https://youtu.be/T3OJVMuHwcU

• Title is Vesna, Весна, a Ukrainian word that means Spring. It’s pretty directly and obviously related to the PIE (Proto-Indo-European) *wósr̥ (“spring” — the final “r” is nasalized, thus the “n”)… We have the word vernal in English, which has a common source… But! Vernal now means summer; it used to mean spring. I assume it’s just “weather is warmer!” This sort of thing happens.
• Song lyrics, with my translation. The folk song is in “Ukrainian” — in a dialectical version, and one that’s presumably really old. It celebrates life and work. Like all folksongs, it uses demotic speech, not “fancy” elevated language — e.g., the word весняночка, which is a portmanteau of “spring” and “night.” I don’t speak Ukrainian, but I do know proto-Slavic (what became modern Russian and Ukrainian) and I can use Wiktionary. I basically treated the lyrics like they were Polish, and it helped. So here’s my attempt at translating it, with commentary. I’m sure it’s got mistakes. C’est la vie.
• Cinematography: Someone’s been watching too much Parajanov! The first minute is using camera work I associate with horror films — cameras hidden behind the trees, waist level, faces of actors are obscured. The horror trope returns at the end, and that whole swirling trees thing — a quote from Летят журавли, the Soviet movie directed by Kalatozov. The second few minutes — a pastiche of Ukrainian cities. I recognize Kharkiv and Kiev. Very Man with a Moviecamera! A day in the life of “city.” Note the quick shot of a movie poster, in English, advertising the film Solaris, a Soviet film from the early 70s based on a novel by Stanisław Lem (the Polish writer of “science fiction” novels) and directed by my heart throb, Tarkovsky. Someone took a film class. This video makes obvious citations of four of the great Soviet directors: Parajanov, Kalatozov, Dziga Vertov, and Tarkovsky.
• The dancing is excellent — the guy in the skullcap is professional, everyone else is just, you know, moving. The woman in the black dress and braid might be a professional, in any case, she’s very good. The cop is totally a cop, but the dude has some moves. I think they are all (except the cop…. he's doing his own thing) folk dancing with moves taken from the хоровод. That word is part of a system — the root is хор, a Greek word that gives English “choir.” So, the dance is usually done as a group, in a circle… in the video, everyone is dancing by themselves. Draw your own conclusions.
• Music: Mostly rhythm, like all great dance songs. Two accordions is way better than one.
• The video was shot in 2010, but the empty chairs at the end, and the song in a park (I know this park!) make this, unexpectedly, an anti-war song. Cue Lotman’s theory of signals.