Mykhailo Manulyak in the program “Svitlyky”

Lviv television, 1996. The programme "Pictures", hosted and directed by Sofia Kokhmat.

The guest of the programme is Mykhailo Manuliak. He looks at family photographs and talks about his family, childhood, the influence of Stanislav Liudkevych, his life and work.

Reference: Mykhailo Manuliak is a Ukrainian composer, arranger, performer, founder and first director of the VIA Vatra. Born in Lviv, he worked at the Minsk and Lviv Philharmonic. In 1971, he founded the Vatra ensemble. The repertoire consisted almost entirely of Ukrainian-language songs. A large part of the ensemble's repertoire was composed by Mykhailo Manuliak.

After a tour of almost the entire USSR in 1971, the KGB drew attention to Mykhailo Manuliak as a "dangerous enemy of the regime". After Mykhailo Manuliak refused to cooperate with the authorities and make concessions, he was removed from the leadership of VIA Vatra and fired from the Philharmonic.

In the 1980s and 1990s, he mainly wrote music for theatre. In 1990, Mykhailo Manuliak, together with composer Roman Khabal, created the first Ukrainian children's rock opera, The Magic Sabre.

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