Humorina

Humorina (Russian: Юморина, romanized: Yumorina, Ukrainian: Гуморина) is an annual festival of humor held in Odessa, Ukraine on and around the April Fools' Day since 1973. The festival is marked by a large parade in the city center, performances by musicians, comedians, clowns and a large number of fun-dressed people on the streets. These days traditional April Fools Days' pranks are spread by people, local mass media.

Humorina-2007

History

It was invented in 1972 by the Odessa KVN team after the all-Union KVN contests and the corresponding TV show were discontinued.[1]. Young members of the team in protest decided to come up with a special festival of laughter. The name arose by analogy with the Kinomarina (english - Filmarina) film festival taking place at that time, and so the name appeared - Humorina[2]. Such a pun was characteristic of the satirical performances of comedians on the KVN TV show.

The festival became so popular that more and more people gathered for it every year. Frightened by a huge, self-organizing crowd, the city authorities banned the celebration of Laughter Day.[3]

The name "Humorina" was proposed by Oleg Stashkevich - one of the founders and a member of the Odessa KVN team.

The first slogan of Humorina was - Odessans of all countries - unite! What is a paraphrase of the famous slogan of the communists - Workers of the world - unite!

Today

Today the Humorina includes lot of city events with celebration of April Fools Day. In Soviet times, the main driving force of the festival were Odessa KVN team. In the early 1990s, the World Club of Odessa and its president Mikhail Zhvanetsky initiated the return of the festival. Now this has changed and comic troupe the "Masks" taken the baton.

The "Masks" was very well known TV show in 1990th. Later they organized own theater - House of Clowns, which working in Odessa still. Today this people are leaders and the main power of the festival and April Fools' Day humoristic events. The "Masks" organized separate festival - Comediada[4], that starts 4 days before 1st of April. Since 2010 until today with the celebration of April Fools Day the International Festival of Clowns and Mimes taking place in Odessa.

Facts

In 2019, Humorina festival was dedicated to the centenary of the Odessa Film Studio. At traditional parade in the city center, one of the platforms presented the famous Soviet film D'Artagnan and Three Musketeers by Georgi Yungvald-Khilkevich and showed original costumes from the movie.[5]

Since the first run for mayor of the city, a candidate from the Internet party of Ukraine, the regular participants in the traditional city procession, became Darth Vader and the imperial stormtroopers from the movie Star Wars.[6]

References
  1. Humorina timeline Archived 2007-09-28 at the Wayback Machine
  2. "First of April". odessitclub. 2019.
  3. "Humorina festival in Odessa". odessacityguide. 2019.
  4. "Comediada". official website. 2020.
  5. "Humorina 2019". omr.gov.ua (in Russian). 2019.
  6. "Parade "Humorina-2017 foto"". USI (in Russian). 2017.

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