Babylon XX (1979)
- Original title
- Вавилон ХХ
- Directed by
- Ivan Mykolaichuk
- Genre
- drama film
- Country
- Soviet Union
- Runtime
- 1h 40m
- Rating
- 3.6 of 10 from 8 voters
- Elsewhere
- IMDb
The catalogue in 3D
The film shelves have a room of their own that you can walk around in. The cat behind the counter is the AI Catbot, and they pick real films from the same catalogue when you tell them what you feel like watching. Nothing is for sale, here or in there. Go in from here and this film is already out on the counter, with more like it waiting on the shelf next to it.
How it feels
Peasants in a 1920s Ukrainian village struggle to adjust to life in a new commune run by a Soviet sailor. The film shows the clashes and hardships that come with the forced shift from old ways to collective farming.
melancholicslow-burnearthysomberhistoricalpoeticfatalisticreflective
What happens
Babylon XX (Russian: «Вавилон XX», romanized: Vavilon XX; Ukrainian: «Вавілон XX», romanized: Vavilon XX) is a 1979 Ukrainian film of Dovzhenko Film Studios directed by Ivan Mykolaichuk in his directorial debut and starring an ensemble cast including Mykolaichuk, Lyubov Polishchuk, and Les Serdyuk as peasants struggling to adapt to life within a commune led by Soviet sailor Klym Synytsia (played by Ivan Havryliuk). It is a loose film adaptation of the 1971 novel A Flock of Swans by Vasyl Zemliak, and depicts collectivization in the Ukrainian Soviet Socialist Republic and the transition from capitalism to communism in Ukraine. Babylon XX had a troubled production history, with both a part-time film crew and a backdrop of Soviet repressions on Ukrainian freedom of expression; Ukrainian poetic cinema, the movement to which Babylon XX belonged, was formally banned, and A Flock of Swans itself had been threatened to be banned. The film's production took two years before premiering at the 1979 Kyiv International Film Festival "Molodist" to critical acclaim, being awarded the festival's main prize. Since its release, the film has come to be seen as one of the greatest Ukrainian films of all time. It is tenth on the list of the 100 best films in the history of Ukrainian cinema created by the National Oleksandr Dovzhenko Film Centre, and has been described as a classic of Ukrainian poetic cinema by the Ukrainian State Film Agency. (from Wikipedia, CC BY-SA)
More like this
Siberiade (1979)
Early Cranes (1979)
Other People's Company (1979)
September Vacation (1979)
A Taste of Bread (1979)
Nakts bez putniem (1979)
The Grasshopper (1979)
A Strip of Uncut Wild Flowers (1979)- More like this film, on a shelf you can walk up to.It's the lit case on the top shelf.