Film on Ukrainian Art Historian Borys Voznytsky –Toronto Screening

After a tour of American cities, the documentary film The Guardian of the Past will be screened at St. Vladimir Institute in Toronto. Directed by Polish actress and well-known producer of experimental films, Malgorzata Potocka, the film is a tribute to one of Ukraine’s prominent cultural figures. It tells the inspiring story of Borys Voznytsky, long-time Director of the Lviv National Art Gallery who, in the face of Soviet tyranny, fought to preserve works of sacred art. The Guardian of the Past has won awards at documentary festivals in Los Angeles (2005), Kyiv (2006) and Moscow (2007).

Borys Voznytsky (1926-2012) devoted his life to Ukrainian and Polish art, travelling around Ukraine in search of neglected treasures such as icons, liturgical objects, and other religious art. During the 1960s and 70s, he engaged art historians and enthusiasts to preserve some 12,000 museum-worthy artefacts, which otherwise would have been destroyed as a part of the Soviet campaign against religion. The works of art salvaged from abandoned churches, houses and convents were hidden at the St. Bernard Monastery in Olesko, Ukraine. The collection boasts a large selection of sculptures by Johann Georg Pinzel.

Borys Voznytsky died tragically in 2012, and in 2013 the National Art Gallery in Lviv and the Mystetskyi Arsenal in Kyiv, in recognition of his outstanding contribution in the field of museum development, created the Borys Voznytsky Award.

The Guardian of the Past (2004, Polish with English subtitles) will be shown on Tuesday, April 30 at 7:30 pm, St. Vladimir Institute, 620 Spadina Ave., Toronto.

The screening is being presented by: the Polish Cultural Institute, New York; Jacyk Program for the Study of Ukraine, University of Toronto; Konstanty Reynert Chair of Polish History, University of Toronto; and St. Vladimir Institute.

Oksana Zakydalsky

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Borys Voznytsky