On the Cusp: Ivan Levynskyi and Building the City of Lions

A lecture and documentary film screening by Peter Straton Bejger, filmmaker, editor, and writer

Moderated by Serhiy Bilenky, HUSI Program Director at HURI, Research Associate at the Canadian Institute of Ukrainian Studies (CIUS), University of Alberta, and Editor-In-Chief of East/West: Journal of Ukrainian Studies

About the Lecture

The documentary On the Cusp: Ivan Levynskyi and Building the City of Lions profiles a legendary crossroads of East Central Europe now called Lviv. Dubbed “the City of Lions” in honor of its medieval founder, and known variously in history as Leopolis, Lemberg, Lwów, or Lvov, the city became an important center of Secession art and architecture before 1914 when it was the capital of the Habsburg crown land of Galicia and Lodomeria in the Austro-Hungarian Empire. The architect/builder Ivan Levynskyi was a fundamental actor during that era in creating a Lviv that was aesthetically captivating and culturally significant. Levynskyi’s work helped to shape an urban model of elegant density, propinquity, and architectural heterogeneity, a vibrant metropolis reflecting a complex multicultural framework. 

Levynskyi, a professor at the city’s Polytechnic, was a Ukrainian by birth and at the center of a cosmopolitan professional milieu—training and collaborating with a generation of Polish architects commissioned for projects by Austro-German or Jewish clients and navigating through a sociopolitical arena contested by competing emerging nationalisms. This “city symphony” film, accompanied by a lecture and discussion, traces a remarkable life and legacy that ended tragically during the violent aftermath of the First World War and offers not only compelling visuals of Lviv’s splendid architectural heritage, but also provocative reflections by city residents, scholars, and other observers on memory, identity, and the politics of place-making.

About the Speaker

Peter Straton Bejger is a filmmaker, editor, and writer based in San Francisco. He was a U.S. Fulbright Research Scholar in Lviv, Ukraine in 2017-18, hosted by the Center for Urban History of East Central Europe and the Lviv Polytechnic National University, where he created the architectural history documentary On the Cusp: Ivan Levynskyi and Building the City of Lions. He has been a frequent international observer of Ukrainian presidential and parliamentary elections for the Organization for Security and Cooperation in Europe and also worked for several years as a journalist and media relations consultant in Kyiv. Previously, he was a commissioning editor for the publishers HarperCollins, Henry Holt, and New Republic Books in New York. 
 

This event is organized by Harvard's Ukrainian Research Institute (HURI) as part of the Harvard Ukrainian Summer Institute (HUSI) Public Lecture Series.

Persons with disabilities who wish to request accommodations or who have questions about access should contact HURI Programs Manager, Megan K. Duncan Smith, at least two weeks in advance of the session.

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