VUFKU (All-Ukrainian Photo Cinema Administration) existed for less than nine years (1922-1930), but it managed to release over 140 fiction films, several hundreds of non-fiction films and newsreels, dozens of animations, gain fame of “Ukrainian Hollywood,” and take under its control all aspects of the cinematic process – filmmaking, distribution, film press, propaganda, and education. From over 140 full-length fiction films made by VUFKU, about 60 films are considered lost. A lot of the surviving films have come down to us incomplete (without one or more parts).

The website VUFKU. Lost&Found is the first online collection of Dovzhenko-Centre’s media library and is perhaps the only online resource providing comprehensive information on VUFKU.

The mission of the VUFKU. Lost&Found project is to search and return to Ukraine the lost films of the 1920s. Traces of some of the lost films of that time can be found in international archives. Meanwhile, we are collecting archive materials about the lost films, restoring their contents, learning the context of their release.

These searches and analysis, restoration of films and their return to the cultural circulation require financial support. Donating to our fundraising campaign, which will start in October 2019, you will be able to contribute to the restoration of Ukrainian cinema.

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Blown Up Days

Blown Up Days (1930)

1930, Odesa Film Studio Ukrainfilm, 6 parts / 1,640 m

Director:
Oleksandr Soloviov
Scriptwriter:
Stanislav Waiting (Radzynskyi), Valdo (Volodymyr Ovcharenko)
Cameraman:
Borys Zaveliev
Artist:
 Serhii Khudiakov
Cast:
Seven Svashenko (shock worker on a tractor plant), Mykola Nademskyi (old man / Muruhii), Ivan Tverdokhlib (peasant Montetsuk), Stepan Vasiutynskyi (peasant Kapulenko), N. Kreminskyi (cameraman), Ivan Syzov (a member of a collective farm), P. Kostenko (podkulachnik), Oleksii Kharlamov (kular Detsiuk), H. Rostov (priest), Volodymyr Chuveliev (medium peasant Bidoha), Oksana Pidlisna (peasant), Ivan Franko (kobzar), T. Kochkina (an old peasant woman), V. Komaretskyi (a priest, in the prologue), A. (?) Bielov (a kulak, in the prologue), Natalia Chernyshova (kulak’s daughter, in the prologue), Yelena Chernova (a working class woman, in the prologue)

The year 1929. A “shock worker” from a tractor plant visits a film studio premises and is furious to see fake stage designs for a kitsch production about a Soviet life. He refuses to help the crew with his tractor, but is happy to ask one of the cameramen to go with him to visit an actual Soviet village. There they witness the birth of the kolkhoz and the dekulakization of wealthy villagers. Then they are transported to the future, to the year 1932, when the first five-year plan is done and the commune-sovkhoz is established. Movies can move faster than time, but the pace of change in Soviet society is even faster than that.

Interviewed by “Kino” magazine in 1930, Oleksandr Soloviov stated: “Our movie touches on all the principal subjects discussed at the November plenum of the Central Committee of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union, such as village-city relations, city’s guiding role in collectivization of rural areas, and the lack of personnel.” Under those formal phrases hides the hilarious satirical farce told in avant-garde movie language, although it, in fact, satirizes the VUFKU avant-garde.

The joke becomes less funny when put in context. Semen Svashenko’s character is a member of “Fellowship of Friends of Soviet Cinema” — an actual “proletarian activist” organisation which played its part in the discrediting and closing down of VUFKU. Still, while making fun of Stabovyi, Vertov/Kaufman and Dovzhenko, Solovios simultaneously pays tribute to the era of artistic freedom which was coming to its end. Soloviov’s friendly critique sees Vertov’s cinema as too idealistic (Soviet life is larger than its reflection in cine-eye), and Dovzhenko’s as too epic (in “Blown Up Days”, kulaks are too wretched to dare execute an “Earth”-style murder). Humorous approach to depicting the village and factory life in the prologue, in fact, unconsciously predicts trends of later-era Stalinist cinema.

In the movie, the entrance gate of the Odesa film factory, where all of the indoors scenes were shot, can be seen. The outdoors scenes were filmed all over Eastern Ukraine and Southern Russia (Kuban): at Kharkiv factories, in Ukrainian villages and in the 240 ha-sovkhoz “Gigant” in Rostov region, the latter representing the future after the five-year plan.

 

The shooting began in February 1930 and finished in August 1930. Premiere took place on 03.11.1930. The film is stored at the Russian Gosfilmofond.

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