Festival location

The Museum of Architecture and Everyday Life “Old Village”, Kolochava village, Khust district, Transcarpathian region

A special event deserves a special place. That is why we chose the open-air museum “Old Village” in Kolochava, where the soul of Transcarpathia is reverently preserved through an exhibition of local architecture and everyday life. Houses of the hillfolk of the early 20th century, antique interiors and utensils, huts of the poor, shoemakers, shepherds, a church-parish school, a village bathhouse, a Hungarian gendarmerie station, and even a Jewish tavern — these living fragments of the past are collected in an open-air museum on the banks of the Kolochava River, among the green hills of the Carpathian Mountains.

One of the gems of this place is the exhibition “Kolochava Narrow-Gauge Railway,” where a steam locomotive reminds us of journeys through mountains and valleys, of movement and time that never stands still.

However,very special for us was the exhibition about the cinematic past of Kolochava, where a film was shot back in the 1930s, the film “Mariika the Unfaithful.”

It was created by three artists: Czech writer Ivan Olbracht, screenwriter Karel Nový, and director Vladyslav Vančura. The film perfectly conveys the authenticity of that time: folk customs, clothing, dialect, dances, and songs, and in general, the life of the hillfolk in Transcarpathia, then Subcarpathian Rus, its diversity, and multinational culture.

The film was shot in Kolochava, dubbed in Prague at the Barrandov Studios, and then shown in Uzhhorod, Mukachevo, Khust, and Kolochava. However, the film “Mariyka-Nevirnytsia” received recognition only 76 years later at the festival of archival and restored films in Bologna. Then the film won in the nomination “Best Rediscovered Film.”

The museum cares not only about culture but also about nature. Every spring, the Old Village is covered in purple flowers crocuses. Heifell’s crocus is on the verge of extinction and is listed in the Red Book of Ukraine, but in Kolochava the flower is under close supervision and carefully protected.