Andriesh / The First Lad
- This is a past program
Presented by the UCLA Film & Television Archive.
Part of the UCLA Film & Television Archive screening series Three Homelands: A Sergei Parajanov Retrospective. Learn more at cinema.ucla.edu.
Andriesh (1954)
A young shepherd tasked with protecting his village’s flock meets a passing bogatyr (Slavic knight) and receives a magic flute. But when a nefarious sorcerer hears the instrument’s gleeful tones, he wreaks havoc upon the boy’s village, kidnapping humans and animals alike. Our hero joins forces with the bogatyr and embarks on a fantastic voyage to confront the evil wizard, encountering wondrous creatures and dazzling landscapes along the way. Though co-directed, Sergei Parajanov’s feature debut draws from the same source material as his diploma film (now lost): a poem by Moldovan author Emilian Bukov. Brimming with folkloric detail and practical effects, Andriesh is an enchanting fairy tale deserving rediscovery.
DCP, color, in Russian with English subtitles, 62 min. Director: Sergei Parajanov, Yakov Bazelian. Screenwriters: Emilian Bukov, Grigori Koltunov, Sergei Lialin. With: Kostia Russu, Nodar Shashik-Ogly, Kirill Shtirbu.
The First Lad (1958)
Parajanov’s spirited second feature is a more traditional piece of Socialist cinema, though imbued with the auteur’s charming eccentricities. Soccer and romance clash as a love triangle forms on a collective farm between a mechanic, a Komsomol (All-Union Leninist Young Communist League) secretary and a soldier. Parajanov’s vibrant musical comedy pays tribute to his film studies instructor, Ihor Savchenko, a pioneer of the collective farm comedy genre. Parajanov also infuses this populist entertainment — the biggest commercial success of his career — with folkloric touches. As the director states, “For the first time I discovered for myself the Ukrainian village – discovered its texture of overwhelming beauty, its poetry. And this enchantment of mine I tried to express on the screen.”
DCP, color, in Russian with English subtitles, 85 min. Director: Sergei Parajanov. Screenwriter: Pavel Lubensky, Viktor Bezorudko. With: Hryhorij Karpov, Liudmyla Sosjura, Jurij Satarov.
The UCLA Film & Television Archive is a division of UCLA Library, and presents its public programs in the Billy Wilder Theater at the Hammer, among other venues. For more information about the Archive, visit cinema.ucla.edu.
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