(Вечір на Івана Купала / Vecher nakanune Ivana Kupala)
Directed by Yurii Illienko
71 minutes
In Ukrainian with English subtitles

There was a certain kind of 'folklore poetic' cinema that emerged in the 1960s in the former East Bloc, which Ukrainian filmmakers were a large part of. There was a history for this movement that can be traced all the way back to the 1920s with a lyrical-experimental filmmaker named Dovzhenko who was born in northern Ukraine. But in the 60s movies were suddenly ignited with color... and it was almost as if this folklore-poetic spirit was infused with traditional folklore patterns and designs, resulting in an almost psychedelic trip of mind-blowing tapestry of visual patterns. 

The director of this particular movie Yurii Illienko had been a cameraman for one of the greatest practitioners of this aesthetic, whose name was Sergi Paradjanov. Here as a director Illienko takes this overheated fantasy-folklore imagery to tell the story of a young poverty-stricken farmer who wants to marry his true love, but when her father interferes, the young man goes to make a deal with a demon. Everything climaxes and a kind of delirious madness. It's based on “St John’s Eve” by Gogol, a tale that taps into the deep mythology of the region. A cinematic step into another world, both ancient and modern.