The National Ecology of the Carpathians in Soviet Ukrainian Cinema: Between Hutsul Ethnography and the Magic of the Mountains

Abstract

This article frames the Carpathian Mountains in Ukrainian cinema within a broader discourse of “mountains and meaning,” both within Soviet Ukraine, and within global nationalisms during the first half of the 20th century. Within this discourse, mountains are simultaneously transcendent spaces imbibed with religious and national meaning, but also spaces of commerce and tourism. This article examines the intersections of those spaces in three different eras of Ukrainian cinema, during the Second World War; the post-war era; and the 1960s. I ground these films in global processes of mountain fetishism, within which the mountains move between containment and porousness.