“Contemporary Ukrainian film critics are not very knowledgeable about silent films and are not interested in them,”
says Stanislav Bityutskyy, head of the research and programming department at the Dovzhenko Centre.
The 1920s marked the greatest boom and probably the most vibrant period in Ukrainian cinema. It was a time when everyone wanted to make films and no one yet fully understood what cinema was. People were only discovering its power and beginning to realise that it was not merely a sideshow, but a major art form. Perhaps there has never been such a surge of interest in cinema in Ukraine since.
At the same time, the state authorities were also deeply interested in film. From 1922 to 1930, there operated an organisation known as VUFKU — the All-Ukrainian Photo and Film Administration — one of the most important phenomena in Ukraine’s film history. This institution effectively controlled everything related to cinema in Ukraine. It was a powerful monopoly with its own studios, cinemas and even a magazine dedicated to film. VUFKU produced films, screened them and wrote about them — and did so so successfully that everyone wanted to enter the industry and believed cinema to be art.
However, few people at the time truly knew how to make films, so they learned in the process. A huge number of productions emerged during that golden period. Around 140 feature films were made and screened internationally, and Ukrainian cinema became widely discussed abroad. Today, we primarily associate that era with Oleksandr Dovzhenko, who is often described as “our everything”. Yet although much is known about him, many aspects remain unexplored. He was among the few Ukrainian filmmakers who studied abroad, spending time in Germany, which later influenced his work with French and German stylistic elements. This is significant, as afterwards Ukrainian cinema rarely became such an integral part of the European film landscape.
At the Dovzhenko Centre, this period is actively researched, yet even in Ukraine it remains largely unknown. Audiences are often unwilling to abandon stereotypes and approach Ukrainian silent cinema objectively. For instance, whenever Earth is screened, first-time viewers say: “I didn’t expect it to be so good.” Only now are we rediscovering early Ukrainian cinema and bringing it back to audiences.
It is important to reflect on this era with all its ambiguity, as most films of the time contained a propaganda component. Earth is one of the most prominent examples. In a sense, it is also unsettling. Dovzhenko shot it in 1930, portraying the joy of collectivisation, and only two years later the Holodomor began. We are aware of the tragedy that followed in rural Ukraine, yet the film remains a powerful work of art. This period therefore requires discussion and careful reflection on how to address its propaganda dimension today. Many artists genuinely believed in the communist idea, while simultaneously searching for national roots and exploring Ukrainian identity. This makes the cinema of the 1920s exceptionally complex and worthy of deeper study.
With Earth, there has been a shift in focus. Five years ago, the Dovzhenko Centre conducted a survey among film experts, asking more than 70 specialists to compile their top ten films. After combining the results, it became clear that although Earth had long dominated such rankings in Ukraine, it was overtaken by Shadows of Forgotten Ancestors. The survey demonstrated that the silent-film era of the 1920s is becoming increasingly distant not only for audiences but also for professionals, who for some reason pay less and less attention to it. There is a clear tendency for contemporary Ukrainian critics to be unfamiliar with silent cinema and uninterested in it. As both experts and viewers drift away, an already under-researched period risks being gradually lost.
At that time, it was common practice to invite specialists from abroad. Cinematographers were brought in from Germany, whose film school was considered the strongest. Russian directors were also involved, yet since they worked on Ukrainian territory, within VUFKU and Ukrainian studios, these productions are regarded as part of Ukrainian cinema. The first Ukrainian blockbuster, the Cossack action film Taras Tryasylo, as well as the first biographical film about Taras Shevchenko, were directed by Pyotr Chardynin. To a certain extent, Chardynin stood at the origins of large-scale, commercially oriented filmmaking in Ukraine.
We also consider Dziga Vertov’s Man with a Movie Camera to be part of Ukrainian cinema. He initially had a successful career in Moscow with his brother, cinematographer Mikhail Kaufman. However, when the persecution of formalism began, they moved to Kyiv, where they gained the freedom to work as they wished. It was at Ukrainian studios that they shot their key films. I believe Kaufman’s Spring stands alongside Man with a Movie Camera. If you have not seen it yet, I highly recommend it, as it is essentially a declaration of love for Kyiv. Although it was not made by a Ukrainian, we consider it one of our own.
And one more thing. Overall, the greatest tragedy of Ukrainian cinema is that its development was interrupted and lacked continuity across generations. In the 1920s, there was a first major boom, when a generation of very young directors, cinematographers and the Kurbas acting school emerged. This tradition should have continued in later generations. However, in 1930, VUFKU was closed by a decree from Moscow. Stalinist cinema arrived, many people were repressed, and the tradition was destroyed. Subsequent generations simply did not exist. The same tragedy was repeated in the 1960s with poetic cinema and figures such as Parajanov and Illienko: another surge, another closure imposed from Moscow, and again no continuity between generations. This is an extremely painful pattern for Ukrainian cinema.
“Public museum collections contain a very small number of works by artists from the 1920s,”
says Oksana Barshynova, Deputy Director General for Exhibitions at the National Art Museum of Ukraine.
The art of the 1920s and 1930s, known in Ukraine as modernism or the avant-garde, is, one might say, a very popular brand. Many people are familiar with this phenomenon and know the names of Ekster, Malevich, Bohomazov and Boychuk. However, our knowledge is far from clear or definitive. Many myths still surround this period and, unfortunately, continue to be created today. Here we can return to a point raised in relation to cinema: how we classify artists as Ukrainian, whether by origin, place of work or other criteria. This is a separate and complex discussion about the standards we apply.
Last year, our museum hosted a landmark exhibition of Ukrainian portraiture. Fedir Ernst and Danylo Shcherbakivskyy, renowned art historians, formulated criteria for what constitutes Ukrainian art. For the first time, they proposed a broad framework that included both the work of Ukrainian artists abroad and the multinational nature of our artistic environment. During the Soviet period, however, this vision was severely restricted, and Ukrainian art was confined to narrow ethnographic boundaries. It was denied a wider spectrum, encompassing artists of Ukrainian origin as well as those who worked in Ukraine. Therefore, careful scholarly work to search for, study and disseminate information is essential. In reality, public museum collections contain very few works by artists from the 1920s. This period is often referred to as the Executed Renaissance, and its artistic heritage has not been preserved to the extent we would wish.
The results of such research take the form of exhibition projects. These include In the Eye of the Storm. Modernism in Ukraine, which toured Europe and introduced Ukrainian art to international audiences, and the Special Fund project, based on research into a secret collection where many modernist works were sent in 1937–1939. These works appeared only sporadically through the efforts of individual artists and scholars and became widely known only in the late 1990s. There is still a vast number of pieces there. We must bring them back into our field of vision to show how large this continent of modernism truly was. This is a major task.
Those regarded as leaders of artistic life in the 1920s taught at the Kyiv Art Institute and other universities, forming large communities of followers and students. These students also endured great hardship. Those who survived were forced to change their style and conceal the names of their teachers. Yet this special collection, which was meant to be destroyed, has survived. Thanks to it, we can discuss what modernism really looked like and dispel myths. Myth itself is a foundation of cultural thinking, but there are myths that distort perception rather than bring us closer to the truth. This includes the tendency to reduce artistic practice and complex personalities to simple traditions or influences, for example, folk art. Folk art is extremely important and beloved, but here we must be careful and examine things more closely.
I have said that few works of modernism have been preserved: one cannot fill an entire museum with them, usually only two or three rooms for permanent exhibitions. But there is another issue. We are still overcoming Soviet inertia, when modernism and the avant-garde were treated as Russian-centric, because Burlyuk, Ekster, Malevich and Archipenko lived in territories subordinate to Russia. Yet there is also a vast layer of Galician and Lviv art, closely connected both to the European context and to Ukrainian culture, and the artists mentioned took part in exhibitions in Lviv. Such involvement requires locating real works, replenishing collections and forming a more holistic picture of the period. We want to write biographies of major figures such as Malevich and Boychuk, linking them to the Kyiv context, but archival material is scarce. This means research is needed not only in Kyiv and Ukraine, but worldwide. This is a primary task.
And this brings us to a common theme: the interval nature of Ukrainian culture in the twentieth century. Something reaches a peak of development, is then arbitrarily interrupted, followed by return, remembrance and restoration — and then another catastrophe. Stanislav mentioned the 1960s as the best-known period in cinema. In art, the key moments are likewise the 1920s and the 1960s: modernism itself and its rethinking in the work of later artists, especially within the monumental school of Mykhaylo Boychuk. These are two particularly significant phenomena.
As for myths, we constantly move around them. Earlier, when I was just beginning my professional career, realism fascinated almost everyone. Realism is a complex visual concept that requires knowledge, effort and deep viewer engagement. In one way or another, realism became a kind of cult, while the modernist tradition was rejected. Any modernist manifestations in Ukrainian art, whether in the 1920s or the 1960s, are the only ones that stand out, while the rest fade into the background and somewhat distort the picture of 20th-century art.
“Galician composers are unknown in other parts of Ukraine,”
Stefaniya Oliynyk, Senior Lecturer at the Mykola Lysenko Lviv National Music Academy, explains.
I would like to continue some of the points already raised here, but in a musical context. When I was invited to join the discussion, I recalled the moment when I first encountered the culture of the 1920s.
I studied at the Solomiya Krushelnytska Specialised Music School and later at the Mykola Lysenko Conservatory in Lviv. We performed a great deal of music from the 1920s and 1930s, particularly by Galician composers. My teacher, Tetyana Vorobkevych, published a large number of scores from that period: Kudryk, Nezhankivskyy, Barvinskyy, Lysko and Kos-Anatolskyy. These are composers well known in Galicia, whose music is performed in music schools. Yet it was a revelation for me, when I began attending conferences in Kyiv and Odesa as a student, to discover that these composers were virtually unknown in other parts of Ukraine.
I see the words “rediscovery” and “space” on the festival poster. It seems to me that we are now at the stage of rediscovering these spaces — these cultural “cosmoses” — as compositional schools and communities that were highly fragmented at the time. We reflect on the Ukrainian-centred nature of Galician culture, we know how powerful Borys Lyatoshynskyy’s compositional school in Kyiv was, and we are aware of the separate layer of diaspora music. But to what extent did these communities intersect? How much did the artists of that era know about one another? And how should we think about this today from a national perspective? Is this the construction of Ukrainian cultural heritage, or the borrowing of influences?
There are many questions, and rediscovery begins with two major problems: sheet music and recordings. My colleagues say: we created a website — watch the films there; we mounted an exhibition — we published a professional catalogue. Unfortunately, I cannot say: “Go to this portal and listen to music from the 1920s and 1930s, created in Kyiv, Lviv and Košice in exile.” These connections remain highly fragmented. To bring everything together, we must invest in two areas: sheet music and recordings. Only then can we properly evaluate this entire layer and continue to discover and comprehend the period of Ukrainian modernism in all its diversity.
It is also difficult to decide how to treat music of the Soviet period, when composers were forced to compromise with ideology in one way or another. Two years ago, I took part in publishing the symphonic heritage of Stanislav Lyudkevych. In my view, his figure is comparable to Lyatoshynskyy in terms of role and influence on musical culture of the time. When Soviet power came to Galicia, he was already over 60, and because of his age and authority he was largely left alone. Yet in order to survive, he still had to make concessions. It is fascinating how he circumvented prohibitions through authority and ingenuity. For example, he abandoned choral and vocal works with explicit texts and moved towards symphonies, where he could add a formal dedication while the music itself meant something entirely different. His contemporaries recalled that in the symphonic poem Our Sea he was inspired by national poetry: the stormy sea functions not as nature, but as a metaphor for national life. He wrote formulaic dedications to the October Revolution, yet the meaning and content of the music speak of something else. This calls for a thoughtful approach that looks beyond official inscriptions.
Of course, not everyone was as fortunate as Lyudkevych. One of Ukraine’s most significant composers, Vasyl Barvinskyy, was sentenced to ten years in labour camps in 1948, and all his works were burned in the courtyard of the conservatory. Today, his legacy is being reconstructed piece by piece. This means we urgently need to locate the scores, but finding them is only part of the task. The main goal is to publish and perform them. Without this, it is impossible to create a foundation for rediscovering Ukrainian musical culture.
In my opinion, to assess the context of the era properly, we must study documents and perform the works. Each piece needs to be examined in order to understand its place, the real scale of the legacy, and how often it was performed. For instance, when I visited the Chopin Museum in Poland, I saw a vast selection of composers, scores and publications. We need a similar approach to our own heritage, ensuring that everything is accessible. We once discussed with conservatory professors what percentage of Ukrainian musical heritage is generally available in printed scores. We arrived at roughly 10 per cent. That means 90 per cent remains unknown.
The ‘Territories of Culture’ project is produced in partnership with the First Private Brewery company and is dedicated to researching the history and transformation of Ukrainian cultural identity.