02
Feb
2018
The 1960s were the time of searching for the new language of visual art: cinema, book design, painting and theatre. Not only on the territory of Ukraine and the USSR, but in the Western countries as well – for a number of reasons, this decade created the environment for re-evaluating the previous approaches to art and introducing dramatic changes to them. The reinterpretation of Mykhailo Kotsiubynskyi’s Shadows of Forgotten Ancestors was such a “dramatic” change for the Ukrainian culture. It was on the basis of this story that the artists made a new product that did not become attractive to masses and widely popular, but it provided an alternative: a way of looking at the things you already know without turning to outdated forms.
A film and a book (as an artistic object) – these two methods of revisiting the classics were offered in the 1960s. The production set of Shadows of Forgotten Ancestors in 1963-1965 was not just the place for making one of the masterpieces of the Ukrainian cinema, it also gathered very talented people of that time: Serhiy Parajanov, Yuriy Illienko, Heorhiy Yakutovych, Ivan Mykolaichuk, Larysa Kadochnykova, Lidiia Baikova and others. The illustration of the book by Yakutovych was a more personal process that initiated the painter’s individual creative search and demonstrated the general striving of graphic artists for a harmonious book design. Anyhow, both phenomena always told us about something bigger: about how artists’ attitude towards the world and culture was changing.
Book illustration may be approached differently. The most common practice is to design only the cover, like a book’s business card. When visual art gets inside a book, an artist faces a lot of additional issues: what structure to choose for the pictures? how to make them consistent with the text and so that they do not overshadow it? what techniques and colours will fit a specific book better? and what in general should be portrayed from the text and what can be left out? All these problems may be “solved” for some time if there is a strong canon established – as it was during the Stalin period with its set of rules for designing a book of almost every genre. However, in the second half of the 1950s and 1960s, graphic artists again started pursuing a “perfect” edition – an ensemble book where a text and its illustrations are harmoniously combined.
Heorhiy Yakutovych put his creative ambitions in the Shadows of Forgotten Ancestors project. Everything about Kotsiubynskyi’s story was appealing: depth of the idea, universality of the topic, description of the local Hutsul culture, poetic character of the language.
Anton Sereda, cover of the book Shadows of Forgotten Ancestors. 1929, State Publishing House of Ukraine, Kyiv
There is a set expression regarding the Shadows of Forgotten Ancestors’ plot that teachers in schools often use: “It is a story of Hutsul Romeo and Juliet”. The main hero is Ivan Paliychuk who as a child met Marichka Hutenyukova, the girl from the hostile family. Despite all the obstacles, the couple decided to stay together, however while Ivan was shepherding up in the mountain valley, Marichka tragically died. Ivan could not put up with his beloved’s death for a long time, but later he returned to the native village and married Palagna. They did not live a happy life: Palagna soon found a lover – molfar Yura, and Ivan saw a mirage in the mountains – Marichka’s spirit – that led him to his own death.
Olena Kulchytska, illustrations from the book Shadows of Forgotten Ancestors. 1929, State Publishing House of Ukraine, Kyiv
However, love was rarely the main storyline in visualizations: the artists, through Shadows of Forgotten Ancestors, turned to Hutsul ethnography and folklore, considered the social aspects of living in a closed society and raised the topic of connection between a human being and the nature.
The Carpathians. 1952, photograph by Heorhiy Yakutovych.
From the Yakutovych’s archive
ГHeorhiy Yakutovych. Drawings from the Carpathian album.
1952, pencil, ink. From the Yakutovych’s archive
Yakutovych had been working on Shadows of Forgotten Ancestors for several decades. It was important for him not to simplify the story’s depth and fall for a decorative value in portraying Hutsul life – and to do this, he needed to feel the atmosphere of both the book and the Carpathians as fully as possible. So Heorhiy produced numerous sketches, illustrations and page layout variations, made his first trip to the Carpathians in 1952 and went back to working on Shadows again and again. At the same time, Yakutovych constantly improved his graphic technique, mastered the woodcut which is a very hard and diligent art to make but it also offers great possibilities of creating the contrast, light and shadows.
Thus, we may use Heorhiy’s search related to Shadows of Forgotten Ancestors to actually study the artist’s and personality development during the first period of his creative activities.
When the Second World War began, the Yakutovych were evacuated to the Russian village Tonkino in Nizhny Novgorod Oblast. They lived there in a doctor’s old farmstead that served as both a hospital and a library.
One time Heorhiy and his elder brother Ihor saw a very old book without a cover. “Ivan was the nineteenth child in the Paliychuk family…”, the book began, but Yakutovych junior was not familiar with this language. The elder brother told him about this story and Heorhiy got hold of his first book in Ukrainian – Shadows of Forgotten Ancestors.
It was this case that marked the beginning of Heorhiy’s admiration for Shadows of Forgotten Ancestors and the Carpathians.
Copy-book with Heorhiy Yakutovych’s drawing.
1940s. From the Yakutovych’s archive
While studying at the Kyiv Art Institute, Heorhiy Yakutovych repeatedly wanted to illustrate Kotsiubynskyi’s story. At first, being a third-year student – as a term paper. You may see his vision of the book at that time on this page. Heorhiy was obviously under a strong impression of Olena Kulchytska’s design of Shadows of 1929 as well as focused a lot on Hutsul ethnography and mythology. Yakutovych already then realized that it was impossible to portray a certain culture without dipping in it, so he wanted to visit the Carpathians. It was complicated due to the fact that the mountains remained a closed territory after the war. However, owing to the connections of his wife’s father, the couple managed to see the Carpathians in 1952. During that time, Yakutovych made a lot of sketches from nature and planned to devote his graduation paper to Shadows. Unfortunately, the institute did not allow him to take this subject, strongly recommending him to choose something from the Russian classics. For this reason, the painter postponed this work for almost a decade.
Георгій Якутович. Макет книги «Тіні забутих предків».
1950, папір, олівець, туш.
З архіву родини Якутовичів
During the 1950s, Yakutovych improved his different graphic techniques, referred to a wide spectrum of creative subjects, received his first professional recognition as well as spent a lot of time in the Carpathians where he got deeper and deeper into Hutsul mode of life. In 1962, Heorhiy felt ready to illustrate Kotsiubynskyi’s story, but he was suddenly invited by Serhiy Parajanov to be the art director of the film Shadows of Forgotten Ancestors. This new experience completely changed Yakutovych’s approach to book design. Why – he would later explain it in his Graphics and Cinema essay:
“On sharpening our skills at first at the art school and then on our own, we often lose the sense of immediate perception and find ourselves helpless when it comes to reality. When getting into cinematography, I was hoping to become “purified” from acquired skills and be able to find a true artistic interpretation where a line, a spot and a form are unified in a manner that renders the music of the nature.”
Heorhiy Yakutovych. Layout of the book Shadows of Forgotten Ancestors.
1950, paper, pencil, ink.
From the Yakutovych’s archive
After the shooting of the film, Yakutovych totally reworked almost all Shadows’ engravings, refused from a lot of plots and added new ones instead. The dynamics of images changed the most as it was the aspect that the painter would focus on after working on the film. The action in illustrations (or its absence) played a greater role now than different decorative elements. Yakutovych gave up stylization for the benefit of the eventful life that he experienced during the shooting and his long stay in the Carpathians.
Fault-finding with himself made Heorhiy waste a lot of boxwood plates which were rather expensive at the time. Hence, Yakutovych had to put aside the illustration of Shadows of Forgotten Ancestors and perform other publishers’ orders – this way the painter had the money for new plates. This process also delayed the book publication for some time, so the work was finished only in 1967.
Heorhiy Yakutovych. Illustration Palagna’s Divination
that was not included in the book and the wooden plate to it.
1965, woodcut / boxwood. From the Yakutovych’s archive
The book Shadows of Forgotten Ancestors illustrated by Yakutovych was published by the Dnipro Publishing House in 1967. It was very clearly structured. First of all, the painter divided the story into four parts, each of them corresponding to the new psychological condition of the main hero Ivan Paliychuk. All parts began with a short half-title and a frontispiece on the left-hand page. These elements’ purpose was to generally convey the atmosphere and the plot of the following text block. The events of the story are depicted on ten general illustrations presented on the right-hand pages. They take a bright image from the text and render it almost cinematographically: a viewer sees like a shot from a film and understands that there is a much wider story behind it.
In addition to systematic illustrations, Yakutovych included another two which actually get a viewer acquainted with the book – the dust cover and the small headpiece that accentuate love as the main storyline. Thus, twenty pictures “narrate” their story both separately and together.
The book Shadows of Forgotten Ancestors made a great impression on Yakutovych’s surroundings and art critics. Interested people found an example of how a harmonious integration of a text and pictures should look like, how skilfully created woodcuts should each tell their story yet form a single narration. The formal perfection and richness in contents are the result of a decade-long search.
It was also important that Heorhiy actually opened the Carpathians for many artist of his time. Every year Yakutovych’s friends from different cities visited Dzembronia village (where the painter had a house) and spent some time there – and then, after coming back to the capital, exhibited their works on the subject of Hutsul life.
In general, when one grand purpose has been reached, other purposes sort of spawn from it. It was the case with Heorhiy as well. After Shadows of Forgotten Ancestors, he shifted onto completely different book forms and became open to experiments. During the first years after the long-awaited publication, the painter thought that Hutsul theme was exhausted, but later it found a new life in other books and series with People of Dzembronia Village being the biggest one.
The film Shadows of Forgotten Ancestors marked two important political milestones of the 1960s: the shooting took place at the end of Khrushchev Thaw and the premiere – during Brezhnev’s ruling. Thus, in the time of unstable ideology, Shadows of Forgotten Ancestors included a lot of codes: original and innovative conceptions of the authors; censorship of the film studio; a confusing opening night and the following perception of the film. It was Shadows that unlocked the creativity of Parajanov as a director, Illienko as an operator, Mykolaichuk, Kadochnykova and Bestayeva as actors, and Yakutovych as an art director. The critics would later refer the motion picture to “poetic cinema” – as opposed to a more (socio-)realistic style that prevailed in the Soviet era. The reason for this was a strong artistic view of the director and the crew that used the methods on the set that were more inherent to the Western tendencies of the French “new wave” or Italian neo-realism rather than to the local practice.
Shadows of Forgotten Ancestors was also surrounded by the myths: there were legends about the filming, authors, actors and locals who acted as extras. The dwellers of Verkhovyna, Kryvorivnia and Dzembronia still remember the unusual personalities of the film creators, and the participants of the shooting themselves have their own versions of what was happening in the Carpathians.
Fragment from the film Shadows of Forgotten Ancestors.
1965, Oleksandr Dovzhenko Film Studio
Photograph from the shooting. First row from left to right: Ivan Hnatyuk, Vasyl Demydyuk, Kateryna Demydyuk, Maria Ilyichuk, Heorhiy Yakutovych, Lyudmyla Kustova. Second row from left to right: Mykola Slyvchuk, Lidiia Baikova, Petro Soryuk, Spartak Bagashvili, Yevdokia Soryuk, Serhiy Parajanov, Dmytro Kharuk, Hanna Laskuriychuk. 1963, the photographer is unknown. From the Yakutovych’s archive
Tetyana Bestayeva as Palagna. Photograph from the shooting, 1963. From the archive of Oleksandr Dovzhenko Film Studio National Museum (Kyiv)
Heorhiy Yakutovych. Sketch of the Palagna scene. 1963, paper, pencil. From the Yakutovych’s archive
The production set of Shadows in the Carpathians became sort of a creative laboratory where people shoulder to shoulder were developing the work of art to be later recognized prominent for the Ukrainian cinema. A film is a purely collective creation where it is hard to definitely emphasize the role of each participant. Shadows of Forgotten Ancestors may serve as a bright example as there are still discussions about: who contributed the most to the visual series – director Parajanov or operator Illienko? who helped actor Mykolaichuk receive the part of Ivan – co-director Luhovskyi or art director Yakutovych?
Each participant of the shooting process showed their character. Thus, one time Illienko and Kadochnykova almost left the Carpathians because of the argument with Parajanov – the operator’s and director’s views on the creative conception were completely different. There were even rumours about their duel. Heorhiy Yakutovych, as his son Serhiy recollected, once also “was going to kill Parajanov”. But the tension of the creative act did not prevent the film’s authors and actors from working together on other movies.
Serhiy Parajanov
Serhiy Parajanov – the director of Shadows of Forgotten Ancestors. He was born into an Armenian antique dealer’s family in Tbilisi in 1924. Before Shadows, he worked at the Dovzhenko Film Studio, however his early films are considered to be failures. Friends and relatives described Parajanov’s character as complex, but his creative approach sought nothing but greatness. Having set the bar high, Parajanov surrounded himself only with people he thought were “geniuses”.
Serhiy demonstrated in Shadows how universal his outlook was: filming Hutsuls and their life was as easy for him as understand the culture of Georgian mountains. One of his special features as a director was his ability to convey the global beauty through local and folk things.
Yuriy Illienko
Yuriy Illienko – the film’s operator. He was noted as a talented and pioneering operator even before Shadows of Forgotten Ancestors, and received several international prizes. That is why Illienko often entered into creative conflicts with Parajanov on the set: their views on art were different, so they had to reach compromises and persist in their opinions. After Shadows, Illienko continued working in “poetic cinema”.
It was Yuriy who introduced Parajanov to his wife at the time – Larysa Kadochnykova. As soon as the director had seen her, he shouted: “It’s Marichka!”
Heorhiy Yakutovych
Heorhiy Yakutovych – the art director. It was Heorhiy’s first time working in cinema. Serhiy Parajanov turned to him because the film crew needed “a guide in the Carpathians” – and Yakutovych knew Hutsul theme and had a powerful artistic vision of their life. As Parajanov later confessed, Yakutovych “was not just an artist, he was a thinking artist. I could have probably found a more talented person but not as thoughtful. He showed us the Carpathians like a guide. He knew them. He saved us from idyllic presentation of peasantry, from falsity.”
Several moments are considered purely Yakutovych’s contributions in the movie. First of all, it is the “silver forest” that can be seen when Ivan meets the spirit of Marichka for the last time and dies. Secondly, it is the division of the film into chapters – a technique that the painter would use in his own book design. It is also the black and white part of the film where Ivan is suffering after losing his beloved.
Larysa Kadochnykova
Larysa Kadochnykova – the performer of a part of Marichka Huteniuk. Before Shadows, the actress worked at the theatre, so this experience became a new page on her creative path. Besides, thanks to this film, Kadochnykova would then actually become a Ukrainian actress – before that, she was working at the Moscow Sovremennik Theatre. Collaborating with Parajanov inspired Kadochnykova so much that she later turned to creative activity herself.
Ivan Mykolaichuk
Ivan Mykolaichuk – the performer of a part of Ivan Paliichuk. When playing one of his first roles, Mykolaichuk impressed the whole production team with his acting. During the unplanned screen tests conducted after a famous actor Gennadi Yukhtin was approved for the part, the film director and operator changed their mind and gave the part to Mykolaichuk, a Hutsul by origin.
The local population can still remember the shooting process: everyone was admiring Ivan who was an ideal of men’s beauty.
After Shadows, Mykolaichuk acted in many other “poetic” Ukrainian films and since the 1970s started directing movies himself.
Others
An important female part in the film – Palagna – was played by Tatyana Bestayeva, another actress from Moscow. She was supposed to be the exact opposite of Marichka: instead of being tender and spiritual, Palagna had to be all about corporeality and passion. The part in Shadows of Forgotten Ancestors was the most successful in Bestayeva’s career.
And if Marichka’s antagonist was Palagna, Ivan’s antagonist was molfar Yura. His part was performed by Georgian actor Spartak Bagashvili – the State Stalin Prize winner who refused to take an audition for the role and was invited directly to the shooting in the Carpathians.
Volodymyr Luhovskyi, the film’s co-director, helped Parajanov solve conflicts with actors and the film crew. His reasonable character often prevented the team from falling apart. It was Luhovskyi who saved the largest part of Parajanov’s storyboard of the motion picture.
Lidiya Baikova – a well-known costume designer at the film studio was responsible for the actors’ appearance (which was highly appreciated in Shadows). She visited Carpathian villages and collected different authentic clothes, and Parajanov called her as a joke “Lidochka, the Hearse” because she used to be dressed in black all the time.
Another thing that made the film more atmospheric was the music of Myroslav Skoryk – at that time a 25-year-old composer who processed Hutsul folklore in a masterly way and combined it with the symphonic melodies.
Shot from the film Shadows of Forgotten Ancestors:
Hutsuls in Tavern. 1965,
Oleksandr Dovzhenko Film Studio
Hutsul Holiday. 1984,
photograph by Heorhiy Yakutovych
Shot from the film Shadows of Forgotten Ancestors:
Hutsuls in Tavern. 1965,
Oleksandr Dovzhenko Film Studio
Hutsul Holiday. 1984,
photograph by Heorhiy Yakutovych
The local population who featured in Shadows of Forgotten Ancestors was mentioned in the credits simply as “Hutsuls of Verkhovyna”. However, all these people who participated in mass scenes, sang folklore songs for the sound accompaniment, welcomed the actors and actresses in their homes and shared their knowledge about ethnography – all of them became an important part of the film history and carried a lot of stories about the film crew. And we know their names: Mykola Shatruk sang kolomiykas (Ukrainian folk songs) and the part of Ivan Paliichuk; Paraska Danyliuk performed a part of Marichka Huteniuk; Mariia Illiuk, the Soruk family and Hanna Illichuk hosted the film crew; Vasyl Korzhuk and Mariia Potiak were involved in shooting different scenes. So Shadows of Forgotten Ancestors are indelibly photographed on Hutsuls’ collective memory.
The people living in the Carpathians were also sensitive about some director’s ideas concerning their culture. They had mixed feelings especially about the scene of Ivan’s and Palagna’s wedding where the couple had to put on a yoke during the ceremony. Many spectators in Kryvorivnia where it was filmed were offended by this author’s metaphor as Hutsuls did have not such a ritual in their culture.
Shots from the film Shadows of Forgotten Ancestors: Palagna’s Divination and Marichka in Church.
1965, Oleksandr Dovzhenko Film Studio
Special Notification of the State Security Committee of the USSR. The first and second pages of the document dated September 6, 1965.
From the Sectoral State Archive of the Security Service of Ukraine
Shots from the film Shadows of Forgotten Ancestors: Palagna’s Divination and Marichka in Church.
1965, Oleksandr Dovzhenko Film Studio
Special Notification of the State Security Committee of the USSR. The first and second pages of the document dated September 6, 1965.
From the Sectoral State Archive of the Security Service of Ukraine
The production team was restricted in its creativity already at the stage of shooting: for instance, the film studio did not allow demonstrating the shots of the real Carpathian churches for they were adorned too brightly. Because of this fact, the church scenes had to be shot on the modestly decorated stages in Kyiv that were absolutely different from the splendid interiors of the Carpathians. The Dovzhenko Film Studio’s opinion was straightforward: “You shouldn’t accentuate the religious motives as there is nothing to justify that”.
Special Notification of the State Security Committee of the USSR. The first and second pages of the document dated September 6, 1965. From the Sectoral State Archive of the Security Service of Ukraine
The premiere of Shadows of Forgotten Ancestors took place on September 4, 1965 in the Ukraine Cinema in Kyiv – this event became one of the famous political acts of the decade. After the screening, Ivan Dziuba came on the stage and addressed the audience about the mass arrests of the Ukrainian intelligentsia. He was supported by other activists, such as Vasyl Stus and Viacheslav Chornovil, and a part of the audience got up in solidarity. The cinema’s siren went off almost immediately and the police carried out checks at the exit. The protest participants as well as film’s authors were later punished or oppressed after the opening night.
In addition to the censorship from higher-ups, there were also cases of self-censorship in the society. One time, during the screening in the Moscow State University, students started whistling at the scene where Palagna was naked and left the room.
Since the opening night in 1965, the motion picture has been much more appreciated abroad than at home. One of the biggest prizes it won was the Grand Prix of the Mar del Plata International Film Festival (Argentina). Larysa Kadochnykova and Ivan Mykolaichuk were the ones who received the award, while Parajanov did not go because of the joke he once said in the studio’s hallways: “I can even do with a one-way ticket, you know”.
In Ukraine, the film crew was awarded the Shevchenko National Prize after Parajanov’s death in 1991.
The poetic and pioneering character of the movie was noted by many directors and film critics. For example, Emir Kusturica called Shadows of Forgotten Ancestors the best motion picture, and the Harvard University included it in the list of must-watch films.
Shadows gained popularity in France as well. It is interesting that it has an absolutely different title there: the original name seemed too complicated for literal translation, so Shadows of Forgotten Ancestors are known there as Fiery Horses (Les Chevaux de feu).
Fragment from the film Shadows of Forgotten Ancestors.
1965, Oleksandr Dovzhenko Film Studio
It is important that Shadows of Forgotten Ancestors became an impulse for further search of the film crew. After the shooting, Heorhiy Yakutovych finally finished illustrating Kotsiubynskyi’s story. The painter always lacked something before that: experience, understanding of Hutsul culture, freedom from the fossilized academic norms. “After working in cinema, I felt an urgent need to use the specifics of art as fully as possible, making a picture more plastic and spacious. I went back to illustrating the story and reworked all the sheets. […] This desire became especially keen, perhaps, after having some experience in filmmaking, after watching Antonioni’s movies”, Yakutovych commented on his enthusiasm about Shadows in his Graphics and Cinema essay.
Fragments from the film Shadows of Forgotten Ancestors.
965, Oleksandr Dovzhenko Film Studio
Fragments from the film Shadows of Forgotten Ancestors.
965, Oleksandr Dovzhenko Film Studio
Shadows of Forgotten Ancestors has survived through decades in the “topic students write compositions on” and “film on a shelf” status owing to the potential within it. There have been festivals, productions, performances and numerous studies dedicated to it.
Fifty years after the film’s premiere, Ya Galery Art Centre and FILM.UA Group arranged a large-scale project Shadows of Forgotten Ancestors. Exhibition that was held in Mystetskyi Arsenal National Cultural-Arts and Museum Complex and Lviv Art Palace in 2016. There were also several editions that were prepared for this project specifically: a large-scale study Shadows of Forgotten Ancestors. Book, bilingual catalogues and the collection of comics Shadows of Forgotten Ancestors. Graphic Histories.
This exhibition led to further research, particularly that of the oeuvre of art director Heorhiy Yakutovych. His design of Kotsiubynskyi’s story was analyzed in detail in the book Like a Shadow.
When art stimulates to create more art – that is what actually makes a piece of work culturally universal.
Editors Pavlo Gudimov and Kateryna Nosko
Artbook Publishing House, 2016
Photo by Andrii Khir
Curators Pavlo Gudimov and Andrii Alferov
Mystetskyi Arsenal National Cultural-Arts and Museum Complex, 2016
Installation Horseman, artists Yuriy Denysenkov and Ivan Mykhailov
Photo by Maksym Bilousov
Editors Polina Limina and Pavlo Gudimov
Artbook Publishing House, 2017
Design by Kateryna Sivachenko
