The Well for the Thirsty, Unreleased for 22 Years, and Ukraine’s “Poetic Cinema”

In 1964, at the Oleksandr Dovzhenko Film Studio in Kyiv, director Serhii Paradzhanov made Shadows of Forgotten Ancestors (Тіні забутих предків) — a film known in Japan under the title The Fiery Horse. Its relationship to the original novel is covered in our article on Kotsiubynsky’s Shadows of Forgotten Ancestors.

The entry “Cinematic Art” (Кіномистецтво) in the Encyclopedia of Modern Ukraine (ЄСУ), written by Serhii Trymbach, states that this film began a new wave in Ukrainian cinema, and that this wave came to be called “poetic cinema” (поетичне кіно). What follows covers the works that came after Paradzhanov and the paths they took. It does not cover the history of Ukrainian cinema as a whole.

The Name “Poetic Cinema”

Who Coined It?

The ЄСУ entry uses the passive voice, saying the wave “came to be called” this, without recording who coined it. The English-language Internet Encyclopedia of Ukraine (IEU, from the Canadian Institute of Ukrainian Studies), in its entry “Film” (first published 1984), lists 1960s works without using this term at all. The same encyclopedia’s entry on Leonid Osyka, however, calls his The Stone Cross a “poetic cinema” adaptation.

On the origin of the term, a 2016 paper by Larysa Naumova in Народна творчість та етнологія (Folk Art and Ethnology), the journal of the National Academy of Sciences of Ukraine’s institute of ethnology, makes the following points.

• In 1927, Viktor Shklovsky wrote, in his essay “Poetry and Prose in Cinema” in the collection Poetics of Cinema, that “there is prosaic cinema and poetic cinema.”
• After that, the terms “poetic” and “prosaic” began appearing in writing on film theory without a clear definition, with “poetic cinema” in particular becoming widespread.
• The philosopher Serhii Proleiev views the term as having emerged within Soviet film criticism, and as having been a convenient, “ideologically neutral” label at a time when suggesting an artistic choice lying outside socialist realism could invite ideological condemnation.

By this paper’s account, the term was not coined at a single stroke by one critic, but became fixed through use within Soviet film criticism. The sources cited here do not establish when or by whom it was first applied to the body of Ukrainian work from the 1960s.

“Poetic Cinema,” “the Poetic Wave,” “the Banned School”

There is also more than one way to refer to it. The state’s online Great Ukrainian Encyclopedia has an entry titled “Ukrainian Poetic Cinema” (Українське поетичне кіно), which it defines as a 1960s movement foregrounding visual expressiveness and surrealist and ethnographic themes. The 1989 book by film historian Larysa Briukhovetska, listed in IEU’s bibliography, is titled The Poetic Wave of Ukrainian Cinema; the 2001 collection cited in Naumova’s paper is titled Poetic Cinema: The Banned School.

Main Works, and Years That Do Not Agree

For some works, the production year given by an encyclopedia and by the archive holding the film differ by a year or two. The table below does not settle on a single year, but lists what each source gives. The Dovzhenko Centre is Ukraine’s national film archive, in Kyiv, which presents each of these films in its own “Top 100 Ukrainian Films” (see our article on the Dovzhenko Centre).

Was The White Bird Marked With Black Banned?

The White Bird Marked With Black is where sources most clearly diverge. ЄСУ’s entry on Illienko (written by Larysa Briukhovetska, 2011) describes the film as “banned,” while also listing the Golden Prize at the Moscow International Film Festival and an award at a festival in Tehran. The Dovzhenko Centre’s own description states that the film made it to the Moscow festival in time to win the Golden Prize, and that this was Illienko’s “one certain victory” over Soviet censorship before perestroika. These two sources alone do not settle for what period, or over what scope, its screening was restricted.

What These Films Portrayed

ЄСУ’s Trymbach explains that while the protagonist of a socialist-realist film moves from “darkness” and “silence” toward “light” and “words,” in the films of Paradzhanov and those who followed him, Illienko and Osyka, the protagonist instead returns to a wordless world. In Trymbach’s reading, poetic cinema features many mute, blind, or mad characters.

• The Well for the Thirsty: written by the poet Ivan Drach. An old man, Levko, abandoned by his family, tends the village well while preparing for death. According to the Centre, it was the last role for its lead, Dmytro Miliutenko. ЄСУ describes it as depicting a village disappearing, swallowed by sand.
• The Eve of Ivan Kupalo: based on Gogol’s story of the same title. According to the Centre, the crew painted cows and hillsides for filming, and the area near the filming location, the village of Buchak, was later submerged beneath the Kaniv Reservoir (on the reservoir, see our article on the Dnipro’s six dams).
• The Stone Cross: based on Vasyl Stefanyk’s short stories “The Stone Cross” and “The Thief,” written by Drach. It portrays the eve of a Galician peasant, Ivan Didukh, emigrating abroad (Centre).
• The White Bird Marked With Black: written by Illienko and Ivan Mykolaichuk. It portrays a family in a Hutsul village near the Romanian and Polish borders from 1937 onward (Centre).

Another feature is that many of these films are based on literary works. Illienko later also made The Forest Song. Mavka, a film of Lesia Ukrainka’s play (ЄСУ gives 1978, IEU 1980). The play itself is covered in our article on Lesia Ukrainka and The Forest Song.

Films Left on the Shelf

The Dovzhenko Centre states that after a studio screening, The Well for the Thirsty was found to contain an “ideological deviation” and was shelved for 22 years. The State Film Committee decision the Centre cites reads: “Due to director Yurii Illienko’s inexperience, the film The Well for the Thirsty came to contain an ideological deviation; as a result, the film was not released, and the 268,000-ruble cost was written off as a loss.” Shot in 1965, the film was not released until 1987.

IEU’s entry “Film” likewise states that The Well for the Thirsty and The Eve of Ivan Kupalo had their distribution banned by censors. The same entry cites the fact that, after Dovzhenko’s death, films based on his scripts were made in Moscow rather than in Ukraine, as evidence of the Russification of Ukrainian cinema in the 1960s.

The 1973 Arrest and the 1974 Decision

According to IEU, Paradzhanov came under pressure in 1965–1968 for writing letters protesting the unjust arrests of intellectuals, and was himself arrested in 1973. He was released in 1977 following pressure from abroad.

ЄСУ’s Trymbach writes that at a 1974 plenum of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of Ukraine, Ukrainian poetic cinema was officially banned on the grounds of “ethnographism” (meaning “nationalism”) and excessive formal experimentation. Trymbach’s account holds that, together with Paradzhanov’s arrest and a change of leadership at the State Film Committee and the studios, a “pause” then fell over Ukrainian cinema. The Centre presents 1979’s Babylon XX as a work made nearly 15 years after the poetic wave was suppressed.

The Filmmakers

• Yurii Illienko (Юрій Іллєнко): ЄСУ gives two dates side by side, “born May 9, 1936 in Cherkasy; per his passport, July 18, 1936 in Dnipropetrovsk,” while IEU gives July 18, 1936, in Cherkasy. Died June 15, 2010. He served as cinematographer on Shadows of Forgotten Ancestors.
• Leonid Osyka (Леонід Осика): born March 8, 1940 in Kyiv, died September 16, 2001 in Kyiv (IEU, ЄСУ).
• Ivan Mykolaichuk (Іван Миколайчук): born June 15, 1941 in Chortoryia, Bukovyna, died August 3, 1987 in Kyiv (IEU). He played the protagonist Ivan in Shadows of Forgotten Ancestors and later also worked as a director.
• Ivan Drach (Іван Драч): a poet. He wrote the screenplays for The Well for the Thirsty and The Stone Cross (Centre).