Finding the Place and Traveling There
Once I decided to tell a story about the Jewish history of Volhynia and my family's former life there, I had to figure out how to get there, how to get around and who to talk to. The places were principally Rovno and Novogradvolynsk.
​The gateway to these places was the city of L'viv, a city of many names--known as Lwow during times it was in Poland (before 1792 and again between WWI and WWII) and Lemberg when it was part of the Austro-Hungarian Empire between 1792 and the end of WWI. In 2005, we took a short flight from Vienna to get there. It was Ukrainian Easter Week, the 60th anniversary of Liberation Day, and the 60th anniversary of the Shoah. I hired a translator and driver sight unseen on the internet. His name was Slav Tsarynnik. He picked us up without a hitch and sheparded us through everything. I talked to volunteers at a couple of Jewish charities in the U.S. through whom I made a one connection in Rivne and one in Novogradvolynskii. Both people were kind, knowledgeable and generous with their time. This orientation trip served its purpose in moving the project from fantasy and impulse to something that could become real.
Filming
I had the good fortune of being introduced to an aspiring cinematographer, Matthias Schubert, who was just beginning his career. His then partner was Ukrainian. They accepted the invitation to go with us to the towns in Western Ukraine and do the filming and sound work. We arrived in early July 2005. Our mini-skeleton crew filmed everyday, all day for seven intense days. The product was 40 hours of raw footage.
Back at Home
Back at home, the real work began. And ended. And began and ended again. On several occasions, the interval between ending and beginning again lasted years. But sometimes only for months.
Without the benefit of not yet available machine translation, Slav did almost all of the translation of the Russian and Ukrainian dialogue. My cousin, Oskar Soderberg, modified parts of the Russian translation. I dictionaried my way through the Yiddish parts. Later, Oskar did a great deal of editing and sound sweetening.
I also flunked or stumbled through courses in editing film in Final Cut Pro and then in Adobe. I managed through the years to produced what only vaguely resembled a rough cut. But by far, the most difficult part was scripting. In order to write a script, you have to have a
coherent idea of what the film is about. That still eludes me somewhat. In the end, I was rescued by my intelligent cousin Oskar Soderberg, who knew how to edit and had a bit of extra time. Finally, Matthias Schubert, the aspiring young cinematographer who had since become an acclaimed master, magnanimously spent several days of his precious time to finish it off.
