The creative individuality of the writer in the documentary film trilogy “Bright road candle is black. In memory of Vasyl Stus” .

Abstract

The object of research in the article is the creative individuality of Vasyl Stus ‒ such as it is presented in the documentary film of Stanislav Chernilevs’ky. His film “Bright road candle is black. In memory of Vasyl Stus” (1989‒1992) began the process of interpreting the life and work of Stus in the cinema. Work on the film “Bright road candle is black. In memory of Vasyl Stus” began in 1988, when Chernilevs’ky began to consider the script, after reading one of the new publications of the writer. Thinking first film-portrait, the director changes the original design and collects documentary material. In the film about Stus, he is interested in several lines: a chronicle, an interview, a self-portrait. At the same time, the director defends the idea that there is no integral image of Vasyl Stus in the trilogy, since it is impossible to embrace the entire writer. The structure of the film “Bright road candle is black. In memory of Vasyl Stus” is: a conditional prologue, three films, an epilogue. In the prologue, the director accentuates the image of the tunnel and the waterway. In the first film we are talking about childhood, becoming a writer until the 70’s. Biographical Vasyl Stus submitted in the foreshortening of his formed aesthetic, moral and ethical and national postulates. The second film covers the period from the first arrest in 1972 to the death of his father in 1978. An interview with a son, wife, friends, former political prisoners reveals the details of Stus’s life in prison. The main opposition in this part of the film is the opposition of the system and free man. In the third film we are talking about the years of Stus’s life from the moment he came from exile to death (murder) and reburial. Stus as a creator is the keynote of this part of the film. In the epilogue, emphasis is placed on the revival of the writer, his new life. The personality of Stus is read in the film “Bright road candle is black. In memory of Vasyl Stus” with the help of the expressionistic category of the boundary: it lies between the worlds of God and the system. One of the main things in this case are images of the tree, experiences, God, the river, the road. Stanislav Chernilevs’ky in his own way approaches the processing of documentary material, inscribing a person in a figurative structure.