Akcyja Visla premierEs

Bogdan Horbal, New York

During my recent trip to Poland I was lucky to be in Legnica for the second screening of the motion picture Akcyja Visla (Operation “Vistula”). The first screening had taken place in Krynica during annual Biennale of Lemko-Rusyn Culture just a couple of weeks before. Legnica’s screening took place on June 12 in the building which serves as a home of local theatrical troop. All 240 seats were sold out in no time while several people agreed to pay half price to watch the movie standing. Movie focuses on one family preparing for a wedding which is interrupted by the Polish military. The rest needs to be seen on the big screen…

Copies of the resettlement document issued to each family during Operation “Vistula” were used as tickets. Lemko activist Jan Dziadyk who in the movie plays a member of the Polish Security Office overseeing the operation was selling them at the door. When a ticket was sold, it received the stamp of the State Resettlement Office, Państwowy Urząd Repatriacyjny.

Before the screening, the main force in the creation of the movie and its director and screenwriter Andrii Kopča welcomed the gathered crowed. He spoke about the production and invited the lead actors onto the stage to introduce them to viewers. Kopča also acknowledged critical help received from the Carpatho-Rusyn Society in the amount of $5,000. He underlined that the production hit a dead end and was in danger of not being finished when the American Rusyns sent the funds needed to do the actual scenes of the resettlement. This assistance is also acknowledged in the end credits.

The production has certainly not been done Hollywood style. With a budget that did not exceed 50,000 zloties (some $13,000) the movie should be viewed as symbolic in its nature. Shortcomings caused by the lack of more extensive funding (and perhaps, as some whispered, sometimes poor organization) are evident but should not and cannot overshadow the true value of this unique undertaking. What this movie means to Lemkos one could find out during the few brief sound problems when neither the soundtrack nor the voices of the actors were heard. What was clearly heard was the weeping of the audience, among which young people constituted a significant portion!

This is despite the fact – as was observed by my father, who was 13 in 1947 – that the resettlement was in fact more brutal then pictured here. It seems that it did not have to be more brutal in the movie. What needed to be said and depicted was done with small-scale settings. Jurij Starynskij, a Lemko activist as well as the founder and director of the widely successful Kyčera Ensemble underlined just that. He spoke after the screening, and while thanking all the participants he made a good point by stressing that this movie was not produced in the independent Ukraine where 2/3 of the Lemko population ended up after World War II and where state and professional film studios could have been involved.

Kopča noted that 12,000 zloties (roughly $3,000) promised by the Polish authorities have never been delivered. In fact, this is a movie that was prepared, produced and financed by Rusyns but that must be se en by Poles, according to the director of the Legnica theatrical troop, who after the screening immediately suggested that Polish subtitles be produced and that the movie be presented to Polish viewers.

Fulfilling the promise given to the C-RS after receiving funding, Kopča stressed in a private conversation with me that the movie will also be made available to the American Rusyns with planned English subtitles. For that, however, one will have to wait probably till the end of the year, as version of the movie currently being shown still requires some work. The final version will probably be a bit shorter than the current one hour and forty minutes put together from more then twelve hours of footage.

All of the actors in the movie are amateurs, though some have experience from performing with the Lemko Theatre. The lead roles were played by Olga Perehrym; Štefan, Ivan and Joanna Kosovskij; Anna Rydzanyč; and Pavlo Dziamba. Petro Trokhanovskij was born to be a “diak,” while Andrej Kopča – according to his own opinion – had to play the “bad guy” (the commanding officer of the Polish troops). That this movie is already turning into a cultural and historical monument is evident in the case of the late Mykhal Sandovyč, who plays the role of a local priest. Sandovyč died in a car accident in late December of 2003. The film’s music was scored by Jaroslav Trokhanovskij.