Cinema
The Chumaks' Way
Чумацький шлях
Volodymyr Honcharov · 1980
Synopsis
Set to verses by Dmytro Pavlychko, the film brings to the screen the popular tale from which the Ukrainian name of the galaxy comes, taken from the chumaks, those drivers of ox-drawn carts who went to fetch salt in the south of the country: at a time when salt was scarce, a simple boy sets off far away to bring some back. The Ukrainian version lingers on the food of these men on the road.
Context
The film is spoken in Ukrainian by Bohdan Stupka. This version, long thought lost, was found with a private collector and digitised by the Dovzhenko Centre in December 2023; it differs from the first minutes onwards from the Russian version, which cut, among other things, the mention of the solomakha, the flour porridge of Cossacks on campaign. The film is one of three that Honcharov made with the same cinematographer between 1980 and 1988.
Who it is for
A nine-minute animated short, best seen in its Ukrainian version; the chumaks hauled salt in ox-drawn carts, and the Milky Way bears their name in that language.
Prizes and reception
Cited among the films that made Ukrainian animation known outside the country in the 1970s and 1980s.
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