A perfect example of a film that tells a somewhat dull story, but makes up for it with ballsy, experimental (and perfectly executed) cinematography.

I couldn't have cared less about the story, honestly. The acting was serviceable, effectively moving the plot along complete with some throwback silent film-style acting.

But back to the main attraction - the cinematography. Yuri Ilyenko and Parajanov nail it over and over again. From the beginning with the camera dropped from a tree crushing a man to the camera tracking the young boy trudging down the birch tree thick, snow covered hills.

The man striking the camera lens, blood rushing across the frame and morphing into blood red horses galloping overhead.

The zoopraxiscope-style images shrouded…

The Soviet films of that era — and not just mine — are like a cardiogram of terror. They are cardiograms of fear. The fear of losing your film, the fear of starving. You feared for your work.

When Sergei Parajanov abandoned his fear, he left behind both Soviet realism and security; his every subsequent act — both personal and artistic — was one of defiance, and one the Soviet government was determined to punish.

Both artistically independent and bisexual, Parajanov was twice a target for the great forces of conformity, offenses for which he spend nearly five years in a work camp and nine months in prison. Before those enforced breaks from his career and the subsequent denials and…

Widely considered the most important film in the history of Ukranian cinema, Sergei Parajanov’s Shadows of Our Forgotten Ancestors is a masterwork that boldly combines folkloric pageantry, fairy tale mysticism, and frenetic, hallucinatory cinematography. Adapted from Mykhailo Kotsiubynsky’s novel, Shadows tells the story of Ivan (Ivan Mykolaichuk), a young Hutsul peasant who witnesses his father’s murder by the local miser. Years later, Ivan falls in love with the miser’s daughter, Marichka (Larisa Kadochnikova), but her shocking death leaves him wallowing in grief until he meets Palahna (Tatyana Bestayeva), a beautiful woman who seems to restore his faith in life and hope for the future. When the ghost of Marichka begins to haunt Ivan, however, Palahna is driven into the arms…

Terra is its own language beyond language, beyond our imaginary schema, eruptive with its own mana, and all geist is its expression. It encapsulates all time fore and aft, harbours all birth and death, and our countless unions in its midst are at once a wedding and a wake.

This is not a fairytale. Ivan and Marichka are purely terran archetypes, formed of clay, the dance of civilization all around them an ordered chaos of colour and ritual. There isn't really a 'story' here so much as an expression of a grander narrative inscribed within a fabric as ancient as time itself.

How exactly this was accomplished in 1965 I'll never know. Parajanov's cinema is surely the greatest of all…

How can one begin to describe something so beautiful and fantastical. Sergei Parajanov established what only a few filmmakers ever were able to do and that is to invent their own cinematic language, untested and un-replicated by anyone else at that time. Despite the story, the film marvels in Parajanov's one of a kind aesthetic. His frenetic lens that is constantly moving as well as his and Yuri Ilyenko's experimental cinematography that often reacts according to movements in the scenarios. Most of all however is Parajanov's use of color and the radiance that his rich and vibrant visuals elicit. He is a man of lavish tastes and he holds no bounds in seeking out the most delicate and detailed sets,…

There's excellent employment of colour to exemplify the mood within specific scenes in this mesmerising work from Sergei Parajanov, which frequently gets neglected in light of all the praise heaped on his classic The Colour of Pomegranates. 

Set in Ukraine within a small Hutsul village in the Carpathian mountains, Paradjanov conducts the film to examine the ethnic group culture of the Hutsul people and to champion their history as it follows the tribulations of a young man who becomes committed to his childhood sweetheart; who also happens to be the daughter of the one responsible for his father's death. 

A mood of other-worldliness permeates the story, formulated through a whole variety of diverse effects from particular angles to a frequent…

Not to be dramatic but it’s one of the most beautiful films ever. An avant-folk dirge that contains all of Earthly life within it, a solar deity incantation metastasized into a rustic-pastoral drone. Its mysticism towards seasonal/cyclical change is only spiritual insofar as spirit is contained already within matter, dirt, soil, history. Similarly, as a magical realist parable or gnostic/syncretic fable, we see that paganism is inextricable from Christian culture, superstition, decorum, clothing, habit. Every Orthodox ritual is a callback (conscious or not) to a heathen past. A radical shift in perspective; the landscape is defamiliarized through anarchic camera technique so as to approximate the way the land would have been perceived by the characters in their respective time and…

English Version below

Winter
Schnee
Bäume
Junge
Bruder
Niedergeschlagen der Eine
Lebend der andere
Beiwohnend das Begräbnis
Unter Trunkenbolden

Der Winter gewichen
Der Schnee geschmolzen
Die Bäume bleibend
Gras sich emporreckend
Der Junge
Das Mädchen
Zwei sich findend

Aus Zwei mach Eins
Geteilte Leben im Bündnis
Zweier gefundenen Seelen
Des Einen Weges und des Anderen Ablebens

Hier der Schnitt
Die runterfallende Barriere
Bilder sie ersetzend
Fahrende wie kreisende
Stehende ebenso

Aus Bildern Worte formend
Eines größeren Inhaltes
Sie verewigt Sergei Parajanov
Meiner Erkenntnis mit ihm
Ein Regisseur der bildenden Sprache
Hier auch singend in allen Facetten
Trötend die Trompeten
Das Ohr verzückend der Chor
Das Ende der Abschluss
Bilder wie Töne und Töne wie Bilder

Die Story um eine Familien-Fede…