The place of Ukraine in Mark Donskoi’s “The Rainbow”

This article argues that Mark Donskoi’s 1944 film “The Rainbow”, made at the evacuated Kyiv film studios in Turkmenistan, gains an enormous amount when seen as a Ukrainian film. While the Odesa-born Donskoi is usually associated with his work at the Gor’kii film studios in Moscow, The Rainbow is one of a number of films he made at Kyiv studios, and one that is particularly productive when seen in the light of its ambiguous relation to Ukraine. On the one hand, Donskoi’s film is indicative of what Yuri Shevchuk has called ‘imperial appropriation’ and treats Ukrainian linguistic and cultural identity as a subset of Russian; on the other hand, through the evocation of the location of Ukraine, the casting and performance of celebrated Ukrainian actor Nataliia Uzhvii, the homage to the poetics of Oleksandr Dovzhenko, and the poignant if inadvertent relevance of the subtextual commentary about occupation and resistance, Donskoi created a film that enriches Ukrainian film history, and is at the same time enriched by being seen in this context.