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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In Spring

1929, VUFKU (Kyiv), 6 parts / 79 min

Director:
 Mіkhail Kaufman
Scriptwriter:
 Mіkhail Kaufman
Cameraman:
 Mіkhail Kaufman 

In Spring (1929) is a masterpiece of the Ukrainian avant-garde cinema, a non-feature film made by Mіkhail Kaufman, Dziga Vertov’s brother and co-author, in accordance with the avant-garde theory of “cine-eye”. The film shows Kyiv in 1929, almost unknown today.

The shots showing the awakening of the city, the renewal of its life, are in line with the lyrical portrayals of reviving nature. Kaufman’s attentive camera pauses on smiling faces of children, lyrically depicting a declaration of love to Kyiv. In In Spring, Kaufman used the method of “hidden camera” for the first time.

 

The premiere of the film was on August 27, 1929.

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Mikhail Kaufman’s In Spring (1929) was more of a cinematic poem than a documentary. In 1930 in Ukraine, along with Earth, it made a profound impression on us. In Spring made us discover a completely new form of documentary cinema, a cine-poem, where the lyrical theme of thaw and swelling buds conveyed the pathos of the advancement of the USSR towards building socialism without concealing the still existing remnants of the past. I saw this film thirty-seven years ago but still keep unforgettable memories of it.

 

Georges Sadoul, French film theorist