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Tickets are available through the American Cinematheque website.
Shadows of Forgotten Ancestors
Ukraine, 1965
Sergei Parajanov’s global breakthrough — a film that galvanized a new generation of filmmakers not only in Ukraine but throughout the Eastern Bloc — remains a potent blend of bravura filmmaking and spellbinding folklore. Parajanov adapts Mykhailo Kotsiubynsky’s 1911 novel about a snow-bound Romeo and Juliet tragedy among the Hutsul people of western Ukraine. But in Parajanov’s hands, this ageless story becomes a transcendental cinematic experience infused with poetry, song, dance and paganist folklore. Shot in the rugged Carpathian region by Yuri Ilyenko, the film is rightly renowned for the delirious abandon of its cinematography. “A tale of blood feuds, sorcery, and star-crossed love — that’s not so much lyric as lysergic ... overwhelmingly beautiful.”—J. Hoberman.
DCP, color, in Ukrainian with English subtitles, 96 min. Director: Sergei Parajanov. Screenwriter: Sergei Parajanov, Ivan Chendej. With: Ivan Mykolaichuk, Larisa Kadochnikova, Tatyana Bestayeva.
Restored by The Film Foundation’s World Cinema Project and Cineteca di Bologna at L’Immagine Ritrovata laboratory, in association with the Dovzhenko Film Studio and in collaboration with the Oleksandr Dovzhenko National Centre. Special thanks to Olena Honcharuk and Daniel Bird. Funding provided by the Hobson/Lucas Family Foundation.
