Images of Women in Ukrainian Poetic Cinema: Metamorphoses of Femininity

Abstract

The relevance of the research topic is to address the archetypal foundations of femaleimages in poetic cinema films, to consider the factors that bring the characters of the analysed films out of the depths of the national consciousness. Ukrainian screen culture is currently in search of the main types of screen characters, in the creation of new behavioural traits of heroes and heroines, as well as in the actualisation of symbolic and metaphorical features of the images of Ukrainian poetic cinema. The study object is the female characters in the films of Ukrainian poetic cinema of the 1960s and 1970s. The study aims to identify signs of transformation of archetypal foundations of female characters in the films of Ukrainian poetic cinema. The study analyses the feminine traits of the characters in the films of Ukrainian poetic cinema, identifies similar figurative and metaphorical features of the analysed female characters, and considers the socio-cultural context of the era under which the films were created. The main methods are aimed at understanding the historical process during which the cultural and ideological foundations of Ukrainian poetic cinema were laid. In this regard, the article uses such research approaches as: historical and genetic, cultural, art historical, comparative, and others. Among the researchers of poetic cinema of Ukraine whose works are used in the article are the following: O. Bryukhovetska, I. Zubavina, H. Pohrebniak, O. Musienko, and others. The results of the study focus on the phenomenon of poetic cinema, which included female characters, because through feminine characteristics, directors increasingly boldly promoted the idea of the political and cultural fate of Ukraine, its peculiarities. In these images, the directors encoded their reflections on the colonial past and the colonial present.