10 Questions with Marichka Lukianchuk

Marichka Lukianchuk is an artist and a filmmaker from Ukraine, born in 1997. She first studied advertising and had her own advertising agency that she closed after two years to devote herself fully to art. This year she graduated from Interdisciplinary Arts studies at Zuyd University of Applied Sciences, Maastricht, The Netherlands. Her short films ‘Past Future Mountain’ and ‘Spiderweb for Shelter and Hunt’ were premiered in the cinemas, made their path to international film festivals, and created a base for her further search in art (auteur) film. Currently, Marichka is working on her next short film, “Island of Dreams (in your hands)”, and combines her artistic practice with teaching. Although she sees her vision reaching its full potential in art house films, she also works on independent and collaborative interdisciplinary artistic projects. In the future, she strives to make her path to feature filmmaking and to combine her artistic practice with educational one further.

marichkalukianchuk.com | @marichka.lukianchuk

ARTIST STATEMENT

Marichka believes that ideas are not something you come up with, but the intentions searched for and uncovered within and outside oneself. These intentions come from the image on her mind, and she sees her mission in uncovering the stories hidden behind them. In this way, she perceives drawing and writing as integral parts of her artistic process, uniting in films at the end. She combines video and stop motion in her approaches and sees it as her way to cross the border of real and dreamlike, moment and eternity, contemplation and action - and tell these stories; she sees it as a freedom of understanding that everything can be alive and meaningful — behind and through the camera. Marichka treats filming as drawing and editing as poetry and balances on the verge of conscious and unconscious, aimed and spontaneous in her work. She feels the most related to the idea of 'an auteur': a person who creates 'worlds', built on the base of their artistic philosophy and style, and takes part in every stage of the process, but also sees great collaborative opportunities in filmmaking - to direct, but also to give space and opportunities for other people to reveal themselves and to create an exchange of visions. And there, at the intersection of all of this, her projects are born.

On a social level, Marichka sees Creators as Guides that strive to reach higher levels and take society or a group of people with them. They make the exchange of wisdom and experience between generations possible; as shamans in old tribes, they guide people through the necessary inner transitions, through moments of uncertainty to the moments of clarity, making them visible and helping to overcome struggles, to leave behind what should die and to give space for what should live. In this instance, art becomes a bridge between reflection, action, and prevision. We can see worlds beneath worlds through art, and they have no limitations; like an alchemist process, it generates endless possibilities within one object, idea, and body. In a way, all art comes from the same stream, strives for one thing, and is about the search for a deeper and more conscious life for comprehending the world: inner and outer. It communicates with the audience through truth and trust: giving hints keys to the door; leaving space for imagination and interpretation based on their own experiences, associations, feelings.

Marichka sees opportunities on the verge of art and psychology and believes in the importance of uncovering and connecting archetypal appearances to the times we live in. Carl Gustav Jung and the Jungian School of Psychoanalysis's work is very influenced by their views on soul, collective unconsciousness, dreams, archetypes, mythology, and symbolism on individual and group levels. As psychology knows of the soul, she sees a relation between it and art as a crucial one. Symbolism in her work could be perceived both as an approach and a subject. Symbols help her understand questions from different perspectives and see what is beneath the surface. They are the roads to knowing and exploring, as deeply personal as communicators on a 'human level'. Her approach to uniting personal and global in her works comes from this paradoxical relation: the deeper one goes inside, the more universal things appear.

Marichka is fascinated by poetic cinema, surrealism, and magic realism in cinema, art, and literature. Objects and natural forces are very important to her, bearing a symbolical load, unfolding their hidden lives and playing the equal protagonists' role in the works.

Another important layer of Marichka's work is the image of femininity. Being brought up and mainly influenced by women, she grew up with a different perception of femininity than the one existing in society. For her, the image of the woman was always the one that could pose a threat, could create a shelter, could haunt, and could save. It was a big force of life and death. She strives to broaden and challenge the perception of women in our society and to find ways to speak of equality not on the basis of politics or exclusion but through portraying deeper and more multilayered female images and characters.

INTERVIEW

First of all, introduce yourself to our readers. What are your history and your artistic background? And how did you start getting involved with art, and more specifically with video and cinema?

Looking back, I can highlight several important moments about my childhood that now, with time and distance, make a logical chain. Coming from a non-artistic family and surrounding, as a child, I could not imagine how I could ever live as an artist, as I kept hearing of the impossibility of this path. Always drawing, writing and creating stories that I sometimes could not separate from reality, I lived my life in books and dreams of another life, something different from what life was supposed to be. Being a very calm and secretive child, a strong sense of guilt started to unveil the dark side of things quite early. From my childhood, the moments I remember are mainly the inner experiences, slightly influenced by the outer world, which was not a big part of my interest. I believed I was a gypsy, and even my grandmother, who brought me up, could not convince me I was not. Once I heard a story about a child whose gypsies stole, and since then, I have been waiting for my people to find me, leaving secret messages during my walks. I also had my secret 'treasures' hidden all around my room, and after making sure of being alone and not watched, I carefully checked out every little thing and put it precisely as it was before. There may darkest drawings also found their place; without being able to explain what was so dark about them, I knew that they conveyed the knowledge I was not supposed to learn at my age therefore they needed to be concealed from any stranger's eye. I lived in my own dreams, imagining the hidden life on things and fighting with death that I thought was a bull from the dark drawer in my room that followed me in my childhood nightmares as I thought that it couldn't come when I watched. All these experiences influenced me in my later life and found their place in my artistic works.

Later on, the time came for me to prepare for exams and to choose a career, and I stopped doing what was believed to be useless - drawing and writing. I decided to choose advertising, and it was a very important period of my life: looking back, I see that I was directing all the ambitions I secretly had for art, visiting art museums in every place I traveled to and reading books about art, still believing on the surface that I'd be able to work in advertising. As I was always interested in many things and wanted to be at every step of the process: from creating an idea to producing it, designing it, filming, editing, and presenting, it was followed by the run-away from an advertising agency and refusals on the job interviews because: 'You can't be good at anything if you want to do every- thing'. That's how I started my own advertising agency together with a friend, and it firstly felt good to be able to create independently. Our beliefs in changing something and our crazy ideas brought us forward, but also... even further from the advertising world. This period of my life became crucial for several reasons: I gained some sense of purpose, some skills that later on built my path into the art world, and I realised that I did not belong there, that it was not enough, but before that some important realisation took place. 

While trying to position ourselves in the advertising sphere, we were often asked to lie and manipulate, judged on the level of use of our work, but every time my beliefs of what life was as well as my moral principles became stronger. That was also when I started working on educational and social projects and did some workshops in orphanages. Finally, exhausted and disillusioned, I decided I could not go on like this. Around that time, I visited Vienna to see the exhibition of paintings of Egon Schiele when I experienced a moment of truth, the moment of deep soul and body experience, losing track of time and crying from the inside: for the strength, for the desire to live, to explore, to learn, to experience, to create in every stroke of the painter. Scared that I could not do it, that I 'did not have it', I started drawing again, with my hands shaking, with my soul singing. This moment changed everything, it showed me the satisfaction I had been searching for all my life, and it changed me, bringing me back to the roots, to where it all started. My family did not know how to react; some friends told me that I was spoiled to leave what I did well for the unknown. But I found a sense go purpose, got my inspiration back, my feelings opened up. With this realisation came the thought that I needed to take a chance and to leave everything behind: for better education, for another view on things and to regain my freedom. 

So I left everything and applied for an Interdisciplinary Arts bachelor's in The Netherlands. The first year there, I could not believe that I had all the time and energy to devote to my dream - to art. 'I am an artist still were scary words to say out loud and were painfully forgotten when facing my family. I waited for a point of no return' to happen all the time on the back of my mind. Now, back in Ukraine, I realised that this point happened inside, and happened long ago. The Netherlands and two years at iArts brought me freedom, first of all from my own blocks; I learned to be open to my feelings, intuition, and truth, and speak up. I discovered my ways of working and creating, and through this - the way I want to live. My grandmother says that with age her hearing has declined. Sometimes she does not hear strong noises, but other times she hears the lowest sound from the far corner. I guess that's what happens with all of us with age and experience. We don't hear, see or feel less. We just become more selective about what we hear, see and feel. Now, the longing for mystery, for what is behind the locked door, for the inner life of things and experiences has come back, mixed with the eye for outer life and learning. 

My vision, mediums, themes, and approaches have formed and developed throughout my degree. During my studies, without conscious realization, I went more and more into the direction of filmmaking. In my 1st year, I created my first video art piece, "Inevit(ability) or I am not tall enough". When I discovered the stop motion technique, I applied my visual language and aesthetics to the medium of film and touched upon a narrative on the verge of reality and dream.

On my 2nd year, I made a 7-minute film, "Spiderweb for Shelter and Hunt", which, in many ways, created a basis for my further search in cinematography. This project made a number of things visible: the development in my style and stop motion approach, experiments with sound and the suitability and contrast between sound and image, use of symbols and decorations and the search for the female image and spiritual roots and routes within one family.

As my graduation work, I created a short film "Past Future Mountain" that, in many ways, was a personal challenge for me to realise that filmmaking is something I want and can go for. Being an idealistic person, I was always looking for something that would feel like 100%. On my path, I tried many different things that I gained experience from and that I enjoyed, but only after entering the filmmaking world can I say that it's my 100%. The challenges it conveys on every step, the complexity it enables, and the instruments it provides for my vision's unveiling and development are worth living for.

And how would you define yourself as an artist today?

On a personal level, as in my previous work "Past Future Mountain", I find myself on the border between past and future. My artistic vision, methods of work, process, themes, and style are quite deepened and clear for me now. The next step for me is to take the quality of the work to the next level, both technically and regarding the conceptual depth and storytelling, to find a team and financial possibilities for it, and to further build my path into the auteur film.

I can highlight a few important aspects of my positioning in an art film sphere in a global sense. Firstly, as humans, we are all searching for something bigger than society, built on consumption and entertainment, can offer, and COVID put a lot of things we perceived as a given under question and made these searchings even stronger. Now the medium of video is everywhere, and the cinema itself is often perceived as the most common way of entertainment. I see the medium of film as the one giving the opportunities to respond to the more spiritual need and be the orienteer we all need for our growth, development, and spiritual path.

Secondly, it is very important for me to position myself as a female director. I am very glad that nowadays, the filmmaking sphere, among many others, feels more equal than ever. Still we are quite far from that, both in our individual and social mentality. Both freedom and women and freedom and creators - are stories about the struggle for freedom. Many people before us fought so that we don't have to fight now. Nevertheless, where the question of freedom is raised, the question of the struggle for it is also raised.

Now we have the opportunity to speak and be heard, to create - and creation, for me, is always a dialogue between people, but also a dialogue outside of time; creation crosses its borders, and therefore art can be considered a striving for eternity. Many women have given their lives to change the world, to make it a more equal and spiritual place. Also, many creators created in spite of all restrictions and could have revealed their potential even more. Therefore, in a sense, speaking and creating is our mission: to share knowledge, thoughts, ideas, feelings. And to show a more female perspective on the world and on filmmaking, to strive to broaden and challenge the perception of women in our society, and to find ways to speak of equality not on the basis of politics or exclusion but through portraying deeper and more multilayered female images and characters, is one of the important aims of my artistic practice. 

Thirdly, living in The Netherlands and having a chance to get to know many people from all over the world, I saw the growing interest to explore the diversity of the cultures. And in many cases, I also felt the limited perception of Ukraine, the country I am from. Its either an idea of a post-soviet country or the associations with war, corruption, Chernobyl, etc. Knowing the country from the inside and having the outer perspective by living for two years in another country and traveling a lot, I see Ukrainian culture in its diversity and ambiguity. In many instances, it plays a big role in my works. Through my films, I am very glad to be able to share them on a global level. I perceive it as one of my missions: to bring it outside and also to make an inner input, as my country has been under the control of the soviet union for a long time. Now I am from one of the first generations to build, explore and reflect on our culture and image. Art for me is never about politics or nationalistic views, but about the common ground we can discover through exploring the diversity we have in the world, the relations between the different cultures, the place and the value of endangered cultures in the globalized world; the more local we start from, the more global things appear, and each culture, as well as all cultures were taken together, are the answers to the eternal questions of who we are as humans and what our purposes are.

Your statement reads, "Marichka treats filming as drawing, and editing as poetry, and balances on the verge of conscious and unconscious. She feels the most related to the idea of an auteur". Give us a definition of auteur and how you apply that idea to your work. 

As I formulated in my artist statement, for me, an auteur is a person who creates 'worlds', built on the base of their artistic philosophy and style and takes part in every stage of the process, from the first manifestation of an inner need and the birth of an intention (idea) till uncovering and conveying it throughout the full realization of the film. In its basis, the term 'an auteur' covers a distinctive approach, style, and thematic focus, personal touch in work and is mostly used in art-house filmmaking. In my perception, artistic vision comes from the philosophical one, that each film is, in some sort, an attempt to answer the eternal question of existence. The film says, "Life is that way" (for this film, in this moment in time), and in this way, a creator and their work are inseparable. The devotion and the depth the creator has is what they give to work, and at the same time, the work gives even more back to the creator. The mission behind the director is to create the world of the film, in which every element (sound, color, word, etc.) are integral; by taking anything out of the world's ruins and adding something alien. The director should be true to oneself and, through this - to the intention of the work, to always be on the side of the idea, and again, through this - to their life values. It is never about adding something 'beautiful' or 'interesting', but about uncovering the path to the world, and for this, openness and feelings are important - to live with and through the work. From the first image/thought of the film, it already exists, and the mission is to bring it to life the way the idea asks for.

From a more practical point of view, it was important to personally understand and be able to do the work on each stage. In my first video works, I filmed, edited, acted, made decorations, etc. It came from understanding how my vision and style are expressed. For example, only now do I feel ready to give the camera to another person, as before, many things were happening intuitively once I grabbed the camera into my hands. Through this, I came to the point where now I can direct. I believe that to pass the task to another person, you need to understand precisely what do you want, how it is possible to make it, and from there on also comprehend the borders of the personal input of each member of the team, the space for improvisation (which I also adore), but knowing the core that can not be changed. As filmmaking is collaborative in its heart, it is magical and crucial to give space for people to express themselves and grow through the process, but at the same time, the core of making a film is in preserving the initial intention that can be lost easily through all the stages and with so many people involved.

What about your creative process? Where do you get inspiration for your films, and how do you develop them? 

In the beginning, I often have different hints: images, ideas, thoughts that might feel unrelated, as well as inner need that derives from what I am going through at that moment in time. My artistic process is also a process of healing; I perceive the creative process as uncovering the connections between them.
Though the initial intention always comes from deep inside, the research plays an important role in my process. I try to get as deep into the topic as possible by reading related books, watching documentaries, or interviewing people. And all the time, I balance between the information I get from outside and my inner intention and intuition. 
What fascinates me is what appears on the verge of personal and global. So I'm very interested in having these two major layers in my films and how they intervene with each other, uncovering the same ideas and motifs on the level of one person's life (protagonist) and on the level of a social group.

In my work, I connect conscious and unconscious methods of work, lateral and vertical thinking. I pay a lot of attention to my dreams, meditation visions, and intuition. At some moments, I let my imagination flow without necessarily knowing where it is leading me. But then I come back with a more critical mind, connecting the dots, clarifying the message, and choosing relevant and irrelevant findings. I repeat this process several times before I get to the core of the story. 
For example, at the beginning of work on "Past Future Mountain", I knew that I wanted to create a fairy tale about a young woman going through her social initiation. I knew that I wanted to make the film in the Carpathian Mountains and integrate Hutsul Culture in it, and I had a vision of people with their eyes covered on top of the mountain and of nature calling out for the protagonist. Step by step, through doing the research and working on script, the dotes were connected and the story appeared.

Your films are layered and rich in meanings; they can be read on many levels. Do you have any director or artist you particularly look up to? What are your references for your work?

For me, this answer naturally follows from my vision of an auteur. The things I look up for in other works are less specific aspects and more of the complexity and integrity of the work. To name but a few, Francis Ford Coppola, Martin Scorsese, Andrei Tarkovsky, Lars von Trier, Wes Anderson, Terrence Malick, Gaspar Noe— are all very different in their approaches, styles, themes — but yet, in my vision, are united in being the auteurs. I do like films that have a balance between the strength of intention and openness for interpretation, meaning that they give enough space for viewers to relate to their own experience and find their own story behind the one film, but still lead that follow. In my approach, I gain it through working with symbolism and uniting deeply personal and global in my works. Hoverer, the layering of the work can be achieved through many ways and that, for me, is something to look up to. Among the recent discoveries, “The Double Life of Veronique” of Krzysztof Kieślowski is a great example of the balance I am talking about.

To name more precisely the auteurs I have a stronger relationship with, Sergei Parajanov and Jan Svankmajer. With Sergei Parajanov, I feel extremely related to his visual language, but I also am fascinated by his ability to become a part of the culture he talks about and with love to a life he brings throughout his career unbreakable despite all difficulties of his life path. In Jan Svankmajer, I see an example of the combination of video and stop motion, in which the technology becomes the part of the idea itself, and the layering he achieves through working with psychoanalysis, alchemy, and the stories he bases his films on, transforming and adding new contexts.

Psychology and psychoanalysis are other important themes in your production. How do you incorporate them into your films? 

My work is very influenced by Carl Gustav Jung and the Jungian School of Psychoanalysis, their views on soul, collective unconsciousness, dreams, archetypes, mythology, and symbolism on individual and group levels. 
Firstly, I rely on them during the research phase of the project. For example, for my work “Past Future Mountains” I explored the fairy tales from the psychological point of view: their motifs, the path of the protagonist, the concept of initiation of the hero, the meaning of the objects and actions in them, and the archetypal female appearances. Then I brought this knowledge to comprehend the Hutsul folklore and chose two contrasting characters from the psychological point of view. The path of Marichka (protagonist) is the path to the initiation of her social mission.  
As my works contain a lot of symbols, I also work on them on two layers, connecting my personal and emotional interpretation of them and their existence and meanings in cultural, psychological, religious spheres.

Is there something else you would like to experiment with in terms of mediums? Or any other field you would like to investigate?

My short films were made with the stop motion technique. However, in other works, I also worked with video. In my next short film, I want to explore the possibilities of uniting stop motion and video, and I am very curious to see what happens there, as for me stop motion is not only a technique but an idea in itself: the possibilities for people and objects to have the same feeling of life, the time and movement it conveys. However, during the work on my previous short film, I also started to feel too limited in it, especially speaking of the actor’s performance. Therefore I see the unity of video and stop motion as a natural step for me and the great possibility for further exploration of filmmaking.

Also, I am very curious to try working on the border of narrative and documentary filmmaking. In some way, I pointed that direction in my last film, as the filming took place in the Carpathian Mountains with the involvement of local people (Hutsuls). It portrayed many elements of Hutsul culture and mindset. In one of my next work, I’ll be curious to enhance it, even more, to have to lines of storytelling (factual or imagined) developing, interweaving, contrasting and adding to each other. 
And surely, what I am doing now is preparing me for taking a step into the feature film. The time will hold further opportunities for the development of the story its characters and for deepening the layers of the work. 

Over the past year, we have witnessed many changes in the art world and our lives in general. What is one thing that you miss about your life pre-Covid, career, and art-wise? And what is one new thing that, over the past year, you have discovered? 

Personally, Covid influenced me in many instances. It changed my life as I had to come back to Ukraine and could not leave; firstly, being shocked, as I could not foresee it, it became a beautiful, tough path to my roots and brought me a lot of reflections and thoughts. In some sort of way, it is during the first lockdown, being locked in the room where my childhood pathed, is when my vision and my decision for the filmmaking completely formed. When the regulations weakened, everything that was developing inside reflected outside and, as a result, my previous short film "Past Future Mountain" appeared. I was always drawn to the Carpathian mountains and dreamed of making some artwork about the hurtful culture and their mindset, their nature, as for me it conveys completely their own passage of time and magic, born from closeness to nature, isolation, and at the same time influence of different cultures. But if not for COVID, I would not have thought that the time for this film was now and who knows when and how it would appear.

Globally, as a human, we can draw many lessons from it, as sometimes the path to growth is bitter. Despite all restrictions, I feel more grateful and connected to the world, and I believe in a larger sense of what is happening nowadays and what we might discover through it. We live in strange times, unpredictable and ambiguous, but it's what we'll do with it is that finally will matter. And in these times, we need imagination and stories even more; if we use it wisely, it's our time to finally look deeply inside, search for inner belonging, and realize where we are at this point, how we got there and what we want our future to be.

Finally, what are you working on now, and what are your plans for the future? Anything exciting you can tell us about?

Currently, I am working on my next short film, "Island of dreams (in your hands)". It is a story of The Woman who finds herself on the island with The Man, not remembering who she is and what she is doing there.

The film bears two layers of meaning. On a personal level, it's a story of a psychological and artistic crisis and unhealthy manipulative relationships. Constant suppression and controversy in attitude and actions lead to an unclear perception of one's needs and powers. On a global level, the film also touches upon the theme of The System and the person, who starts to see the world differently and no longer wants to obey the rules of this world, and how the system influences and suppresses a free mindset.

Another project that goes around my head now is a short film on the border of documentary and narrative about the children's orphanages in Ukraine that speaks on the level of personalities of one orphanage, on the system of orphanages, and is a metaphor of a closed social system. These films are now in the final stage of conception, and soon I will start searching for the possibilities for their production. There are also some other scripts and ideas I am developing, but they are a bit too soon to be spoken about 

Another important step I am taking on now is teaching. For me, making (a creative activity in a border fence) is first of all about giving and creating this exchange in your life. That's why I see artistic and educational practices going hand in hand. After having experience in giving some workshops and lectures, I am now starting to teach the 3-month art film course for teenagers. I dream of creating a space for developing and practicing artists and international exchange in the future.
Speaking of further plans, in the next years, I am striving to make a master's or a post-educational training in film direction in France and to pursue my path into filmmaking.