Serge Krutsenko
Serge (Serhiy) Krutsenko, 26 December, 1967 – 7 January, 2023
The director of the film “The Address On The Wall” Serge (Serhiy) Krutsenko is no longer among us. He left this world on 7 January 2023, and he has remained in our memories as a multi-instrumental performer, a composer, a music producer, a film producer, and a specialist in 3D (stereo) shooting.
He worked with almost all Ukrainian top music stars as a music producer. Some of the albums he produced for musicians became the official Golden Disc albums in Ukraine. He was honoured a Golden Era award for the best television film music of the year. He produced several feature films as a general producer.
Serge Krutsenko was a producer and a composer of the unique international project “The Way Of Columbus” (documentary series about a team of people crossing the Atlantics with 40 days of no food and 14 days of no water act). The film was narrated by “the world-famous Columbus”, Gerard Depardieu. This film won the Grand Prix at the international film festival “Kinoletopis” and a number of awards at other international festivals.
Serge founded the First Recording studio which would record acoustic ensembles for the film and audiophiles’ releases (large symphony orchestra – up to 120 people; the choir – up to 100 people) in the Surround sound format up to 9.4.2 DSD with three mixing versions (digital, analogue-transformed, tube).
Serge Krutsenko also made a significant cultural input in the cinema and music production of the country when he became an advisor to the Minister of Culture of Ukraine (2004-2006). He was one of developers of the documentation to enter Eurimage. He also was an active participant and a developer of the Ukrainian copyright law of 1991.
He had a large number of films as a composer. He managed to compose the music for 7-8 films per year for the leading channels of Ukraine and CIS countries (the majority of the music compositions were made with the large symphony orchestra). Some of those films became the winners of the Nika Award (the film festival of Baltic and CIS countries).
Serge was a music producer and a composer of the animation film “Dragon Spell” which was released in 17 countries all over the world. He was one of the authors of the musical project “Ukrainian Rhapsodies” which involved participants and famous performers from the USA and Ukraine. Serge Krutsenko was one of producers of the national film distribution association “Look Ukrainian – Build Your Future”.
He debuted as a film director in 2021 in the film “The Address On The Wall”. This motion picture is a unique combination of his talents and inspiration. It is a research of the phenomenon of the destruction of a person by another person. “The Address On The Wall” is a question to all humans about how TO BE and how to stop this destruction.
Serge Krutsenko filmed “The Address On The Wall” as a docudrama parable which is an artistic study of human nature. The film researches the reasons of a sudden change which turns a doctor or a builder, a musician or an actor, into a murderer, a fascist capable to kill another human being. How can one person murder its own kind only for the racial differences? This is what happened in Babyn Yar in Kyiv in 1941. The film became a core of the International Humanistic Project “The Address On The Wall”…
Nevertheless, things dramatically changed on 24 February, 2022, when Russia attacked Ukraine. Serge Krutsenko found himself trapped by a war in his own city, trying to save his children while looking after his 82-year-old mother. The Russian missiles’ fragments started to fall down in Babyn Yar and other historical locations used in the film, killing and maiming people… The history repeats itself. The war and fascism did not go anywhere… they were hiding in humans’ hearts for a while ready to attack again. Serge managed to take his daughter and his son out of the war zone to Germany, but he had to return back to Kyiv to look after his old mum and his wife’s parents who refused to leave their homes. He stayed in Kyiv threatened by the missile and bomb attacks, as well as by a possible explosion at the Chornobyl nuclear station captured by the Russian troops… “While making a film about the Babyn Yar tragedy, I could imagine anything, but I’d never have thought that my children would be saved by an old German couple while the Russian army was attacking Ukraine. The world has turned upside down!”, Serge told his colleagues, adding “It’s unfortunate that the film “The Address On the Wall” has such a relevance to the modern reality!”
Worrying about his native Ukraine in these hard times, he suffered greatly and at the same time, he believed in his country’s victory, as he believed in the victory of love over hatred. In Serge’s memory, the project has been continued, while he can observe its development from another dimension…