The White Bird Marked with Black

The White Bird Marked with Black

Directed by Yuri Ilyenko • 1971 • USSR/Ukraine

Yuri Ilyenko’s landmark film follows the Zvonars, a family of poor musicians, as personal and geopolitical crises collide across the course of the tumultuous 1940s. Set in the region of Bukovina, on the border between Ukraine and Romania, Ilyenko’s folkloric vision draws on local traditions, in keeping with the Ukrainian “poetic cinema” movement of the period. A visually striking and vividly rendered account of Ukrainian national consciousness at a turning point in modern history.

THE WHITE BIRD MARKED WITH BLACK • БІЛИЙ ПТАХ З ЧОРНОЮ ОЗНАКОЮ
Directed by Yuri Ilyenko
Written by Yuri Ilyenko and Ivan Mykolaychuk
Cinematography by Vilen Kalyuta
Music by Ivan Mykolaychuk
Starring: Larisa Kadochnikova, Ivan Mykolaychuk, Bohdan Stupka

In Ukrainian, Romanian and Russian with English subtitles

Winner of the Best Film Award at the Moscow International Film Festival, 1971

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The White Bird Marked with Black
  • The White Bird Marked with Black

    Directed by Yuri Ilyenko • 1971 • USSR/Ukraine

    Yuri Ilyenko’s landmark film follows the Zvonars, a family of poor musicians, as personal and geopolitical crises collide across the course of the tumultuous 1940s. Set in the region of Bukovina, on the border between Ukraine and Romania, Ilyenko’s ...

Extras

  • Introducing Ukrainian poetic cinema

    Klassiki curator Sam Goff introduces viewers to the world of Ukrainian poetic cinema: a formally radical and politically subversive movement that emerged in Kyiv in the mid-1960s, and which turned to Ukraine’s folkloric past in order to reimagine the nation’s cinematic future.

  • Notes on The White Bird Marked with Black

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