Ukrainian Rhapsody / Dumka / Natalya Ushvij
- 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.
Ukrainian Rhapsody (1961)
The paths of a young Ukrainian couple tragically diverge due to the outbreak of the second World War. A conservatory-trained singer, Oksana becomes a wartime nurse while her beau Anton is sent to the frontline and subsequently ends up a fugitive POW. This epic wartime melodrama was Sergei Parajanov’s most ambitious film to date. Largely told in flashbacks, Ukrainian Rhapsody emphasizes the power of music as a balm to the ravages of reality. The film also presents a trope that was explored further in Parajanov’s subsequent Ukrainian works: a pictorial and spiritual connection between the Ukrainian landscape and its people.;
DCP, color, in Russian with English subtitles, 87 min. Director: Sergei Parajanov. Screenwriter: Alexander Levada. With: Olga Reus-Petrenko, Eduard Koshman, Natalia Uzhvy.
Dumka (1958)
A cinematic concert of rousing choral music performed by the State Merited Academic Choir of the Ukrainian Soviet Socialist Republic. Performing a repertoire that combines patriotic hymns, folk songs and virtuoso solos, the film’s music is illustrated by Parajanov through symbolic visualizations, often employing striking friezes and expressive sculpture. “I wanted to convey the world of these songs in all its primitive charm,” Parajanov wrote.
DCP, b&w, in Russian with English subtitles, 26 min. Director: Sergei Parajanov.
Natalya Ushvij (1959)
Parajanov honors the career of actor Natalya Ushvij (she also plays conservatory teacher in Ukrainian Rhapsody) and in the process offers contemporary viewers a robust primer on classic Ukrainian cinema. First seen standing on the banks of the flowing Dnieper, Ushvij’s practice is compared to the river’s waters: “clear and transparent.” In the excerpts from her filmography, we see Ushvij’s as an earthly mother figure, a radiant martyr, and a 17th century royal, among several roles. In present day, she lays flowers on the eternal flame of the Unknown Soldier and takes in ancient treasures at a museum, making evident how her films intertwine with/imprint on the history of Ukraine.
DCP, b&w, in Russian with English subtitles, 35 min. Director: Sergei Parajanov.
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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