Babylon XX
Soul and Soil: Ukrainian Poetic Cinema
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1h 34m
Directed by Ivan Mykolaichuk |100 mins | 1979
Having acted in several seminal Ukrainian films of the 1960s and ’70s, Ivan Mykolaichuk made his directorial debut with this work of fervid romanticism and rough-hewn beauty, set in the village of Babylon in the years after the revolution but before collectivization. Inspired by the naïve paintings of Ivan Generalić, Mykolaichuk’s since-canonized film—in which he appears in the key role of village philosopher Fabian—was completed in spite of a government crackdown on Ukrainian poetic cinema.
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Directed by Yuri Illienko | 96 mins | 1990
Released as the formal dissolution of the Soviet Union loomed, this adaptation of stories Sergei Parajanov wrote during his incarceration in the 1970s depicts the increasingly desperate attempts of a prisoner (Viktor Solovyov) to escape his own confineme...
