September 30, 2022

Film screening:
"The Eve of Ivan Kupala" (1968)
by Yuri Ilyenko

7.45 pm

Petro is a humble peasant worker living in an impoverished village in an unspecified time long past. He is in love with Pidorka, the daughter of his landowner. The feudal lord, however, forbids the young couple to be together. When Petro tries to bury his frustration in a tavern, he meets Basavryuk. The man, who resembles the devil, offers Petro a deal that will help him tie his love to him.

"The Eve of Ivan Kupala" is the second film by director Yuri Ilyenko (1936-2010). It is characterized by a folkloric surrealism, created in part by unusual visual solutions and quick, collage-like cuts. Like his first work, "A Spring for the Thirsty", it was banned from the cinemas of the Soviet Union. The screenplay is based on the story "Village
Evenings Near Dykanka and Myrhorod" by Mykola Gogol, with which Ilyenko artfully interweaves the mythological history of Ukraine described here with the actual, real history of the country: from the time of the Cossacks and the Tatar raids to the so-called "Potemkin villages" and the pilgrimage to the cave monastery in Kyiv.

The film screening is curated by Oleksandr Dovzhenko National Centre in Kyiv.

Feature film, 72 min.
Language: Russian with English subtitles