‘An Aquarium in the Sea’ film screening in Chicago

The film ‘An Aquarium in the Sea. The Story of New York Group of Poets’ is a portrait of a unique group of poets who immigrated to the US in 1950s, and in the midst of an English-speaking world attempted to not only preserve their Ukrainian culture, but raise it to world literary standards. 

‘Already in the 50s our literature was well known in New York - the capital of the world having emerged along with Beats and other literary phenomena. Why haven’t we known this before? Or maybe we didn’t want to know,’ said Oleksandr Fraze-Frazenko, film director. Fraze-Frazenko is a Ukrainian film director, poet, translator, musician and co-founder of OFF Laboratory Production Studio. Fraze-Frazenko is known for his documentaries about Ukrainian artists. He has spent his entire life in Lviv, Ukraine.

In the mid 20th century, with the emergence of the Soviet Union, the Ukrainian cultural elite was faced with a tough choice: to escape and preserve their national identity or remain and assimilate into the Soviet space in physical or metaphysical exile. New The York Group poets are children of Ukrainian refugees who were placed in displaced persons camps across Europe during and after WW!!. Raised to appreciated the achievements of Western civilization, these poets have cultivated Ukrainian modernistic poetry, which brought Ukrainian literature onto the world stage. Yet in Ukraine, they are still relatively unknown.

‘An Aquarium in the Sea. The Story of New York Group of Poets’ examines a unique literary phenomenon, introduces Ukraine’s literary achievements to the world and edifies Ukrainians everywhere by deepening their appreciation of their robust literary heritage.