KuFC KuleNews | April 2026

Welcome to the Kule Folklore Centre’s monthly mailout, where we share upcoming events, stories, and news to keep you connected and inspired. 

In the April 2026 KuleNews edition:

News and Event Recap:

• April 10 — Annual Bohdan Medwidsky Memorial Lecture — Photos and Recording LINK
• April 10–12 — Ukrainian Film Festival in Alberta (Calgary)
• April 15 — Oleksandr Pankieiev Addresses Russian Propaganda at FIMI Conference in Buenos Aires 
• April 17–19 — Ukrainian Film Festival in Alberta (Edmonton)

Upcoming Events:

• May 29 & 30 — Say hello at UFest Edmonton!

Enjoy!
Kule Folklore Centre (KuFC)

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Kule News and Event Recap

April 10
Annual Bohdan Medwidsky Memorial Lecture, “Between Narratives of Mourning and Humour: Memory and Resilience in Ukraine, 2022–25"

Presented by Dr. Maryna Hrymych, who described the challenges faced by Ukraine from the first day of the full-scale invasion in February 2022. Amid the torrent of textual, photo, and video content there emerged both “one-day” messages and private reflections, as well as posts that became, to varying degrees, folklorized and integrated into the collective narrative, fostering resilience and maintaining a sense of identity.

Hrymych is a writer, folklorist, ethnographer, cultural manager, publisher, and diplomat. She is the author of a biographical monograph on KuFC founder Bohdan Medwidsky in the form of essays on Ukrainian-Canadian folklore studies (2016), as well as the editor of Robert-Bohdan Klymasz’s book Ukrainian Folk Culture in the Canadian Prairies (2013) and author of its afterword. Hrymych has written twenty novels and novellas, and she is the founder (2005) and director of the Duliby Publishing House.

April 10–19
The Ukrainian Film Festival in Alberta

This year, the Ukrainian Film Festival in Alberta (UFFA) showcased a selection of compelling contemporary films about Ukraine in both Edmonton and Calgary. These critically acclaimed films have received international recognition and won numerous awards.

Over two weekends, festival-goers had the opportunity to experience some of the most outstanding works of contemporary Ukrainian cinema. All of the films were united by the theme of the full-scale Russian invasion and stories of people living through it firsthand. The Editorial Office, by Roman Bondarchuk, explores bizarre realities in southern Ukraine, while documentary films such as Viktor by Olivier Sarbil and My Dear Theo by Alisa Kovalenko explore the experience of the Russo-Ukrainian war from the perspective of a deaf person who wants to become a soldier and a young mother who is serving in the army. And a new documentary by the Oscar-winning director Mstyslav Chernov, 2000 Meters to Andriivka, showcases the true horrors of the war and the unimaginable price that Ukrainian defenders are paying for the safety of Ukrainian civilians.

The festival culminated in the screening of the Polish feature film Two Sisters, followed by a Q&A session with its director, Lukasz Karwowski, in Edmonton. The Q&A was moderated by Dominique Kirchner Reill, director of the Wirth Institute for Austrian and Central European Studies at the University of Alberta, and co-moderated by Victoria Popovych, a Ukrainian community activist, and Dmytro Yesypenko, a research assistant and coordinator of the Sustainable Ukrainian Canadian Heritage program at the Kule Folklore Centre. The Q&A sessions in Calgary took place with the president of the Calgary European Film Festival, Maria Serban, and the executive director of the Calgary Justice Film Festival, Rowan Fisher, following the screenings of My Dear Theo and Viktor. Both sessions were moderated by Mariana Sirko, the UFFA coordinator in Calgary.

UFFA-2026 was co-organized by the Alberta Society for the Advancement of Ukrainian Studies, the Peter and Doris Kule Centre for Ukrainian and Canadian Folklore, the Canadian Institute of Ukrainian Studies, and the Wirth Institute for Austrian and Central European Studies—the latter three all at the University of Alberta. The festival was held in partnership with the Ukrainian Resource and Development Centre at MacEwan University and was financially supported by Razom for Ukraine and the Alberta Ukrainian Commemorative Society. 

Festival-goers in Edmonton also had the opportunity to see the travelling photo exhibit “Ukraine: War and Resistance,” initiated by Fulbright Ukraine and the Institute of International Education (IIE) Kyiv Office and hosted for the first time in Canada by the Kule Folklore Centre. General design by Marian Luniv and curatorship in Canada by Oleksandr Pankieiev, Dmytro Yesypenko, Andriyka Reisdorf, and Illia Pokotylo.

April 15
Oleksandr Pankieiev Addresses Russian Propaganda at FIMI Conference in Buenos Aires

Dr. Oleksandr Pankieiev, Director of the Kule Folklore Centre and Associate Professor and Kule Chair of Ukrainian Culture and Ethnography in the Department of Modern Languages and Cultural Studies, University of Alberta, was in Buenos Aires presenting at the “International Conference on Information Manipulation and Foreign Interference (FIMI)”, held on April 15.

In his presentations, Dr. Pankieiev emphasized that propaganda should be understood and treated as a “weapon of mass distraction.” While its effects can be difficult to quantify, its consequences are significant—distorting public discourse, shaping public opinion, and leading to real human costs.

Pankieiev’s presentations drew heavily on the 2025 edited volume Narratives of the Russo-Ukrainian War: A Look Within and Without, for which he selected essays and interviews with scholars and experts who analyze the war from multiple perspectives. The book’s Spanish edition, Ecos de Guerra: Perspectivas Académicas sobre la Invasión Rusa a Ucrania, received formal recognition from the Government of the Autonomous City of Buenos Aires for its contribution to the field of social communication. 

During his visit, Dr. Pankieiev was interviewed by Andrea Bonzo for Infobae, sharing insights from his research. In the interview, titled “The ethnographer studying how Ukraine won the meme war against Russia: ‘Propaganda is boring,’” (https://www.infobae.com/america/mundo/2026/04/19/el-etnografo-que-estudia-como-ucrania-le-gano-a-rusia-la-guerra-de-los-memes-la-propaganda-es-aburrida/), Dr. Pankieiev underscored the importance of community-engaged scholarship and ethnography as key strategies for addressing propaganda. Through creative practices and storytelling that are more engaging and diverse than malign propaganda narratives, communities can limit the spread of such narratives and remedy their harms.

From left to right: From left to right: Jonathan Sauvé, Embassy of Canada; Oleksandr Pankieiev, University of Alberta; Jean-Christophe Boucher, University of Calgary; Stewart Wheeler, Ambassador of Canada to the Argentine Republic.

See our full Schedule of Events