Ukrainian-American storyteller Masha Martynenko Ellsworth’s new brief movie, “Bound,” is a contemporary retelling of a well known Ukrainian folks track, “Nese Halia Vodu” (“Galya Carries Water”).
The Alameda-based unbiased filmmaker and lead technical director at Pixar Animation Studios presents a pebble-size animated movie in lower than 4 minutes, behind which is an avalanche of Ukraine’s wealthy historical past and cultural traditions.
The track’s lyrics inform of younger love between Gayla and Ivanko, a farm boy liable to passionate gestures. Common themes embrace heartache, rapture, relationships and the fragility of human connections.
“Bound” had a six-day run at San Francisco’s Little Roxie Theater in late July and has been picked up by a number of movie festivals. Not too long ago, the straightforward narrative — advised in cross-stitched animation with vocals from soprano Oleksandra Zabashta and baritone Alejandro Andres Danylyszyn — gained visibility as an Oscar-qualifying brief movie.
That the love story on the coronary heart of “Bound” speaks to audiences worldwide appears inevitable. Additionally suggestive of one in every of life’s best ironies — that tiny acts or occasions given time typically trigger cataclysmic change — the thought springs organically from Ellsworth’s household historical past however could be present in each period, nation and particular person life.
Throughout a latest interview, Ellsworth, 42, describes rising up in Chernihiv, a metropolis in northern Ukraine. Chernihiv right now has roughly 300,000 residents and an East European ambiance and design, with quite a few parks, instructional establishments and cultural actions. Ellsworth says Chernihiv has traditionally supplied a cushty setting the place many individuals select to retire after ending hard-driving careers in different municipalities.
“The city’s location itself shaped my family history,” says Ellsworth. “It’s about 40 miles outside of Chernobyl. When I was young, I didn’t realize not everyone grows up near the site of a nuclear disaster. After it happened, we were always monitored for any problems.”
Like earthquake drills in California, Ellsworth and her classmates practiced nuclear catastrophe drills.
“We had to put on a breathing mask with a hose connected to oxygen in under a minute. We had classes about how to protect yourself against radiation — lessons like, ‘You need one meter of cement to protect you from a specific level.’ It was just normal growing up.”
Some realizations got here later, upon reflection as an grownup. The seaweed salad college students had been urged to eat had nothing to do with Chernihiv being proximal to the ocean.
“Seaweed salads were not Ukrainian food culture at all; they were just feeding us as much iodine as possible.”
Ellsworth describes her mom, an epidemiologist, as “a driven career woman who taught me that anything I wanted to achieve, I could.” Her father is an architect, engaged in a subject with a excessive diploma of technical coaching, who offered one other irony.
“He was opposed to my taking formal art classes. He said they would tell me how to draw an apple. He wanted me to look at an apple and draw it the way I saw it,” she recollects.
Her father typically introduced house architectural fashions that Ellsworth was forbidden from taking part in with. That tweaked her creativeness and launched an early ardour for developing furnishings out of cardboard for her dolls.
Ellsworth’s paternal grandmother died when Ellsworth was simply 7 years previous however had an infinite impression. She was a clothier whose inherited supplies and instruments led to years of designing, pattern-making and stitching doll clothes. Ellsworth witnessed the Soviet Union’s collapse and through the years afterward, tales her grandparents had advised about their lives earlier than the large change gained added which means and nuance.
“Maybe that’s why I like stories that are about life’s irony. We might think we have control of something … and then, a historic miscalculation or miscommunication, or even something simple like a string caught in a rake can change a life.”
In “Bound,” a string entangled in a rake brings the younger couple again from disharmony after a easy error and misguided assumptions threaten to disrupt their budding romance. In comparable methods, Ellsworth’s preliminary profession aspiration was abruptly pulled astray by a single dialog.
“I planned to study to be an architect in college. My dad had a serious discussion with me about being a woman architect in Ukraine at that time. He said it would not be good. So I randomly picked computer science. When I transferred in 2002 from college in Ukraine to Brigham Young University, he wasn’t there to stop me, so I double-majored in computer science and visual arts. I discovered that a career in computer graphics — animation — naturally brings those two together.”
“It just came out. I love the headset it’s wearing. People have told me they saw it at Disneyland, so I’ll have to go get one.”
That’s, if the busy movie competition season, her full-time job at Pixar and planning for extra unbiased movies permit time for journey and side-excursions. In the meantime, she enjoys spending uncommon, stay-home downtime in Alameda.
“It has parks and well-established trees with roots that break up the sidewalks the remind me of Ukraine. I love being able to open the door and go for very long walks. Everything you need is here on the Island.”
Sooner or later, Ellsworth will pursue making longer, extra elaborate movies; maybe growing backstories for the 2 characters in “Bound.” Each fascinated and fearful about AI’s impression on filmmaking, she expects to discover the technical challenges, advantages and doable pitfalls of know-how she say is not merely on the horizon however ever-present.
“AI’s interesting to me, but scary. What will it make easier? What jobs might be eliminated? Outside of that, I’d love to create short stories about that ‘Bound’ couple, but also extended stories rooted in Ukraine’s rich material: its history, traditions, folk stories and adventure stories, like about the freedom fighters from medieval times.”
To be taught extra, go to masha-makes-movies.com on-line.
