1.
Baba Yaga (film)
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Baba Yaga is a 1973 horror film directed by Corrado Farina and based on the Guido Crepaxs Valentina comic series. The film stars Carroll Baker, Isabelle De Funès and George Eastman and it is about a Milanese photographer Valentina Rosselli who meets a middle-aged seductress who calls herself Baba Yaga. She shows a sexual interest in Valentina and gives her a doll dressed in leather fetish wear. It is soon revealed that Baba Yaga has started to control Valentina through the doll, Valentina Rosselli is a Milanese photographer with a knack for controversial shoots. Her friend and lover, Arno, is a director, One night, on her way home, Valentina gets struck by a car driven by a middle-aged blonde. She introduces herself as Baba Yaga and tells Valentina their meeting was pre-ordained, after she drives Valentina home, she snatches the clip from her garter belt, saying she needs a personal object from her and that she will return it tomorrow. Intrigued and disturbed Valentina crashes for the night and has a series of strange, as promised, Baba Yaga returns Valentinas garter clip the next day. She fondles a camera Valentina uses and invites her to her old home to some photographs. Valentina visits the house where she is given doll dressed in bondage gear. Valentinas life suddenly becomes full of strange occurrences, after discovering Baba Yaga is somehow responsible for that, Valentina decides to go back to her house and confront her. Crepax had previously done work with Tinto Brass who commissioned him to the storyboards for his thriller film Deadly Sweet. Director Corrado Farina had admired Crepaxs work, going as for to make a documentary film Freud a fumetti which explored his comics. Farina decided to explore the elements of Crepaxs comics opposed to the more erotic overtones. During pre-production Farina signed a deal with producer Turi Vasile, which lead him to Franco Committeri who later took over for Vasile as the financial backer. Farina made changes to the script by removing the character Philip Rembrandt and turning a small character in the comic, after finishing the script, Committeri left the project after the release of Marco Bellocchios Slap the Monster on Page One. Farina had to find a new producer, and eventually signed with a company called 14 luglio Cinematografica, a French film production company is also credited, but this was predominantly done for tax reasons. The French connections eventually led to the casting of Isabelle De Funès as Valentina, Farina was not happy with her in the role, as his first choice had been Elsa Martinelli and eventually had to choose between De Funès and Stefania Casini. The director initially had wanted the popular Italian singer Ornella Vanoni as the role of Baba Yaga in the film and he eventually cast Anne Heywood who left the project as shooting began
2.
Ivan Bilibin
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Throughout his career, he was inspired by Slavic folklore. Ivan Bilibin was born in Tarkhovka, a suburb of St. Petersburg and he studied in 1898 at Anton Ažbe Art School in Munich, then under Ilya Repin in St. Petersburg. After graduating in May 1900 he went to Munich, where he completed his training with the painter Anton Ažbe, in 1902–1904 Bilibin travelled in the Russian North, where he became fascinated with old wooden architecture and Russian folklore. He published his findings in the monograph Folk Arts of the Russian North in 1904, another influence on his art was traditional Japanese prints. Artistic design of magazines such as Dog Rose and expenditure of the Moscow publishing house followed. Bilibin gained renown in 1899, when he released his illustrations of Russian fairy tales, during the Russian Revolution of 1905, he drew revolutionary cartoons, especially for the magazine Župel, which in 1906 became prohibited. He would further serve as the designer for the 1909 première production of Nikolai Rimsky-Korsakovs The Golden Cockerel, after the October Revolution in 1917, he left Russia after the revolution proved alien to him. After brief stints in Cairo and Alexandria, he settled in Paris in 1925 and he still longed for his homeland and, after decorating the Soviet Embassy in 1936, he returned to Soviet Russia, delivering lectures at the Russian Academy of Arts until 1941. Bilibin died during the Siege of Leningrad and was buried in a collective grave, in 1902 he Bilibin married his former student, the painter Marija Jakovlevna Tschembers. They had two sons, Alexander and Ivan, in 1912 he again married a former student, the art school graduate Renée Rudolfowna OKonnel. In 1923 he married the painter Alexandra Vasilyevna Schtschekatichina-Potozkaja, with whom he had a joint exhibition in Amsterdam in 1929, works of Ivan Bilibin at Cascadia Graphics Ivan Yakovlevich Bilibin at the Wayback Machine at www. scumdog. demon. co. uk
3.
Historical Slavic religion
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Slavic mythology is the mythological aspect of the polytheistic religion that was practised by the Slavs before Christianisation. Unlike ancient Greek, Hindu, Chinese or Egyptian mythology, there are no records for the study of Slavic mythology. It has not been proven that the Slavs had any sort of writing system before the arrival of Saints Cyril, fragments of old mythological beliefs and pagan festivals survive up to this day in folk customs, songs, stories and folk-tales of all the Slavic nations. Although Herodotus is himself not convinced by this rumour, he stresses that he has heard some swear it, the identification of Neuri with Proto-Slavs remains controversial, however. According to Procopius, these Slavs worshipped a single deity, who crafted lightning, though not named explicitly, it can be deduced this is a reference to the deity known as Perun in later historic sources, as in many Slavic languages today. Perun simply means thunder or lightning bolt and he also mentions the belief in various demons and nymphs, but does not mention any other names. The Slavic Primary Chronicle is a work with many valuable references to the pagan beliefs of Eastern Slavs. The chronicle treats the history of the early Eastern Slavic state, even though the manuscript was compiled at the beginning of the 12th century, it contains references to and copies of older documents, and describes events predating the Baptism of Kiev. Two deities, Perun and Veles/Volos, are mentioned in the text of the early 10th century peace treaties between pagan rulers of East Slavs and Byzantine Emperors, later, Nestor the Chronicler describes a state pantheon introduced by Prince Vladimir in Kiev in 980 CE. Vladimirs pantheon included Perun, Hors, Dažbog, Stribog, Simargl, the Hypatian Codex of the Primary Chronicle also mentions Svarog, compared to Greek Hephaestus. Also very interesting are the passages in the East Slavic epic The Tale of Igors Campaign referring to Veles, Dažbog, the original epic has been dated to the end of the 12th century, although there are marginal disputes over the authenticity of this work. The most numerous and richest written records are of West Slavic paganism, particularly of Wendish and Polabian tribes, the German missionaries and priests who criticized pagan religion left extensive records of old mythological systems they sought to overcome. However, they restrained themselves from pious lies, claiming pagan Slavs were idolatrous. As none of those missionaries learned any Slavic language, their records are confused and exaggerated, major works include a chronicle of Thietmar of Merseburg from the beginning of the 11th century, who described a temple in the city of Riedegost where the great deity Zuarasic was worshipped. According to Thietmar, this was the most sacred place in the land of pagan Slavs, another very valuable document is the Chronica Slavorum written in the late 12th century by Helmold, a German priest. Saxo meticulously described the worship of Svantevit, the associated with it. He also mentioned multi-headed deities of other Slavic tribes, Rugievit, Porewit, according to the manuscript, the most important Slavic deity was Triglav, whose temples in the city of Szczecin were respected oracles. In the cities of Wolgast and Havelberg, the war god Gerovit was worshiped, a corruption of Jarovit
4.
Mortar and pestle
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A pestle and mortar is a kitchen device used since ancient times to prepare ingredients or substances by crushing and grinding them into a fine paste or powder. The mortar is a bowl, typically made of hard wood, the pestle is a heavy and blunt club-shaped object, the end of which is used for crushing and grinding. The substance to be ground is placed in the mortar and ground, mortars and pestles have been used in cooking up to the present day, they are frequently also associated with the profession of pharmacy due to their historical use in preparing medicines. They can also be used in masonry and in types of construction. Scientists have found ancient mortars and pestles that date back to approximately 35,000 B. C, the English word mortar derives from classical Latin mortarium, meaning, among several other usages, receptacle for pounding and product of grinding or pounding. The classical Latin pistillum, meaning pounder, led to English pestle, the Roman poet Juvenal applied both mortarium and pistillum to articles used in the preparation of drugs, reflecting the early use of the mortar and pestle as a symbol of a pharmacist or apothecary. The antiquity of these tools is well documented in writing, such as the Egyptian Ebers Papyrus of ~1550 BCE. Mortars and pestles were used in pharmacies to crush various ingredients prior to preparing an extemporaneous prescription. The mortar and pestle, with the Rod of Asclepius, the Orange Cross, for pharmaceutical use, the mortar and the head of the pestle are usually made of porcelain, while the handle of the pestle is made of wood. This is known as a Wedgwood mortar and pestle and originated in 1759, today the act of mixing ingredients or reducing the particle size is known as trituration. Mortars and pestles are used as drug paraphernalia to grind up pills to speed up absorption when they are ingested. Mortars are also used in cooking to prepare ingredients such as guacamole, gazpacho and pesto, the molcajete, a version used by pre-Hispanic Mesoamerican cultures including the Aztec and Maya, stretching back several thousand years, is made of basalt and is used widely in Mexican cooking. Other Native American nations use mortars carved into the bedrock to grind acorns, many such depressions can be found in their territories. In Japan, very large mortars are used with wooden mallets to prepare mochi, a regular sized Japanese mortar and pestle are called a suribachi and surikogi, respectively. Granite mortars and pestles are used in Southeast Asia, as well as Pakistan, in India, it is used extensively to make spice mixtures for various delicacies as well as day to day dishes. With the advent of motorized grinders, use of the mortar and it is traditional in various Hindu ceremonies to crush turmeric in these mortars. In Malay, it is known as batu lesung, large stone mortars, with long wood pestles were used in West Asia to grind meat for a type of meatloaf, or kibbeh, as well as the hummus variety known as masabcha. In Indonesia and the Netherlands mortar is known as Cobek or Tjobek and it is often used to make fresh sambal, a spicy chili condiment, hence the sambal ulek/oelek denote its process using pestle
5.
Vladimir Propp
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Vladimir Yakovlevich Propp was a Soviet folklorist and scholar who analyzed the basic plot components of Russian folk tales to identify their simplest irreducible narrative elements. Vladimir Propp was born on April 17,1895 in Saint Petersburg to a German family and he attended Saint Petersburg University, majoring in Russian and German philology. Upon graduation he taught Russian and German at a secondary school and his Morphology of the Folktale was published in Russian in 1928. His character types are used in education and can be applied to almost any story, be it in literature, theatre, film, television series, games. In 1932, Propp became a member of Leningrad University faculty, after 1938, he chaired the Department of Folklore until it became part of the Department of Russian Literature. Propp remained a faculty member until his death in 1970, Morphology of the Tale was translated into English in 1958 and 1968. It was also translated into Italian and Polish in 1966, French and Romanian in 1970, Spanish in 1971, historical Roots of the Wonder Tale was translated into Italian in 1949 and 1972, Spanish in 1974, and French, Romanian and Japanese in 1983. Oedipus in the light of folklore was translated into Italian in 1975, Russian Agrarian Feasts was translated into French in 1987. Vladimir Propp broke up fairy tales into sections, through these sections he was able to define the tale into a series of sequences that occurred within the Russian fairytale. Usually there is a situation, after which the tale usually takes the following 31 functions. Vladimir Propp used this method to decipher Russian folklore and fairy tales, first of all, there seems to be at least two distinct types of structural analysis in folklore. If a tale consists of elements A to Z, the structure of the tale is thus delineated in the same sequence, the other type of analysis is termed paradigmatic, and describes instead the underlying pattern of the folkloric text, independent of chronology. Elements of the plot may be out of their given order. Respectively equivalent to syntagmatic and paradigmatic are the terms diachronic and synchronic, diachronic covers the sort of analysis that conveys a sense of traversing the highs and lows of a story, like riding the pattern of a sine wave. The second term, synchronic, is where the story is instead absorbed as a whole, most literary analyses are synchronic, offering a greater sense of unity among the components of a story. Although both structural analyses convey partial information about the story, each angle of analysis delivers a different set of information. After the initial situation is depicted, the tale takes the following sequence of 31 functions, ABSENTATION and this may be the hero themselves, or it may be some other relation that the hero must later rescue. This division of the cohesive family injects initial tension into the storyline and this may serve as the Heros introduction, typically portraying them as an ordinary person
6.
Donor (fairy tale)
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In fairy tales, a donor is a character that tests the hero and provides magical assistance to the hero when he succeeds. The fairy godmother is a form of this character. Many other supernatural patrons feature in fairy tales, these various kinds of animals. In his analysis of fairy tales, Vladimir Propp identified this role as the donor, before giving the hero magical support or advice, the donor may also test the hero, by questioning him, setting him tasks, or making requests of him. Then, the donor may directly give the hero a magical agent, advise him on how to find one, if the character itself acts on behalf of the hero, it also takes on the role of helper in Propps analysis. Because a donor is defined by acts, other characters may fill the role, even the villain, conversely, the donor of Rumpelstiltskin converts himself into the villain by demanding the heroines baby as the price of his work. In Grimms Fairy Tales, the hero often meets the vital helper in the woods, when more than one character attempts the tasks, such as when the youngest son sets out last, all of them commonly met the donor. It is through failing in the test that the sons are marked out as not being the hero, only the youngest son passes the test. There may be three donors, distinguished by the fact that the first two are unable to help and so send him on to the next. A common motif, as in Farmer Weathersky, is one can consult all the beasts, the next all the fish, the third all the birds. In other cases, each of the three may give the hero or heroine something, but only the third has the necessary to them. The characters of donors are numerous, Fairy godmothers were added to Sleeping Beauty by Perrault, no such figures appeared in his source, Sole, Luna, e Talia by Giambattista Basile. In the Grimm Brothers variant of Cinderella, the protagonist is aided not by her fairy godmother but by her mother, as is the heroine of the Finnish variant. A great variety of figures may also take this place. In East of the Sun and West of the Moon, the heroine is given gifts by three old women she meets on the way. Heroes seldom have actual fairy godmothers, but similar figures are common, each one has an ability, such as seeing things miles off, hearing things miles off, an extraordinary shot, ability to drink a river, or others that allow them to fulfill the heros tasks. Talking animals are often the heros helpers, perhaps more than any other type, the most common motivation of the animals is gratitude, after protection, receiving food, or settling a quarrel between several animals. In another variation, featured in The Three Enchanted Princes and The Death of Koschei the Deathless and these prove to be shape-shifted men, who aid their brother-in-law in a variant of tale types
7.
Villain
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A villain is an evil character in a story, whether a historical narrative or, especially, a work of fiction. The villain usually is the antagonist, the character who tends to have an effect on other characters. A female villain is called a villainess. It referred to a person of less than knightly status and so came to mean a person who was not chivalrous, the villain therefore could appear twice, once in the opening of the story, and a second time as the person sought out by the hero. When a character performed only these acts, the character was a pure villain, the functions could also be spread out among several characters. If a dragon acted as the villain, but was killed by the hero, another character might take on the role of the villain, two other characters could appear in roles that are villainous in the more general sense. One is the hero, this character is always villainous. Among these characters are Cinderellas stepsisters, chopping off parts of their feet to fit on the shoe, another character, the dispatcher, sends a hero on his quest. This might be an innocent request, to fulfil a legitimate need, in fiction, villains commonly function in the dual role of adversary and foil to the storys heroes. In their role as adversary, the villain serves as an obstacle the hero must struggle to overcome, in their role as foil, the villain exemplifies characteristics that are diametrically opposed to those of the hero, creating a contrast distinguishing heroic traits from villainous ones. Others point out many acts of villains have a hint of wish-fulfillment. Because of this, a convincing villain must be given a characterization that provides a motive for doing wrong, as put by film critic Roger Ebert, Each film is only as good as its villain. Since the heroes and the gimmicks tend to repeat from film to film, tod Slaughter always portrayed villainous characters on both stage and screen in a melodramatic manner, with mustache-twirling, eye-rolling, leering, cackling, and hand-rubbing. Brad Warner states that only cartoon villains cackle with glee while rubbing their hands together and dream of ruling the world in the name of all that is wicked, ben Bova recommends to authors that their works not contain villains. He states, in his Tips for writers, In the real world there are no villains, no one actually sets out to do evil. Or, more accurately, fiction serves as a lens to focus of what they know in life, there are no villains cackling and rubbing their hands in glee as they contemplate their evil deeds. There are only people with problems, struggling to solve them, david Lubar adds, This is a brilliant observation that has served me well in all my writing. He may be driven by greed, neuroses, or the conviction that his cause is just, in an attempt to add realism to their stories, many writers will try to create sympathetic villains, the antithesis to an antihero called a antivillain
8.
East Slavic languages
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The East Slavic languages constitute one of three regional subgroups of Slavic languages, currently spoken in Eastern Europe. It is the group with the largest numbers of speakers, far out-numbering the Western and Southern Slavic groups, the existing East Slavic languages are Belarusian, Russian and Ukrainian, Rusyn is considered to be either a separate language or a dialect of Ukrainian. The East Slavic languages descend from a predecessor, the language of the medieval Kievan Rus. All these languages use the Cyrillic script, but with particular modifications, the East Slavic territory shows a definite linguistic continuum with many transitional dialects. Between Belarusian and Ukrainian there is the Polesian dialect, which shares features from both languages, East Polesian is a transitional variety between Belarusian and Ukrainian on the one hand, and between South Russian and Ukrainian on the other hand. At the same time, Belarusian and Southern Russian form a continuous area, central or Middle Russian, the transitional step between the North and the South, became a base for the Russian literary standard. Northern Russian with its predecessor, the Old Novgorod dialect, has many original, as well, existing several centuries within the Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth, Belarusian and Ukrainian share many common elements, lexical and grammatical above all. Therefore, a crucial differentiation has to be made between the history of the East Slavic dialects and that of the literary languages employed by the Eastern Slavs. In both cases one has to keep in mind that the history of the East Slavic languages is of course a history of written texts and we do not know how the writers of the preserved texts would have spoken in everyday life. After the conversion of the East Slavic region to Christianity the people used service books borrowed from Bulgaria, the Church Slavonic language was strictly used only in text, while the colloquial language of the Bulgarians was communicated in its spoken form. Church Slavonic was a factor in the evolution of modern Russian. All of these languages are today separate in their own right, in the Russian Empire the official view was that the Belarusian, Ukrainian, and Russian languages were dialects of one common Russian language. In the course of the 20th century, Great Russian came to be known as Russian proper, Little Russian as Ukrainian, comrie, Bernard, Corbett, Greville G, eds. Media related to East Slavic languages at Wikimedia Commons
9.
Old Russian
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Old East Slavic, Old Ruthenian, Old Rusian was a language used in the 10th–15th centuries by East Slavs in Kievan Rus and states which evolved after the collapse of Kievan Rus. Dialects of it were spoken, though not exclusively, in the area occupied by Belarus, central and northern Ukraine. Linguists from each of the three East Slavic countries tend to treat Old East Slavic as the predecessor of their own language. The Russian drevnerusskij jazyk means Old Rus’ian as well, Rusian is similarly used by some western scholars such as Horace Lunt. The language was a descendant of the Proto-Slavic language and faithfully retained many of its features, a striking innovation in the evolution of this language was the development of so-called pleophony, which came to differentiate the newly evolving East Slavic from other Slavic dialects. For instance, Common Slavic *gordъ settlement, town was reflected as OESl. gorodъ, Common Slavic *melko milk > OESl. moloko, other Slavic dialects are differed by resolving the closed-syllable clusters *eRC and *aRC as liquid metathesis, or by no change at all. Since extant written records of the language are sparse, it is difficult to assess the level of its unity, in consideration of the number of tribes and clans that constituted Kievan Rus, it is probable that there were many dialects of Old East Slavonic. Nonetheless, by 1150 it had more unity than any other branch of Slavic, with time, it evolved into several more diversified forms, which were the predecessors of the modern Belarusian, Russian, Rusyn and Ukrainian languages. The Ukrainian branch split away first, between 1200 and 1500, whereas Russian later separated from Belarusian by 1700, each of these languages preserves much of the Old East Slavic grammar and vocabulary. The Old Church Slavonic language was introduced, documentation of the language of this period is scanty, making it difficult at best fully to determine the relationship between the literary language and its spoken dialects. There are references in Arab and Byzantine sources to pre-Christian Slavs in European Russia using some form of writing, although the Glagolitic alphabet was briefly introduced, as witnessed by church inscriptions in Novgorod, it was soon entirely superseded by the Cyrillic. The following excerpts illustrate two of the most famous literary monuments, the spelling of the original excerpt has been partly modernized. The translations are best attempts at being literal, not literary,1110, from the Laurentian Codex,1377, Early language, fall of the yers in progress or arguably complete. South Slavic features include времѧньнъıх bygone, modern R прошлых, modern Ukr минулих, correct use of perfect and aorist, єсть пошла is/has come, нача began Note the style of punctuation. 1200, from the Pskov manuscript, fifteenth cent, illustrates the sung epics, with typical use of metaphor and simile. The Old East Slavic language developed a certain literature of its own, though much of it was influenced as regards style, the earliest dated specimen of Old East Slavic must be considered the written Slovo o zakone i blagodati, by Hilarion, metropolitan of Kiev. In this work there is a panegyric on Prince Vladimir of Kiev and this subtle and graceful oration admirably conforms to the precepts of the Byzantine eloquence. It is rivalled by another panegyric on Vladimir, written a decade later by Yakov the Monk, from the writings of Theodosius we see that many pagan habits were still in vogue among the people
