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CHEKAN OLENA <!-- Chekan Olena 26 April 1946 – 21 December 2013 Kyiv, Ukraine

Elena Vasilevna Chekan (Ukrainian Olena Vasilivna Chekan; born on 26 April 1946 – died on 21 December 2013, Kyiv, Ukraine) is a Soviet and Ukrainian film actress, script writer and journalist. Olena Chekan was born on 26 April 1946 in Kyiv. She descends from the Chekan family of Ruthenians from Carpathian Ukraine. Olena is a niece of an archpriest Alexander Ionavich Chekan, who was a dean of a St. Alexander Nevsky Cathedral in Paris and a husband of Maria, daughter of a Head of a Russian All-Military Union of the White Movement of the General Eugene Karlovich Miller. Olena is a sister of a prominent Polish theoretical nuclear physics scientist Jerzy Bogdanović who participated in the scientific activities of the Large Hadron Collider project in CERN that was nominated for the Nobel Prize. In 1972 Olena graduated from the Boris Shchukin Theater Institute in Moscow. She worked as an actress at the Dramatic Theater on Malaya Bronnaya Street (Moscow), at the Alexander Pushkin Theatre (Moscow), at the Studio Theatre of a Film actor of the Olexander Dovzhenko Film Studios (Kyiv), at the Studio Theatre “Suzirya” (“Constellation”) in Kyiv. She also worked on Ukrainian TV, at the Broadcasting Company 1+1 Studio as a creative editor of the “Document” project. Olena worked at the “Ukrainian Tyzhden’” (“Ukrainian Week”) magazine as a journalist and assistant of editor-in-chief since the day of the magazine’s foundation in 2007. Olena worked as an actress in many films in 1980-1990s including “The Bothersome Man”, “Family Circle”, “Women Joke In Good Earnest”, “To The Whizz Of Bullets”, “The Rooks”, “Secrets Of Saint George”, “Three Shells Of An English Rifle”, “Haunted By Ghosts”, “Life Bridge”, “Premiere In Sosnovka”, “Approaching Future”, “By Your Side”, “Start The Investigation” (Second Film, “Smear”), “Gypsy Aza”, “Blue Rose”, “Sinner”, “How Men Were Talking About Women”, “Captive of Château d’If”, “Storm Warning”, “Road Through The Ruins”, “I Want To Make A Confession”, “Vehement”, “Doping For Angels”, “Niagara” and others. Olena’s first role in cinema was in Andrei Tarkovsky’s film “Solaris”. She was a popular and well known actress in the middle of 1980s and she had more than 50 works in cinema including lead roles and secondary roles as well. Olena also worked on more than 30 theater projects performing both leading and secondary roles. Olena Chekan is a member of a Filmmaking Union of USSR and Ukraine and a member of a Union of Theater Workers of USSR and Ukraine. Olena Chekan is also known as a screen writer and performer in several one-man performances dedicated to the creative work of Taras Shevchenko, Lesya Ukrainka, Vasyl Stus, Marina Tsvetaeva, Osip Mandelstam, Mikhail Bulgakov, Anna Akhmatova, Maximilian Voloshin, Alexander Blok, Boris Pasternak, Joseph Brodsky, Antoine de Saint-Exupéry, Federico García Lorca, with the beautiful and amazing musical illustrations (fragments of compositions of Bach, Vivaldi, Haydn, Mozart, Chopin). Her numerous performances were always met with amusement, full house and waiting for the next ones and could be seen on the stage of Cinema House, Central House of Artists, Actors’ House, Studio Theater “Constellation”, in the Memorial House of Marina Tsvetaeva in Moscow, in Ukrainian Cultural Centers in Moscow and Saint Petersburg, in Literature Memorial House of Mikhail Bulgakov in Kyiv, in Memorial House of Maximilian Voloshin in Koktebel, in Memorial House of Alexander Grin in Old Crimea. The 73rd season of the Scientists’ Club of Academy of Sciences of Ukraine in Kyiv was opened with her musical evenings and poetry parties. Olena Chekan performed as a member of an artistic group of USSR State Film actors’ group in her one-man-performances in front of the soldiers in Kabul and Bagram in Afghanistan in 1981-1982. She was awarded with the memorial sign of the USSR Border Forces “For Merit to the Fatherland”. Olena Chekan recited poetry together with the famous Ukrainian poet Lina Kostenko in front of the fire fighters and Armed Forces personnel during the elimination of emergency at the burning Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plant in 1986. She also reported from Grozny as an independent and freelance journalist of “Radio Liberty” during the First Chechen War in 1994-1996. She was also an author, moderator and presenter of the TV-program “Moments of Eternity” on “Inter” TV Channel in 2000 and a creative editor of the “Document” TV-program produced by Broadcast Studio 1+1. Olena Chekan wrote together with Yuriy Makarov as a co-author a screenplay for the 4 parts documentary movie “My Shevchenko” which was the project of 1+1 Channel. The “My Shevchenko” film made in cooperation with Yuriy Makarov was nominated for Shevchenko Prize in 2002. She was also an author of an idea and a co-author of a screenplay of the documentary movie “Ivan Mazepa: Love. Greatness. Treachery” (2005, directed by Yuriy Makarov, project of 1+1 TV-Channel). Olena Chekan is a columnist and a journalist de premier plan of the “Ukrainian Week” (“Ukrainian Tyzhden”, weekly illustrated social and political Ukrainian magazine), where she worked since the founding of the magazine in 2007 as an assistant of an editor-in-chief Yuriy Makarov. In spring 2012 Olena was diagnosed with the fourth stage brain cancer. Her family, her relatives, her friends and everybody who loved and appreciated this beautiful and incredible person were fighting for her life, supporting her in her battle with disease. The entire country was with her at these hard and sad times. Olena Vasilivna underwent three serious surgeries, while the latest one, gamma knife, was carried out in Prague, at the Na Homolce Hospital, with support of the Prague team of “Radio Liberty”. Yuriy Shevchuk, front-man of a popular rock band “DDT”, dedicated to her his solo concerts during his tour with the program “Otherwise” on the 5th June 2013 in Kyiv and on the 19th September 2013 in Odessa. He addressed to the audience calling to support Olena and to help her and her family to raise money for the next chemotherapy. Olena died after the long fight with the disease on 21st December 2013. She had glioblastoma (brain cancer). She died at the beginning of the first clashes on Euromaidan marking democratic changes in Ukraine.

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