The movie is going to be available for viewing for 24 hours starting at 6 p.m. (MSK) on August 29.
Special project musicAeterna and KARO.Art.
“Shadows of Our Forgotten Ancestors”, one of the best works by Sergey Parajanov, continues our collaboration with Karo.Art: the cinematography cycle. The film is going to be available for viewing for 24 hours starting on August 22.
“Shadows of Our Lost Ancestors” was the first film to reveal Parajanov’s unique directing style. Created in 1964 and based on a story by Ukrainian writer Mykhailo Kotsiubynsky, the movie was supposed to become yet another exemplar of social realism with a national flavour — but it did not.
Instead, the Carpathian mountains witnessed the story of the “Hutsul Romeo and Juliet” — Ivan (Ivan Mykolaichuk) and Marichka (Larisa Kadochnikova) from the warring clans of Paliychuks and Gutenyuks. The young couple retains their love even in the face of death.
“Shadows” are ripe with bursts of authentic Hutsul culture — non-overdubbed dialects, music, nature shots — which provide fertile ground for daring stylization by the author. For the first time, Parajanov presents himself as an artist who picks striking, symbolically meaningful colours and treats each shot as a self-sufficient painting. This static motion is interrupted by Yuriy Ilyenko’s lively camera work with its rapid change of angles, distances and rates.
The gem of innovative cinematographic poetry was forged in heated arguments between the director and the videographer, in missed deadlines and breached political conjuncture, in the protest against political censorship and mainstream aesthetics. It is time to give it another look.