Orange Chronicles

By Damian Kolodiy

Filming in Ukraine was quite the experience! The camera was a magnet for people who were not used to being able to express their voice, and I had to get used to this kind of curiosity and desire. As events unfolded, and masses of people arrived in Kyiv, the weather became brutal- cold and snow ensued for a week straight! Shooting outdoors in enormous crowds and trying to compose a shot, focus, and adjust the iris with frozen fingers, wet shoes, and snow on the lens was an incredible physical challenge! However, the people were grateful that I was there to tell the story of their struggle to the world. Often people would offer a shoulder to balance the camera on, create a space for me to work in, and offer warm clothing and footwear against the harsh elements and food and tea to sustain me and keep me warm.

My name is Damian Kolodiy, and I'm an independent filmmaker currently living in NYC, but Boston is where I began my filmmaking career. I was born in Bronx, NY, to children of Ukrainian political refugees. I initially attended Loyola College in Baltimore, MD. where I began a double major in writing and photography. Although Loyola offered an excellent liberal arts education, it lacked the creative community I sought. After my sophomore year, I transferred to Emerson College in Boston, MA. where I decided to major in film, concluding that in today's world more people were likely to watch something than read it.

After graduation, I began a project called “Ill Generation”(www.illgeneration.com) which mushroomed into a feature length sci-fi film taking several years to film and edit. This film was shot entirely in Boston with local cast and crew, including local actors/performers Dylan Tyson, Irina Peligrad, Markus Nechay, Cynthia Von Buhler, and Duncan Wilder Johnson.

In the summer of 2002, I moved to NYC where I continued to edit “Ill Generation” and began to work as a production assistant as well as a freelancer shooting and editing video. Working in video, I began to gravitate towards the documentary field, often covering live events, concerts, or shooting for documentary films. I found documentary shooting to be a much more organic and natural process. Rather than attempting to force various elements together to achieve a preconceived result, documentary work by its very nature is a process that captures the story as it unfolds.

In November of 2004, I decided to go to Ukraine as an election monitor with the intention of making a film about the Ukrainian presidential elections. I ended up staying in Ukraine for three months to document the massive uprising of people against a falsified election and the explosion of events that caught the world's attention in late 2004, now known as the Orange Revolution, which included the presumed poisoning of Viktor Yushchenko. I called on my longtime friend, editor Peter Zielyk, to help edit the film upon my return. Two years later, Peter and I have completed the film and are working towards screening “The Orange Chronicles”(http://www.orangechronicles.com/) around the world.

People thanked me for my presence and support, and were shocked and delighted when I spoke fluent Ukrainian. My American passport and election monitor certification gave me access to key political players, press conferences, and cordoned off areas. My language and citizenship gave me unique access and very particular reactions, both aggressive and hostile as well as warm and friendly. Traveling to Soviet regions of Ukraine proved an incredibly enlightening experience as to the dilemmas, fractured society, and information abuse in Ukraine. Standing on the square, singing the Ukrainian national anthem with a million people who were fighting for the freedom of their nation, the country where my grandfather grew up, was an emotional high I have never before experienced.

“Orange Chronicles” screens in Boston Monday June 11th. It will be presented by the Boston International Film Festival (http://www.bifilmfestival.com/) at 4:45pm at the Park St. Loewes theatre, right up the street from Emerson, where I first learned the techniques of filmmaking.