Project review

It was in 1964 when the great filmmaker Sergei Parajanov completed his film «Shadows of Forgotten Ancestors» which earned him international acclaim. The film was based on the classic book of M.Kotsiubinsky and tells us about a mad and tragic love. It also features a detailed portrayal of Ukrainian Hutsul culture — a small ethnic group of the Carpathian region — and various aspects of their unique and original folkloristic traditions, music, costumes and dialect.

In her multimedia project which was created after Parajanov’s film, Evelina Petrova has managed to achieve the seemingly unachievable: to bring the contemporary audience all over the world the original storyline of Parajanov’s masterpiece while at the same time filling it with new meanings. The music composed and performed by Evelina´s TRIO allows us to feel the connection between Carpathian musical folklore and the core foundations of the traditions of the musical cultures around the world. Thus, the local tradition of the Ukrainian Hutsuls finds itself organically integrated into the global territory of contemporary World Music. Evelina’s musical language, to which the cultural boundaries are unknown, unexpectedly makes us able to understand the narrative without any words creating a real miracle when the actual tragic story is moved to the background. Instead, the audience feels that the real love makes its way out of the frame of harsh day-to-day existence and, gaining the universal freedom, becomes truly immortal!

Roman Fedorov, Russia
Ethnologist, Ph. d. in cultural sciences, Art critic