Film Library
The Stone Cross, 1968.  

Original title: Kaminnyi Khrest

Copyright: the Oleksander Dovzhenko Film Studio, Kyiv, Ukraine, 1968.

Format: feature narrative

Carrier: DVD

Color: black and white

Length: 77 min.

Original language: Ukrainian, with admixture of the Pokuttia dialect.

English subtitles: yes

 

Film crew

Director: Leonid Osyka

Script writer: Ivan Drach

Director of photography: Velerii Kvas

Production designer: Mykola Riznyk

Original music: Volodymyr Huba

Sound editor: Sofia Serhienko

Produced by the Oleksander Dovzhenko Film Studio, Kyiv, Ukraine.

Film cast:

Danylo Ilchenko as Ivan Didukh, Boryslav Brondukov as the thief, Kostiantyn Stepankov as Mykhailo, Vasyl Symchych as Heorhii,  Antonina Leftiy as Antonina,  Ivan Mykolaichuk as Mykola, Borys Savchenko as Dmytro,  K. Mateik as baba Ivanykha, Oleksa Atamaniuk as Andriiko.  Residents of the Pokuttia region as extras.

 

Synopsis

A Galician peasant Ivan Didukh in a desperate attempt to get his family out of abject poverty decides to leave his ancestral home and seek a better live in Canada. On the eve of his departure a thief gets into his house. Following the old custom Ivan calls on his neighbors to sit in judgment of the criminal. A surreal feast ensues. The thief asks Ivan Didukh for and get his forgiveness. The village judges nevertheless sentence him to death. The departure for Canada being tantamount to his own death, Ivan holds a farewell party that feels very much like a wake for him and his family. In his own memory he erects a stone cross on a hill. In a larger sense, Ivan Didukh's stone cross is the monument to thousands of his compatriots who had and still all too often today are compelled to leave their homeland.

Inspired by stories of the Ukrainian writer Vasyl Stefanyk (1871-1936), this film is Ukrainian poetic cinema at its best - extremely terse and laconic in outward expression, but intensely psychological and shattering in the understated delivery of its message. Shot in a striking black-and-white, it brings to mind Akira Kurosawa. Today "Stone Cross" remains little known and even less appreciated both in and outside Ukraine. A true gem of world film art it is a peak of Ukrainian filmmaking that has no parallels.

This film has been restored and digitally re-mastered as part of the 8-disk DVD gift set "Ukrainian Film Classics. Ivan Mykolaichuk," issued by the National Oleksander Dovzhenko Center in 2010.

 

Ukrainian Film Club of Columbia University© 2015. For more information please contact Yuri Shevchuk