Shadows of Forgotten Ancestors, alternatively translated into English as Shadows of Our Forgotten Ancestors or Shadows of Our Ancestors (, ), also known in English under the alternative title Wild Horses of Fire and under the mistaken title of In the Shadow of the Past,Reviewing the film in 1966 for Variety Gene Moskowitz mistakenly called the film In the Shadow of the Past, see Shadows of Forgotten Ancestors: Ukrainian Revival. The Reception of Shadows of Forgotten Ancestors // James Steffen (2013). The Cinema of Sergei Parajanov. Madison: University of Wisconsin Press. 306 p.: pp. 73–78. ISBN 978-0-299-29653-7 is a 1965 Soviet-era Ukrainian film directed by Sergei Parajanov. Based on the 1911 novel Shadows of Forgotten Ancestors by Ukrainian author Mykhailo Kotsiubynsky, it tells a "Romeo and Juliet tale" of young Ukrainian Hutsul lovers trapped on opposite sides of a Carpathian family blood feud.Shadows of Forgotten Ancestors. Turner Classic Movies. 2021
The film was Parajanov's first major work and earned him international acclaim for its rich use of costume and colour.Shadows of Forgotten Ancestors. Ukrainian Revival // James Steffen (2013). The Cinema of Sergei Parajanov. Madison: University of Wisconsin Press. 306 p.: pp. 56–87. ISBN 978-0-299-29653-7 The festival program from the 1966 edition of the New York Film Festival described the film as an "avant-garde, extravagant, sumptuous saga" and a "haunting work" that combined folk-songs and atonal music with fantastic camera work.The 4th New York Film Festival: Tini Zabutykh Predkiv / Shadows of Our Forgotten Ancestors // Robert Elliot Palets (1969). The New York Film Festival 1963–1966: A thesis submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Masters of Arts. Madison: University of Wisconsin. 235 p.: p. 216 Shadows of Forgotten Ancestors is considered to be the most internationally heralded Ukrainian film in history,Preface // First, Joshua J (2008). Scenes of Belonging: Cinema and the Nationality Question in Soviet Ukraine during the Long 1960s: A dissertation submitted in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy (History) in The University of Michigan. 372 p.: p. ii and a classic of Ukrainian magical realist cinema.
Plot In a small Hutsul village in the Carpathian Mountains of Ukraine, a young man, Ivan, falls in love with the daughter of the man who killed his father. Though their families share a bitter enmity, Ivan and Marichka have known each other since childhood. In preparation for their marriage, Ivan leaves the village to work and earn money for a household. While he is gone, Marichka accidentally slips into a river and drowns while trying to rescue a lost lamb.
Ivan returns and falls into despair after seeing Marichka's body. He continues to work, enduring a period of joyless toil, until he meets another woman, Palahna, while shoeing a horse. Ivan and Palahna get married in a traditional Hutsul wedding in which they are blindfolded and yoked together. The marriage quickly turns sour, however, as Ivan remains obsessed with the memory of Marichka. Estranged from her emotionally distant husband, Palahna becomes involved with a local molfar Yurko, while Ivan begins to experience hallucinations.
At a tavern, Ivan sees the molfar embrace Palahna and strike one of his friends. Roused into an uncharacteristic fury, Ivan snatches up his axe, only to be struck down by the molfar. Ivan stumbles into the nearby woods and perceives Marichka's spirit to be with him, reflected in the water and gliding amongst the trees. As reality merges into dream, the colourless shade of Marichka reaches out across a great space and touches Ivan's outstretched hand. Ivan screams and dies. The community gives him a traditional Hutsul burial while children watch through cross braced windows.
Cast Ivan Mykolaichuk as Ivan Larysa Kadochnykova as Marichka as Palahna Spartak Bagashvili as molfar Yurko Mykola Hrynko as Chief Shepherd Leonid Yengibarov as Mykola Nina Alisova as Paliychuk
Production Budget The exact budget for Shadows of Forgotten Ancestors is currently not publicly known, and it is only available from the film's records at Ukrainian State Archives.ЦДАВО України, ф. Р–2, оп. 13, т. 1, спр. 739., арк. 101–103 (in Ukrainian) The partial records gathered by Ukrainian film historians reveal that the cabinet ministers of UkrSSR in May 1966 issued a strongly worded reproach to Parajanov for "exceeding the budget of Shadows of Forgotten Ancestors by 97 thousand rubles". Ukrainian filmmaker Oleh Chornyi, however, speculated in 2019 that the film's budget was in line with typical film budgets of the time, ranging from 300 to 500 thousand rubles".«Тіні забутих предків»: вигадки замість правди. detector.media. 2 September 2019 (in Ukrainian)
Filming The film was one of the rare Ukrainian-language feature film productions at the Ukrainian Dovzhenko Film Studios, which typically produced only Russian-language film productions, some of which were later dubbed into the Ukrainian language for theatrical distribution in UkrSSR. The government officials had asked Parajanov to make a Russian version of the film, to which he stated that he has “long resisted translating the Ukrainian-language film dialogues into the Russian language" because he "considered this text to be an inalienable part of the artistic fabric of the film”.Розділ 3. Українська тема в радянському кінематографі та умови її реалізації: 3.1. Висвітлення історії України в художніх кінострічках // Наталя Ховайда (2015). Державна політика у галузі кінематографа УРСР (друга половина 1960–х – перша половина 1980–х рр.): дисертація на здобуття ступеня кандидата історичних наук. Київ: Київський національний університет імені Тараса Шевченка. 240 стор.: C. 122–123 (in Ukrainian) In his 1988 interview with Ron Holloway, Parajanov confessed that "the ministry asked me to make a Russian [dubbed] version [of the film]. The film was not only shot in the Ukrainian language, but it was also in the Hutsul dialect [of Ukrainian language]. They asked me to dub the film in Russian but I turned them down categorically."
The film is set in the Ukrainian part of the Carpathian Mountains and the location shooting of the village scenes took place in the Carpathian village of Kryvorivnia. The house in Kryvorivnia where the filming took place is now a museum.Ukrainian Program: At the Movies. AY 15–16 Ukrainian Program Highlights. lsa.umich.edu. 06/07/2016Kryvorivnya: Journey to Origins. kharkivobserver.com. 15/10/2017 The indoor shooting took place in the pavilions at the Dovzhenko Film Studios.
Casting Originally, Parajanov planned to cast a rising-star and box-office magnet Russian actor Genadi Yukhtin to play the main protagonist Ivan, but under the recommendation of filmmaker Viktor Ivchenko, along with comments from the film's cinematographer Yuri Ilyenko, that "Yukhtin just did not fit the part and when [during the try-outs] he dressed in the Ukrainian hutsul garments, it wasn't a fit for him", Parajanov later changed his decision, and cast a Ukrainian actor Ivan Mykolaichuk instead.Chapter One – Fiction, Film and Ethnography: The Making of Tini zabutykh predkiv: Making Shadows // J.J. Gurga (2012). Echoes of the past: Ukrainian poetic cinema and the experiential ethnographic mode: Doctoral thesis. London: University College London. 342 p.: p. 88-123
Music The music was written by composer Myroslav Skoryk, who wrote the score inspired by Ukrainian hutsul folk culture. The haunting Ukrainian-folk music contributes to the film's grandeur, and is considered to be one of Skoryk's greatest film scores.
Many individuals who worked on the film admitted that the film was a result of collective effort, and was certainly not an auteur film reflecting the personalities and ideas of only its director Sergei Parajanov. Specifically, the film represented a creative catalogue of many Ukrainian artists, not least of all composer Myroslav Skoryk.Valentyn Moroz. Chronicle of Resistance // Valentyn Moroz (1974). Report from the Beria Reserve: The Protest Writings of Valentyn Moroz. Edited and translated from the Ukrainian: John Kolasky. Chicago: Cataract Press; Toronto: P. Martin. 162 pp.: p. 75. ISBN 0-88778-097-0 (P. Martin edition); ISBN 0-914764-02-0 (Cataract Press edition)Bohdan Nebesio (1994). [https://web.archive.org/web/20211011191046/https://tmpfiles.org/dl/134098/bohdannebesio.shadowsofforgottenancestorsstorytellinginthenovelandthefilm1994.pdf 'Shadows of Forgotten Ancestors’: Storytelling in the Novel and the Film]. Literature/Film Quarterly. vol. 22, no. 1. pp. 42–49. Film historian James Steffen in his book The Cinema of Sergei Parajanov specifically called out the fact that "one of the most distinctive aspects of the film is its use of [Ukrainian] Hutsul folk music on the soundtrack in addition to Skoryk's folk-inspired orchestral compositions" and expressly noted that "Skoryk's original score, a Bartok-like composition that combines lively [Ukrainian] folk-based themes and rhythms with modernistic dissonance, complements the traditional folk songs used in the film and provides an effective emotional counterpoint to the image".
The film features leitmotifs that relate to each of the main characters, as well as to the spirit of the Ukrainian West (the hutsul region in the Carpathian mountains). Skoryk's rendition of a Ukrainian folk song The Willow Board (), which was sung by an unknown choir; is played twice in the film and was intended to add musical drama to the wedding scenes. Another one of Skoryk's musical pieces in the film was his composition for the symphony orchestra Hutsul Triptych ().Chapter 1. An Overview of Skoryk's Life and Works: Stylistic Development // Victor Radoslav Markiw (2010). The life and solo piano works of the Ukrainian composer Myroslav Skoryk. Queenston, Ontario: The Edwin Mellen Press. 164 pp.: p. 13. ISBN 978-0-7734-3690-9
Release Festival release Throughout the film's festival run in Spring 1965, it represented "the Soviet Union" and not "the Ukrainian Soviet Socialist Republic", despite the fact that it was very distinctly Ukrainian. In 1965, the Head of State Film Agency of UkrSSR, , described in his diary how he, along with the film's main actors Larysa Kadochnykova and Ivan Mykolaychuk, went to Argentina for the Mar del Plata International Film Festival to represent the film there, noting that “we represented at the festival the Soviet Union, and we were not the Ukrainian, but the Soviet delegation. I was not offended by the words of greetings addressed to the Soviet Union (the crowd of Mar del Plata cried: ‘Viva Moscú’, ‘Viva Unión Soviética’) [...] We were just representatives of a great people and they [the Argentines] did not suspect the subtleties of relations within the two nations [of Russians and Ukrainians]".Nadia Kindrachuk. Eradication of the National Element in Ukrainian Cinema in the 1960s–1970s // Historia i Polityka. No. 24 (31/2018). p. 113-121VII. Пугало "українського буржуазного націоналізму" і реальність російського великодержавного шовінізму як головної небезпеки в національному будівництві СРСР // Іван Дзюба (1968). Інтернаціоналізм чи русифікація?. Мюнхен: Сучасність. 276 стор.: 84–145 (html version)