History of the Malanka Festival

National Television and Radio Company of Ukraine, 2009.

The television film "The Malanka Festival" is dedicated to the history of folk traditions of the theatrical performance of Malanka on New Year's Eve and the Day of St. Basil the Great.

On the video: the Malanka Festival in the village of Pistyn, Ivano-Frankivsk region, residents of the Hutsul village talk about the traditions of the celebration; filming of a traditional folk mystery, a story about the origins of the ritualized pre-Christian performance; masks, different plans, the history of the use of masks; the history of families in the village of Pistyn, home photo archives; a priest's story about the combination of pagan and Christian beliefs, a carol, singing "Oh, rejoice, earth...".

Comments: residents of the village of Pistyn Orysia Tomyna, Oksana Zimyak, Vasyl Kravchuk, Taras Beisyk; Doctor of Historical Sciences, Professor Oleksandr Kurochkin; Candidate of Philological Sciences, PhD candidate Olena Chebanyuk; Doctor of Historical Sciences, ethnologist Olga Poritska; Priest Oleksandr Vasyliev; Priest Oleksandr Vasyliev's daughter Melania Vasyliev.

Reference: Malanka is a Ukrainian winter holiday associated with the Generous Evening and New Year's Eve, centered on generosity, masquerade parades with dressing up as folklore characters (Malanka, Vasyl, grandfather, goat, gypsy, etc.) and wishes for prosperity for the hosts. It is based on pre-Christian agrarian-magical rites (masking, ritual parades, "driving a goat", plow, wishes for a harvest) with the Christian day of Saint Melania and Saint Basil. In authentic forms, the Malanka rite is best preserved in the villages of Galicia, Bukovina, Podillia, partly Transnistria, and some areas of Vinnytsia and Bessarabia.