Kiev Glasnost Films Inc.

Kiev Glasnost Films, Inc. distributed films contextualizing the fall of Communism in the USSR and Eastern Europe. Its history begins in 1989 when Dr. Romana M. Bahry, Associate Professor in the Department of Languages, Literatures and Linguistics of the Faculty of Liberal Arts and Professional Studies and Fellow of Stong College at York University became the recipient of the 1989 Canada -USSR Academic Exchange Grant which allowed her to travel in August 1989 to St. Petersburg (then called Leningrad), Moscow and Kyiv (then called Kiev). She was one of the first Slavic Studies professors in Canada to travel to Ukraine which was then still part of the USSR. It is here that Professor Bahry met directors of the Ukrainian film studios who asked her to take their films to Canada with her. That same year, Bahry organized a film festival at York University Ukraine titled "Glasnost and Ukrainian Documentary Films" (Oct. 22-23, 1989) which screened documentary films from Kiev. During Bahry’s second visit to Ukraine in 1990, she met with documentary and animation film studios in Kyiv (then called Kiev) and formed Kiev Glasnost Films which would acquire screening and duplication rights.

After acquiring permissions, Kiev Glasnost Films and Bahry were involved with organizing an international symposium at York University titled "Ukrainian Glasnost Films 1990" (proceedings of the symposium published as "York University, Ukrainian Glasnost, 1990 Film Festival”) and consultation for the symposium and film series on "Soviet Society in the Glasnost Era" at the Smithsonian Institution, Washington D.C.; the American Committee on U.S.-Soviet Relations, January 10-21, 1991; The University of Alberta and The Alberta Council for the Ukrainian Arts, March 23, 1991; C.B.C. television’s the Journal "Latvia, Ukraine" (March 1991); and the Harvard Ukrainian Summer Institute: Contemporary Ukrainian Film Festival, Harvard University, Ukrainian Research Institute, August 1991.

2023/07/25 KCP. Created.