The School of Journalism and Communications of the Ukrainian Catholic University (UCU) and the team of the media project Ukraїner worked together for more than two week to tell the stories of “unpopular” corners of Ukraine, resulting in five stories about the city of Lviv.
According to Svitlana Zhabiuk, head of the UCU Master’s in Journalism Program, the students “suggested inviting Bohdan Lohvynenko, founder of Ukraїner, to UCU. With Bohdan we worked on organizing not simply a meeting but a whole school with the whole team of the project.”
In cooperation with Ukraїner, the first- and second-year journalism master’s students went through the theory of all the stages of creating a documentary film, which they eventually used in practice. The school was part of the subject “Multimedia storytelling,” which involves telling the story of an innovation or socially-important theme through the story of one hero.
One story was about the Lviv volunteer organization Tarilka (“plate”), whose volunteers go to food stores to collect donations which they sort and then others distribute to people in need.
(You can watch the Ukrainian-language video HERE>)
Another story was “A touch of Lviv.” Lviv-based sculptor Vasyl Odrekhivskyi, who makes tactile models, helping the blind to recognize and “see” all the beauty of the city in which they live. Second-year student Ksenia Chykunova was the camera operator. She said that “at first I was rather critical, because I had only filmed things with a telephone.” But a mentor helped her and it worked out.
Some of the stories are still being edited, including one about iconographer Roman Zelinko, himself an UCU grad, who is seen in the photo at the top.
[The Ukrainian-language original of this text was written by Diana Motruk.]
