Krasna Malanka (Malanca din Crasna) is a 90-minute film featuring residents of the Romanian-speaking village of Crasna, also known as Krasnoilsk, in Storozhynets raion of Bukovyna. It is divided into five neighborhoods (Putna, Putna-over-the-Ravine, Sus, Diau, and Trazhany), and the day’s celebrations have much in common in all five, but there are some differences, too. Accordingly, the film includes five short stories. The National Dovzhenko Film Studios is the producer of Krasna Malanka.
Throughout the film, its characters show as they prepare for the holiday and make famous bear costumes, reveal all the details and significance of this event for their lives, show their treatment of St. Melania’s Day as a metaphor of the human-nature relationship. Besides showing modern celebrations in Krasnoilsk and a great deal of work invested in preparing for them, the director added the stories of elderly residents who told about celebrations they had staged as youths.
The Bukovyna screenings of Krasna Malanka preceded the national premiere held in Kyiv on December 7. First of them took place in Krasnoilsk village, where the club was bursting with people. Entire village families came to see the documentary about its famous holiday. Some were so overwhelmed with emotions that they even cried. “I do not recall seeing ever before all the village come together to watch a movie. From now on, we will be known all over the world,” one of the film’s characters Ivan Iliuts said.
“Documentaries are very rare on the national film market,” the film’s director Dmytro Sukholytky-Sobchuk said at the Chernivtsi premiere. “Our goal was not to earn money, but to introduce the regular viewer to something new, unusual, to St. Melania’s Day folk traditions. Festival public reacts to the film differently, but the people who were its subject are experiencing everything very emotionally. St. Melania’s Day is a folk carnival that enables us to realize the unity of humans and nature who become one in these rites.”
After the Kyiv premiere, Krasna Malanka will be rolled out across the country.
