Julia Ivanova, director. Family Portrait in Black and White. 2011. 85 minutes. In Ukrainian and English, with English subtitles. Canada. Interfilm Productions. $24.99.

Abstract

Julia Ivanova, director. Family Portrait in Black and White. 2011.85 minutes. In Ukrainian and English, with English subtitles. Canada. Interfilm Productions. $24.99.In rural Ukraine, Olga Nenya is a foster mother to twenty orphans, among them sixteen biracial children who were abandoned by their Caucasian mothers because they represented unacceptable relations with African students in a society where 99 percent of the population (according to the 2001 Census) is white. Left in orphanages, these mixed race kids would likely have remained unadopted. The film's opening features local neo-Nazis declaring that white people produce imbeciles when they mix with subhumans (namely, anybody who is not white) and bragging that the police let them beat up black people with impunity. One African student, describing the high level of racism to which Africans are subjected, says, Living in Ukraine as an African is quite difficult. [Skinheads] want to harass you, anytime they see you. They see us as people who shouldn't be here.Hence, this is certainly not the ideal environment for these unwanted children. Yet because Ukraine is the only place they can call home, they simply do not have a choice. They live in a village, where their neighbors do not perceive them as 100 percent though these orphans can only think of themselves as Ukrainians. Sometimes they even adopt the local racist views on Africa and Africans, as is the case with Sashka, aged fourteen. He is certainly the most patriotic one in the family. He willingly tells how much he loves his homeland, and how much he wants to live there. He even turns out to be just as prejudiced as ethnic Ukrainians, especially against Arabs and Africans. He refuses to talk to blacks on the streets, declaring, What would I have in common with those niggers! Those foreigners come in [to our country] to sleep with our Ukrainian chicks! Ironically, a couple of years later even Sashka admits that he is aware of the racism and is getting tired of it. He knows that people feel that he does not belong there, which is why he hopes to leave Ukraine when he turns eighteen.With Olga, too, it seems that the children have no choice, as she is the only one who volunteered to care for them. She took them in when they were just young toddlers, and raised them as the only mother the majority of them would ever know. Julia Ivanova followed this atypical family over the course of three years and offers a very interesting portrait of their improbable matriarch. Olga is presented at first as a positive, kindhearted person who sacrifices herself to provide a home for the children, whom she calls precious diamonds. …