Cinema
The Stone Cross
Камінний хрест
Leonid Osyka · 1968
Synopsis
In a village of Pokuttia, old Ivan Didukh has spent his life carrying soil on his back up to a stony hill to make a field of it; he is now leaving for Canada with his family. On the eve of departure, a thief slips into his yard: Ivan catches him and, with the neighbours, holds a night tribunal over him, where custom demands death. Before leaving, he raises a stone cross on his hill.
Context
Ivan Drach wrote the screenplay from two stories by the Galician writer and motifs from a third; in February 1968 the state commission congratulated the young director for not having yielded to ethnography. Shot in black and white to a score by Volodymyr Huba, the film was released on 10 June 1968; Osyka, aged twenty-eight, was directing his second feature. A critic cited by the Dovzhenko Centre writes that, where Illienko conducted an immense orchestra, Osyka played a single instrument, on a few strings. The hero has a real model: a peasant from the village of Stefanyk who, leaving for Canada, set up in his field a cross carved from stone.
Who it is for
A short film, of about one hour twenty, almost without background music; the short story that gives it its title is by Vasyl Stefanyk.
Prizes and reception
Two diplomas at the Union festival in Leningrad, for Valeri Kvas's cinematography and Boryslav Brondukov's performance; fifth among the hundred best Ukrainian films.
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