screen the film at Harper. Meanwhile, the film professor compared 2021’s Stop-Zemlia to John Hughes movies such as Sixteen Candles and said that Mavka: The Forest Song (2023) offers an opportunity to showcase a family-friendly movie that tells stories from Ukrainian folk mythology.

“I want people to come and see something different,” Shelton said. “What are young people in Ukraine like? You might get a sense from watching one of these movies.”