#BABA YAGA MOVIE#

'Baba Yaga still remains one of the most ambiguous, cunning, and clever women of folklore,' says Ryan. What lifts Baba Yaga above the usual two-dimensional witches of folklore is her duality, sometimes as an almost-heroine, sometimes as a villain, and her rich, earthy evocation of womanhood. 'The essence of Baba Yaga exists in many cultures and many stories, and symbolises the unpredictable and untameable nature of the female spirit, of Mother Earth, and the relationship of women to the wild,' says Ryan. She's certainly associated with the woods and forests, and the wildness of nature.

In fact, the origins of Baba Yaga might go back far further than the 17th Century - there's a school of scholarly thought that says she's a Slavic analogue of the Greek deity Persephone, goddess of spring and nature. While most girls my age were growing up with nicely sanitised Disney version princesses, I preferred the stories by Brothers Grimm, Charles Perrault, and Hans Christian Andersen – and, of course, in the books of Slavic fairytale and folklore that talked of Baba Yaga.' 'My Russian stepmother emigrated to the United States shortly after the fall of the Soviet Union,' says Ryan, 'and along with my stepsister and step-babushka, she brought borscht, matryoshka dolls, and Baba Yaga. So how did an American end up fascinated by this Slavic myth? Into the Forest is edited by Lindy Ryan, a writer and full-time professor of data science and visual analytics at Rutgers University, New Brunswick, New Jersey who is also the founder of Into the Forest's publisher Black Spot Books, a small press dedicated to female horror writers. 'She seems to have her own life outside of the story, which so few fairy tale characters do.” ' felt she was the most interesting of all the witches, and felt that way even more when I read some of the Russian stories in which she appears,' he says. He tells BBC Culture he first encountered Baba Yaga aged six or seven when he read children's fantasy book The Dragon's Sister and Timothy Travels by British writer Margaret Storey, in which she appeared. Gaiman also used Baba Yaga in The Books of Magic comic series, and the way he has deployed the character highlights her moral ambiguity: where she was helpful in Sandman, she is more of a baddie in Books of Magic. She might well be making an appearance on the small screen soon, as well Neil Gaiman used her in his Sandman comics for DC, the adaptation of which has just had its second season announced by Netflix. Baba Yaga appears in music, too Modest Mussorgsky's 1874 suite Pictures at an Exhibition features a ninth movement called The Hut on Fowl’s Legs (Baba Yaga).

#BABA YAGA MOVIE#

Japanese animation legend Hayao Miyazaki used Baba Yaga as the basis for the bathhouse proprietor in his award-winning 2001 movie Spirited Away. If you’re a film fan, you might recognise the name from the John Wick films starring Keanu Reeves, in which the eponymous anti-hero is called Baba Yaga by his enemies, giving him the mysterious allure of an almost mythical bogeyman. Before that, she had appeared in woodcut art at least from the 17th Century, and then made regular appearances in books of Russian fairy tales and folklore. Meanwhile Stork Bites by EV Knight ramps up the horrific aspects of the myth as a salutary tale for inquisitive children.īaba Yaga appears in many Slavic and especially Russian folk tales, with the earliest recorded written mention of her coming in 1755, as part of a discourse on Slavic folk figures in Mikhail V Lomonosov's book Russian Grammar. The stories span centuries, with Sara Tantlinger's Of Moonlight and Moss offering a dream-like evocation of one of the classic Baba Yaga stories, Vasilisa the Beautiful, while Carina Bissett’s Water Like Broken Glass sets Baba Yaga against the backdrop of World War Two. So enduring is the legend of Baba Yaga that a new anthology of short stories, Into the Forest (Black Spot Books), has just been released, featuring 23 interpretations of the character, all by leading women horror writers. Cunning, clever, helpful as much as a hindrance, she could indeed be the most feminist character in folklore. However, she is also a far more complex character than that synopsis suggests.

Baba yaga