SOFIA YABLONSKA WAS A WRITER, JOURNALIST, CINEMATOGRAPHER, PHOTOGRAPHER, AND THE FIRST UKRAINIAN WOMEN TO TRAVEL AROUND THE WORLD AND WRITE ABOUT HER JOURNEY.
Doctor of philological sciences, professor of the Ivan Franko National University of Lviv and Warsaw University, visiting professor of the Ukrainian Catholic University. Member of the Ukrainian PEN.
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MY READY SUITECASES WERE AMICABLY LEANING AGAINST THE WALL, NEAR THE DOOR. I RECONCILE THE MISCALCULATIONS OF THE HEART WITH THE OLD YEAR AND WITH THE WHOLE PAST. “I HAVE” – NOTHING. “BLAME” – NO ONE!
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The text that the photos are colored by artificial intelligence and do not claim to be true. The photo coloring was made by the cultural startup Ukraine in Color.
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Born on May 15 in Hermaniv (now Tarasivka), near Lviv, Sofia Yablonska, affectionately called Zoika in her childhood, was the youngest of five children in the family of Ivan Yablonsky, a Greek Catholic priest. She spent her childhood in the village of Yalynkuvate in the Carpathians, where her father had a parish.
Sofia takes the entrance exam for the first year of the teacher’s seminary, but doesn’t remain long. At that time, she also attended a one-year course in commercial activities for women at the National Commercial Academy in Lviv (Panstwowa Akademia Handlu we Lwowie) and studied at the Drama School in Lviv (part of the Conservatory of the Polish Music Society). In 1926, she received a response from the Louis Paglieri School of Cinematic Arts in Paris, outlining the financial and organizational conditions for her studies.
Back then, Sofia met Olena Kysilevska, a prominent leader of the women’s movement in Galicia, who played an important role in Sofia’s later publishing efforts. They were friends for years, and Sofia’s texts were published in the magazines edited by Olena Kysilevska.
Moves to Paris to study acting. She met and became friends with artists, particularly those from the Groupe du Pré-Saint-Gervais – Christian Сaillard, Irène Champigny, Eugène Dabit, Béatrice Appia etc and Alain Grandbois . The archive contains her correspondence with these artists. She also maintains close relationships with Ukrainians living in Paris, in particular with Roman Turin, Stepan Levinsky, and Volodymyr Vynnychenko.
Travels on a three-month trip to Morocco, realizing a passion for travel and literature. Collects savings for a film camera with the help of family business, with the goal of filming advertising footage in the French colonies.
Sofia sets out on her dream trip around the world, and to be able to financially support herself, signs a contract with the Yunan Fu Wholesale Company to shoot short documentary narratives. While traveling throughout Asia, settled in China to work on still photography and film projects and the first travelog.
Char Marokko (The Charm of Morocco), Sofia’s first book of travels, is published by Shevchenko Scientific Society (Lviv). Thanks to this book, Sofia became popular and began publishing excerpts from her subsequent travelogs in the Galician press. Mikhail Rudnytsky, a literary critic, became Sofia’s editor and literary agent.
Travels to Australia, Bali, Java, Malaysia, New Zealand, Siam (now Thailand), and Tahiti, where Queen Marao invites Sofia to adopt the Tahitian way and calls her Teura, or “red bird.” Sofia befriends Matai, a resident and main actor in F.W. Murnau’s cult film, Taboo (1931) and French explorer Alain Gerbaud, first to circumnavigate the globe on a sailboat.
Marries Jean-Marie Oudin. The couple lived in China and Vietnam for eleven years. In 1936, she was elected secretary of the International Club of Europeans in Yunnan Province.
Z krayiny ryzhu ta opiyi (From the Land of Rice and Opium), the trevaloq about China, is published in Lviv (Biblioteka Dila).
Sofia visits Galicia for the last time, where she gains popularity from her travel and magazine writings, giving readings and visual presentations from distant travels. Daleki obriyi (Distant Horizons) is published in Lviv (Biblioteka Dila).
Oudin family returned to Europe, settled in Paris. In 1955 The family moved to Noirmoutier, a tidal island in the Atlantic off the coast of France. Sofia takes up practicing architecture, designing their house. In Noirmoutier, Sofia remains engaged in literature, organizing her writings, translating them into French. She’s assisted by Marta Kalytovska, whom Sofia met at the Shevcheko Society building in Sarcelles, outside of Paris. Begins to write her most important work, a memoir about her formative years and family relations, Knyha pro batka. Z moho dytynstva (Book About My Father. From My Childhood), published posthumously in 1977, in France, with the help of Yuriy Stefanyk and Marta Kalytovska.
Dies on February 4 in a car accident while delivering her new short stories and essays, Dvi vahy – dvi miry (Two Weights – Two Measures) to her publisher in Paris.
Sofia visits Galicia for the last time, where she gains popularity from her travel and magazine writings, giving readings and visual presentations from distant travels. Daleki obriyi (Distant Horizons) is published in Lviv (Biblioteka Dila).
Title: She was a friend of someone else
Sofia visits Galicia for the last time, where she gains popularity from her travel and magazine writings, giving readings and visual presentations from distant travels.
Title: She was a friend of someone else
Sofia visits Galicia for the last time, where she gains popularity from her travel and magazine writings, giving readings and visual presentations from distant travels.
Title: She was a friend of someone else
Sofia visits Galicia for the last time, where she gains popularity from her travel and magazine writings, giving readings and visual presentations from distant travels.
Title: She was a friend of someone else
Sofia visits Galicia for the last time, where she gains popularity from her travel and magazine writings, giving readings and visual presentations from distant travels.
Title: She was a friend of someone else
Sofia visits Galicia for the last time, where she gains popularity from her travel and magazine writings, giving readings and visual presentations from distant travels.
Title: She was a friend of someone else
Sofia visits Galicia for the last time, where she gains popularity from her travel and magazine writings, giving readings and visual presentations from distant travels.
Title: She was a friend of someone else
Sofia visits Galicia for the last time, where she gains popularity from her travel and magazine writings, giving readings and visual presentations from distant travels.
Title: She was a friend of someone else
Sofia visits Galicia for the last time, where she gains popularity from her travel and magazine writings, giving readings and visual presentations from distant travels.
Title: She was a friend of someone else
Sofia visits Galicia for the last time, where she gains popularity from her travel and magazine writings, giving readings and visual presentations from distant travels.
Title: She was a friend of someone else
Sofia visits Galicia for the last time, where she gains popularity from her travel and magazine writings, giving readings and visual presentations from distant travels.
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The main goal of the Foundation is to create a digital archive to find, copy, digitize, catalog and make available to researchers a huge unique treasure – the jade – of Ukrainian culture.
Her status as member of a then stateless nation made her especially sensitive to national and social inequality among the communities she described.