Ecofeminism in Film Adaptations of Lesia Ukrainka’s Forest Song

Abstract

This article offers 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 films coincides with, and arguably reflects, 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 film 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.