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A Portrait on the Background of Mountains

In the depth of Carpathian Mountains, a woman photographer captured for thirty years the life of the rural people. After she died, a box with thousands of negatives was found under her bed. A mystical journey of connecting the past with the present starts. In capturing the authentic life of the mountains people the film tells life stories of the forgotten region of the Carpathian.

  • Maksym Rudenko
    Director
  • Maksym Rudenko
    Writer
  • Andriy Granytsia
    Producer
  • Petro Tsymbal
    Editor
  • Svyatoslav Lunyov
    Music
  • Maksym Rudenko
    Cinematographer
  • Oleg Goloveshkin
    Sound
  • Project Title (Original Language):
    Портрет на тлі гір
  • Project Type:
    Documentary, Experimental
  • Runtime:
    1 hour 24 minutes
  • Completion Date:
    February 1, 2019
  • Production Budget:
    39,000 EUR
  • Country of Origin:
    Ukraine
  • Country of Filming:
    Ukraine
  • Language:
    Ukrainian
  • Shooting Format:
    Digital
  • Aspect Ratio:
    2.39:1
  • Film Color:
    Color
  • First-time Filmmaker:
    No
  • Student Project:
    No
Director Biography - Maksym Rudenko

Maksym Rudenko was born in Mykolaiv (Ukraine) in 1975. He studied photography and visual arts at the Academy of Classical Photography. In 2009 he graduated from the School of Cinema and Television, where he studied documentary film directing (workshop of Marina Razbiezhkina).

Continued to study cinema art at Gerasimov State Institute of Cinematography (VGIK / Russia), cinematography department (class of Igor Klebanov), graduated in 2015. After graduation, returned to Ukraine, worked as cinematographer in feature and documentary films.

In 2016 I participated in the documentary workshop "Młodzi o młodych" ("Young about Ukraine").

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Director Statement

Two years ago I arrived in the village of Kryvorivnya. This is the Carpathian village, where Sergei Parajanov shot his famous film Shadows of Forgotten Ancestors. In Kryvorivnya I accidentally visited the house of Paraska Plytka-Gorytsvit. She was a local artist, poet and photographer. It's her photos that interested me. For 30 years Paraska shot people and the place, where she lived. Later I found a box with this woman's film negatives. It was a mixture of sand, clay and hundreds of films. Film negatives lay in the box for years, and were subjected to the influence of time and mold. I organized the project to restore these films (https://www.facebook.com/ParaskaPlytkaHorytsvit/). After the restoration and scanning, thousands of portraits of nonexisting people from the past era and a whole layer of history of the Hutsul village Kryvorivnya appeared.
In the process of identifying people on the photos I found, I travelled a lot and talked with the residents of the village. Among them I found several interesting personalities. They became the heroes of my film.