A Spring for the Thirsty

An old man living alone in the sand, with nothing left but his memories and his photographs. Nobody comes any more to the well that once gave water to thirsty passers-by. When the memories stop consoling him, he turns every photograph to face the wall. It was Yuri Illienko’s first film, from a screenplay by Ivan Drach. It comes in five parts and is nearly silent, with sound used very sparingly and the whole account carried by images that stand for something else. The film was finished in 1965 and banned at once by a decision of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of Ukraine, the stated reason being ideological deviation, with the costs written off as a loss. It reached a screen only in 1987. It now sits twenty-first on the list of the hundred best Ukrainian films.