Filmmaker Halya Kuchmij Honoured at Award Night

By Halya Wawryshyn

On Thursday June 29, filmmaker Halya Kuchmij was honoured at a Media Award Night organized by Toronto’s Ukrainian Canadian Professional and Business Association. The event, which took place at the Canadian Ukrainian Art Foundation (KUMF), was attended by members of the media and UCPB Association members.

Halya was introduced by the well-known artist Natalka Husar. They have been friends since 1976 when Halya offered Natalka her first job in Canada, painting ads for a  film festival.

Kuchmij has worked in film and television as a producer/director for the past 25 years and has garnered numerous accolades for her work, including: the Genie Award, seven Gemini nominations, six Chris Awards, a Gabriel Award, two New York Film Festival Awards, an Anik Award, two Yorkton Film Festival Awards and the Asia Pacific Media Fellowship. 

She started out as an independent filmmaker, then worked with the National Film Board of Canada and then the Canadian Broadcasting Corporation. While with the CBC, she worked for various television programs, including The Journal, Man Alive, Life & Times and Witness and produced and directed network specials, documentaries and current-affairs programs.

Her work has taken her to the United Kingdom, Germany, Cuba, France, throughout Canada and the United States and to Ukraine.

Many of Kuchmij’s films have Ukrainan themes. Early in her career,  Kuchmij took a road trip to Winnipeg, Dauphin, Vegreville and other locations in Western Canada. She developed a passion for The Prairies and became fascinated by the contributions of early Ukrainian settlers to Canada and depicted them in her films. Kuchmij’s The Strongest Man in the World, about Michael Swistun, a Depression-era Ukrainian Canadian strongman/magician from rural Manitoba was narrated by actor Jack Palance. The film earned her a Genie Award in 1980 and set her career in motion. Another film, Laughter in My Soul, focused on first-wave Ukrainian immigrant Jacob Maydanyk. A cartoonist, painter, humourist, publisher, iconographer, and teacher, Maydanyk educated Ukrainians in Western Canada through his Shteef Tabachniuk comic-strip.

Currently, Kuchmij is working on a movie about banduristy and is planning to work on a film about Filip Konowal, who was awarded the Victoria Cross and Peter Dmytruk. Little-known in Canada, Dmytruk is honoured as a World War Two hero in France.

At the Media Awards Night, Kuchmij thanked the UCPB Association for putting on the evening in her honour and presented a half-hour film, which she called Snapshots of My Life.  It began with black-and-white photographs from 1952 showing how she and her family arrived from England to Canada and settled in Thunder Bay.

Later, the family moved to Toronto. From a childhood that included membership in CYM, church attendance and violin lessons, Kuchmij moved on to an adolescence when she tried to be an “Anglo-Princess.”  In university, she got involved in SUSK, the Canadian students' union, and through her participation became interested in Ukrainian Canadian issues, which led to her exploration of Ukrainian themes in films.

After the movie presentation chronicling her career, Kuchmij said that her position had been deeply paid for by her ancestors. She thanked her mother who stood behind her for many years and presented her with flowers.

Kuchmij was then given a standing ovation. Ukrainian Canadian Congress President Orysia Sushko congratulated her on behalf of the UCC and commented on her cinematic contributions and the wide variety of subjects in her work.  The UCPB Association’s President Roman Nazarewycz read a congratulatory letter from Bell Globemedia President and CEO Ivan Fecan, who was unable to attend.

In conclusion, Nazarewycz listed Kuchmij’s many awards and then presented her with flowers, a tryzub and a small statuette of a sower, reminiscent of Western Canada and symbolic of the subject matter of many of her films.