Ukrainian-American storyteller Masha Martynenko Ellsworth’s new short film, “Bound,” is a fresh retelling of a well-known Ukrainian folk song, “Nese Halia Vodu” (“Galya Carries Water”).
The Alameda-based independent filmmaker and lead technical director at Pixar Animation Studios presents a pebble-size animated film in less than four minutes, behind which is an avalanche of Ukraine’s rich history and cultural traditions.
The song’s lyrics tell of young love between Gayla and Ivanko, a farm boy prone to passionate gestures. Universal themes include 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 multiple film festivals. Recently, the simple narrative — told in cross-stitched animation with vocals from soprano Oleksandra Zabashta and baritone Alejandro Andres Danylyszyn — gained visibility as an Oscar-qualifying short film.
That the love story at the heart of “Bound” speaks to audiences worldwide seems inevitable. Also suggestive of one of life’s greatest ironies — that tiny acts or events given time often cause cataclysmic change — the idea springs organically from Ellsworth’s family history but can be found in every era, country and individual life.
During a recent interview, Ellsworth, 42, describes growing up in Chernihiv, a city in northern Ukraine. Chernihiv today has roughly 300,000 residents and an East European atmosphere and design, with numerous parks, educational institutions and cultural activities. Ellsworth says Chernihiv has historically offered a comfortable setting where many people choose to retire after ending hard-driving careers in other 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 disaster 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 came later, upon reflection as an adult. The seaweed salad students were 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 mother, 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 field with a high degree of technical training, who presented another 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 recalls.
Her father often brought home architectural models that Ellsworth was forbidden from playing with. That tweaked her imagination and launched an early passion for constructing furniture out of cardboard for her dolls.
Ellsworth’s paternal grandmother died when Ellsworth was just 7 years old but had an enormous impact. She was a fashion designer whose inherited materials and tools led to years of designing, pattern-making and sewing doll clothing. Ellsworth witnessed the Soviet Union’s collapse and over the years afterward, stories her grandparents had told about their lives before the massive change gained added meaning 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 young couple back from disharmony after a simple error and misguided assumptions threaten to disrupt their budding romance. In similar ways, Ellsworth’s initial career aspiration was abruptly pulled off course by a single conversation.
“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.”
Interning at Pixar upon graduating from BYU in 2007, she first worked on “Ratatouille,” followed by “Cars 2” and “Cars 3.” Recently, she received an email from Pixar’s legal department asking for permission to use her name for a “Cars”-related collectible toy. Ellsworth is not sure why or how her name was selected, but says seeing the funky, bright yellow die-cast vehicle named “Masha Ellswrench” is surreal.
“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 is, if the busy film festival season, her full-time job at Pixar and planning for more independent films allow time for travel and side-excursions. Meanwhile, she enjoys spending rare, 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.”
In the future, Ellsworth will pursue making longer, more elaborate films; perhaps developing backstories for the two characters in “Bound.” Both fascinated and fearful about AI’s impact on filmmaking, she expects to explore the technical challenges, benefits and possible pitfalls of technology she say is no longer simply on the horizon but 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 learn more, visit masha-makes-movies.com online.
Lou Fancher is a freelance writer. Reach her at lou@johnsonandfancher.com.
