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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For Woman About a Woman

For Woman About a Woman

Hygiene of a Woman

1930, First Film Studio VUFKU (Odesa), 37 min

Director:
 Yevheniia (Ivha) Hryhorovych
Cameraman:
 Zhan Kapustin
 
Artist:
 Hryhorii Dovzhenko
Cast:
 Klavdiia Dombrovska (a girl), Klein (a physician)
 

This is a directorial début of the future honoured artist of the USSR (1954), a native of Dubno Yevhenia (Inha/Ivha) Hryhorovych (1905-1978). Graduating from a Pedagogical School like many Ukrainian filmmakers, Hryhorovych enters the State Cinema Technical College, a higher education institution opened in Odesa in 1924. 

One year after college graduation, Hryhorovych gets to the filming location of the film The Exhibit from Panopticon (1929), becomes an assistant of the famous director Heorhii Stabovyi, who shot Two Days (1927), one of the most significant Ukrainian films that was the first to be screened in the USA. Hryhorovych also works with him on the next film Don’t Prevent Movement (1930). 

The collaboration with Stabovyi is, apparently, the reason why the young director is trusted to make an important educational project – a popular science film about the structure and characteristics of the female body with recommendations on the female’s behaviour in her everyday life, while also during pregnancy and the postpartum period. 

For Woman About a Woman was filmed by a Komsomol filming crew at Odesa Film Studio, at health care facilities and institutions, at a jute mill and a tobacco factory. 

The outstanding gynaecologist, author of several Ukrainian textbooks, monographs on operative obstetrics, Doctor of Medicine Oleksandr Krupskyi was a medical consultant of the film. A graduate of the University of Tartu, Krupskyi made a career in Ukraine, was a member of the Ukrainian Central Rada, a minister of health and care of the Ukrainian People’s Republic. During the film shooting, he headed the Chair of Obstetrics and Gynaecology of Odesa Medical Institute. From 1930 to 1936, he headed the Chair of Obstetrics and Gynaecology of Kyiv Medical Institute. Next year, Krupskyi was arrested on trumped-up charges in the trial of the Union for the Liberation of Ukraine. When freed, Krupskyi was forbidden to live in Ukraine. 

Krupskyi’s importance for Ukrainian gynaecology and obstetrics is difficult to overestimate. He researched, promoted and actively used pain relief in labour. Moreover, Krupskyi advocated the necessity of sanatorium-and-spa treatment for rural area inhabitants.

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