Crusade of Ukrainian Documentaries
The Friday before last, against the background of just another fair, a quiet premiere of director Yury Tereshchenko and script writer cum film critic Serhiy Trymbach’s film, The Eternal Cross took place at the Kyiv Cinematographers’ House. Those familiar with renowned Ukrainian film director Leonid Osyka’s creative work will easily find in the film’s name an allusion to his 1968 film, The Stone Cross, which was last shown to the public two years ago at the Molodist [Youth] film festival’s opening ceremony. However, this is no coincidence. The Eternal Cross consists of three documentaries shot at different times, united by the creative work of the great film director who has passed a year ago. Three love stories in the most elevated meaning of this word — love through tears and despair, when you feel unbearably bad.
The first story, “The Seven Tears,” was shot by Osyka himself in 1992 at a children’s cemetery. Seven years after Chornobyl — this speaks volumes. The dramatic quality of the material itself is so shocking that one cannot immediately start pondering over its artistic realization. Meanwhile, the author succeeded in delicately showing human grief from the point of view of not an outside observer trying to shoot reportage but a parent like his heroes. The death of an adult is a tragedy, while child’s death is a catastrophe. The authors demonstrated this to the spectators, drawing this sad formula in course of the film. As long as such cemeteries exist, this pain will exist, too.
Another story portrays widow of actor P. Masokha who took part in one of the best films in Ukraine and the world, Dovzhenko’s Earth. Her husband is dead, and thirteen years after his death she is weeping at his grave, aged and forgotten by all, “Take me with you!” The third story, which gave the name for the whole film, narrates about two young women, or “balsam-carrying women”, as the authors of the Eternal Cross called them. First one is Svitlana Kniazeva, Leonid Osyka’s widow, an actress who is raising her twin kids. Another is Kateryna, wife of Borys Brondukov, who, let us recall, played the main part in the Stone Cross and now is affected with both physical and emotional paralysis. Two confessions, two stories of the women who are unhappy and at the same time self-sufficient in their love.
The brilliant score for the film was composed by A. Huba, filling its dramatic in itself plot with strong poetical energy, which left no one in the audience indifferent. The Cinematographers’ House did not see such enduring ovations for a long time. The fact that the documentary was shot on filmstrip, being a rare exception for the Ukrainian filmmaking industry in the last years, also deserves ovation. “Documentary art on film was dying in Ukraine,” Mr. Trymbach stressed. Even if this single film doesn’t mean its revival, we regained our slightly forgotten pride for Ukrainian documentaries in part and cinema in general. The only complaint is that the Eternal Cross will not be shown on television. “The television has changed,” the film’s authors explain.
