A concert film dedicated to the State Academic Folk Choir of the Ukrainian SSR “Dumka.” Among the works performed by the ensemble are “The Eternal Revolutionary” (lyrics by Ivan Franko, music by Mykola Lysenko), “The Water Flows” (lyrics by Taras Shevchenko, music by Borys Liatoshynskyi), “Dudaryk” and “Shchedryk”, also known as “Carrol of the Bells” (arranged by Mykola Leontovych), “Italian Polka” (by Sergey Rachmaninoff), “It Roars and Rumbles” (arranged by Hryhorii Veriovka), “The Nightingale” (lyrics and music by Marko Kropyvnytsky), “Above the Dnipro” (lyrics by Pavlo Tychyna, music by Herman Zhukovsky), “The Fog Has Fallen” (arranged by N. Poltavtsev), and “Praise to the Communist Party” (lyrics by V. Leftiy, music by Arkadii Filipenko). Each performance is given its own visual treatment, developed by the director as a distinct dramatic episode.

Drawing on Ukrainian folk material, Sergei Paradjanov weaves sculpture, painting, and lyrically shot landscapes into the concert numbers—landscapes in which the flow of a river rhymes with the swaying of the singing chorus. During one of the compositions, trees begin to bloom right in the studio. Behind the camera, Paradjanov is assisted by Oleksii Pankratiev, a distinguished Ukrainian cinematographer of the silent era who had worked with Mykola Shpykovskyi on “Bread” and “Self-Seeker”. Yet the director lacks experience—and, more critically, freedom. The film is made on commission for the Kyiv Television Studio, and features not only Ukrainian classical works but songs intended to promote the friendship of the Ukrainian and Russian peoples and the leading role of the Communist Party.

After the success of “Shadows of Forgotten Ancestors”, Paradjanov wrote triumphantly in his article “Eternal Motion” in the journal “Iskusstvo kino” (The Art of Cinema) that in “Shadows” he had managed to transform song material into action and action into song—something he had been unable to achieve when filming “Dumka”, which he described as one of the steps in his “eternal motion.”

The film was scanned by the Film Laboratory of the Dovzhenko Centre in 2024.