Ecofeminism in Film Adaptations of Lesia Ukrainka’s Forest Song
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.18523/kmhj249180.2021-8.46-67Keywords:
Ecocriticism, ecofeminism, Illienko, Ivchenko, film, Lesia UkrainkaAbstract
This article off ers a pioneering ecofeminist study of Viktor Ivchenko’s Lisova pisnia (1961) and Yurii Illienko’s Lisova pisnia. Mavka (1980), two Soviet Ukrainian film adaptations of Lesia Ukrainka’s eponymous fairy-drama (1911; Forest Song). It focuses on the interrelated depiction of gender and nature along with the drama’s ideological and material aspects: androcentrism and deforestation. The production of both fi lms coincides with, and arguably refl ects, what Marko Pavlyshyn describes as “the emergence of a conservationist consciousness” in the USSR in the 1960s. The article’s goal is therefore twofold – to bring new ecofeminist insights into Ukrainian fi lm studies and to raise eco-awareness about the Volyn Polissia, which provides the setting for Ukrainka’s drama and its adaptations, and currently faces environmental devastation from illegal amber mining.
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