ranishnya rosa

My thesis has eaten up most of my words, so here is a singular little crocus, which I found sprouting all by itself in a little hillock on campus. It was all alone, in the middle of the grass, & I was rather excited to see the wee splash of purple! I wonder how often it is noticed. & who decided to plant it right there in the middle of the grass.

Also, here is a video from a Ukrainian group called Haydamaky, for a song called Meni Rozkazhe Ranishnya Rosa. It's a bit of a schmaltzy-sounding song, I warn you, (considering the title refers to feeling a lot like the morning dew on the grass where one had a lovely little tryst one night) but I mention it because the video has incorporates snippets from Serhiy Paradjanov's Tini Zabutykh Predkiv / Shadows of Forgotten Ancestors, which is probably my favourite film ever. So watch it, & pay attention to the scenes projected all over the concrete walls, and that are occasionally interspersed (& also be amused by their singer, Oleksandr Yarmola, who looks a lot like a Ukrainian cousin of Jean-Luc Picard! with a moustache)

I saw Tini Zabutykh Predkiv again when it played at the Metro's Ukrainian film festival a few weeks ago, & it never fails to enchant me. I love the details, the ethnological-documentary feeling, the crazy motion of the camera that can seem jerky as Hutsul dancing, and appropriately sweeping at once, befitting the mountain landscape & its presence throughout the film. I love the portrayals of village religious life, the pagan beliefs shining through the thin layer of beaten-gold Orthodoxy. I love it, even if it isn't completely faithful to the story by Mykhaylo Kotsiubynskyj and some of the nuances of his writing don't come through in the dialogue. I love its use of folk songs, some of which my baba used to sing. I love how so many of its image have left indelible imprints on my eyelids, like Marichka's hand pressed to the window on Christmas Eve -- or near the end, with the shots of the red willow branches looking strikingly like pulmonary arteries, scarlet & frozen. I love it because even though the legend that inspired the story is rather sentimental, it's sentimental in a way that is rough and yearning and tragic (so very, very Slavic) and I love it because it examines outsider-ness & connections to nature/ancestors & inability to live within societal confines. I love it even though most people I make see it are rather confused by it (the subtitles aren't great, I know, and there are so many references to obscure folkloric elements) but I am happy that they have seen it, even if they can't quite appreciate why I love it so much.

So yes, you can see why it makes me glad to see it pop up in a music video.

Also, it just came out on DVD (Arwen, did I tell you that it also includes a documentary about Paradjanov and Tarkovsky!!! and a feature about the songs used...) Anyway, I still recommend that you should all track it down. (I will watch it with you if you like, and I will give you better translations of the subtitles & answer questions about what all the people with their fancy moustaches & funny costumes are doing...)