Talk:Shadows of Forgotten Ancestors

BAFTA Award

I made an email request to BAFTA of this content :

I am looking for information on BAFTA Award for Sergei Parajanov’s (a Soviet film director) “Shadows of Forgotten Ancestors”, the work he did in 1964. I would be grateful if you could provide information on what exactly the award was for, what nomination and which year or direct me to the web-source which has this information

Here is the reply I got:

Thank you for your enquiry. Regretfully, having checked through the Awards listings ,the film or director did not win a British Academy Award. Sorry I cannot be of more help to you. Regards

Doreen Dean

Steelmate (talk) 14:32, 28 January 2008 (UTC)

Ukrainian vs Soviet film

It is usual to refer to films made in USSR as Soviet films: Russian Mirror (film) is labelled as "Soviet film", as well as Come and See or Lieutenant Kijé (film) from Belarus, Armenian Anahit (1947 film) etc., etc. Even other films from Ukrainian SSR are labelled as Soviet films, such as Aerograd or Farewell, America. Why this exception? StjepanHR (talk) 17:32, 6 February 2024 (UTC)

Hi StjepanHR. A couple of notes on your recent edits [1]:

• Per reliable resources, modern analysts classify Shadows of Forgotten as a Ukrainian film (and a classic Ukrainian film for that matter, the most iconic one for that matter) not a Soviet/Russian film. I mean there is a reason why at 2023 screening of the film at Italy's Biennale described it as: "Appearing [...] when [...] the “thaw” was still continuing in Ukrainian cinema, Tini zabutykh predkiv [Shadows of Forgotten Ancestors] became a turning point for the development of Ukrainian culture in the second half of the 20th century. Starting with the dissident scandal at the premiere of the movie at the Ukraine cinemas, continuing with the long confrontation of directors-followers of the “poetic” school with Soviet censorship, ending with the transformation of Parajanov’s film into a style icon for the young cinema of independent Ukraine"; or UK's The Garden Cinema introduced the films as "The most important Ukrainian film of the second half of the 20th century". Please note that when Russia tries to claim Shadows of Forgotten Ancestors as a Russian/Soviet film, Ukrainians rightly accuse Russians of cultural appropriation (see the reaction from Ukrainian government from earlier this month when Russians tried to screen Shadows of Forgotten Ancestors as a part of "Russian culture" section at a film festival in France: Kyiv Independent: Ukrainian embassy appeals to France over 'cultural appropriation' at Russian film festival). Lastly, also please note that whereas Soviet does not equal Ukrainian, Soviet=Russia. This is because Soviet Union was a Russian empire "in disguise" (for better context see Felix Schnell's 2015 paper "Empire in Disguise" The Soviet-Russian Imperial Metamorphosis after World War I); or in the words of Piroska Nagy-Mohacsi and Mario I. Blejer from their 2022 paper "The Russian Empire has been in place in varying forms and duration since at least the 16th century. One variant of this empire was the Soviet Union".

• Please refrain from your statements like the one you made that "we don't write for Hollywood films that they are from California, but from the US :)" [2] -> because it implies that Ukraine was just a region of Russian tsarist/soviet-communist empire. This is simply false and in essence just paraphrases the oft-repeated Russian mis/dis-information that "Russia/Russians and Ukraine/Ukrainians are "one nation/people" (see debunking this disinfo for instance here from euvsdisinfo.eu or here at politico.com). Your comparison is inappropriate, because while California was and is just a region of the US, Ukraine on the other hand is and always was a separate country with a centuries-long history, which unfortunately for most of the last ~400 years had most of its territory and people subjugated under a colonial rule of Russian tsarist/soviet-communist empire. While Ukraine indeed only recently regained its independence in 1991, that did not stop Ukrainians from being their own unique nation/people or Ukraine from being its own unique country even before 1991, including back in 1960-s when the film was made.

In summary, there is no consensus to change Shadows of Forgotten Ancestors from being categorized as Ukrainian film to being categorized as Soviet/Russian because in modern sources Shadows of Forgotten Ancestors is classified as an iconic film of Ukrainian cinema (see example reference above from Biennale); I mean heck, even in old sources from back in the 1970's renowned American film critic Roger Ebert called it a Ukrainian film.

p.s. Just one last thought: if one really wanted to add "sovietness" to the description of the film, the only proper way to emphasize that would be to describe the film in the introductory section instead of "Ukrainian film" as "Soviet-era Ukrainian film" (which is the name of the category that the film is in https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Category:Soviet-era_Ukrainian_films); but honestly that adition of "soviet-era" seems redundant to me because the category already states that.--Layney77 (talk) 07:58, 16 March 2024 (UTC)

I won't revert your edit in the lede (and I even agree with the description "Soviet-era Ukrainian film", since it is more precise than just "Soviet"), but the country was Soviet Union and not Ukrainian SSR. Trust me, I would like to change info on many Yugoslavian films made in Croatia to "Croatian Socialist Republic", but the country was still Yugoslavia, regardless of my dislike of that (artificially created) country.

The situation is 100% same here. Ukraine was not an independent country, but just a constitutive republic of the Soviet Union (just like California in the USA and I don't care if you like that comparison or not). If you are offended by that, another example is that we don't write for Scottish or Welsh films that their country of origin is Scotland or Wales, since those are not countries.

You seem to cite Ebert, who referred to it numerous time as a "Soviet" film. One doesn't exclude the other. If a film is Californian, it is still American (or if a film was made in Croatia in 1960, it would be reffered as both Croatian, which is more precise, Yugoslavian, which is less precise, or even "East European", which is extremely imprecise). We are dealing with the country of origin and there was no such country as Ukraine (or Croatia, my homeland, for that matter) back them.

I also dislike your infusion of Ukrainian nationalism in this discussion, but that is another topic and I don't really want to discuss politics (and Special Military Operation) here and it is compeltely irrelevant to the discussion on this film.7

You also seem to use a strawman argument implying that I want to describe this as a Russian film, which is false. Russia, just like Ukraine, was just a constitutive part of a larger country. You conveniently seem to miss that I wrote "It is usual to refer to films made in USSR as Soviet films: Russian Mirror (film) is labelled as "Soviet film", as well as Come and See or Lieutenant Kijé (film) from Belarus, Armenian Anahit (1947 film) etc."

I know anything related to Ukraine is a hot topic now, but please leav aside the recent developents and find a reliable source describing country of origin as "Ukraine" or even that a country named Ukriane existed at the time of release. None of the sources you have listed provides that. StjepanHR (talk) 22:32, 7 April 2024 (UTC)

P.S. I decided to ask about this on Template talk:Infobox film. Let's see what they say on the issue. StjepanHR (talk) 01:09, 8 April 2024 (UTC)

I have asked for the third opinon. Here are some further arguments: I have also checked seven other random famous films from defunct states aside from the Soviet Union and they all included the original country:

• Closely Watched Trains (Czechoslovakia)
• Battle of Neretva (film) (Yugoslavia among others)
• The Cremator (Czechoslovakia)
• Battle of Sutjeska (film) (Yugoslavia)
• One Song a Day Takes Mischief Away (Yugoslavia)
• Ecstasy (film) (Czechoslovakia)
• My Sweet Little Village (Czechoslovakia)

The only exception from this rule that I could find are the films from United Arab Republic (1958-1961 union of Egypt and Syria), which all have country of origin listed as "Egypt", probably due to fact that Syria had little to none national cinema at the time. Also, a huge majority of films listed in Category:Austro-Hungarian films have the country as Austria-Hungary. Same with Category:Films of the Russian Empire.

Additionally, here are the sources listing the country of origin as the Soviet Union:

• Harvard Film Archive: [3]
• HK Cine Fan: [4]
• ACMI: [5]
• Croatian film lexicon: [6] StjepanHR (talk) 15:50, 12 April 2024 (UTC)

Response to third opinion request:

In my view, "country" in this context denotes the independent sovereign state from which the film originated, which in this case was the USSR. By no means do I want to downplay the distinctness of Ukrainian culture or identity, but the Ukrainian SSR was not (and to my knowledge, made no claim to be) a country that was independent of the Soviet Union in 1965. I also don't think it would be factually correct to list the Latvian SSR as the country for a film made in Riga or the Russian SSR for a film made in Leningrad. I think it's appropriate to emphasize the Ukrainian nature of the film in the article text, and the article does that well. I can even see the case for removing "Soviet-era" from the lede entirely. But the inescapable fact is that UkrSSR was not a country, so it's incorrect to enter it in the "Country" field of the infobox. Having anything other than USSR there (without a reliable source specifically listing an alternate country) would violate WP:V, WP:NOR and WP:NPOV. Wburrow (talk) 18:13, 12 April 2024 (UTC)

Thank You for Your opinion. I have already changed the article to exclude revisionist history presented by another user. As I said, Ukrainian SSR was, at the time, at the level of sovereignity of an average US state, so it didn't make sense to me to include it as a country (thus my comparison with California, which is also, unlike Layney77 stated, not merely a region, but a constituent state, just like Ukraine in 1965). ALso, like Ukraine, California might vote to be independent one day in the future, but that doesn't mean that we should change the country to "California" for all films released before that :) StjepanHR (talk) 02:31, 13 April 2024 (UTC)