Special Screening: RAINBOW (1943) and CONSCIENCE (1968)

Please join us for a Special Screening of Rainbow and Conscience with English subtitles. This will be a rare opportunity to see these remarkable films. The screening will take place Tuesday (February 18) at 7 pm in HQ L01.

The films and subtitles are from Dovzhenko Film Center in Kyiv.

Rainbow (Raduga/Rajduga) Ukrainian SSR, 1943. 93 minutes. Directed by Mark Donskoj. Digital file. In Russian with English subtitles. Dovzhenko Film Center, Kyiv.

For obvious reasons, the only films from the period 1941-1944 that can be categorized as “partisan” were made in the USSR, which at once conducted a massive military campaign against the Nazis, supported various partisan groups, and produced a large number of films. Arguably the progenitor of the partisan film genre, Rainbow offers a still-horrifying portrayal of atrocities wrought by the Nazis upon inhabitants of a Ukrainian village, as well as the unflinching resistance with which the butchers are met. Widely shown abroad, Rainbow reportedly moved Franklin D. Roosevelt so profoundly that he wrote a personal letter to director Donskoj, most famous for his film adaptation (1938-1940) of Maxim Gorky’s three-part autobiography.

Conscience (Sovist’). Ukrainian SSR, 1968. 75 minutes. Directed by Volodymyr Denysenko. Digital file. In Ukrainian with English subtitles. Dovzhenko Film Archive, Kyiv.

After two young partisans kill a Nazi officer in an occupied Ukrainian village, the invaders make an impossible demand: either turn over the perpetrators, or all the inhabitants of the village will be slaughtered. Too radical for its time, Conscience attained its status as a Ukrainian film classic only during the Perestroika years.