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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The Eleventh Year

1928, Kyiv Film Studio VUFKU, 5 parts / 1,600 m, 59 min

Director:

Dziga Vertov

Cameraman:

Mykhail Kaufman

The Eleventh Year is the first of three avant-garde films made by Dziga Vertov and his brother, cameraman Mikhail Kaufman, in Ukraine on the basis of the newly opened VUFKU Kyiv Film Studio.

Dedicated to the success of the first five years in Donbas, the film tells the story of accelerated industrial modernisation of eastern Ukraine, which resulted in the transformation of an agricultural country into an industrial one. The Eleventh Year is Vertov’s first experiment in implementing his programme of developing a specific film language, separate from the language of theatre and literature, in which the camera would directly capture the raw matter of life. This programme was fully implemented by Vertov in his next Ukrainian film, Man With a Movie Camera (1929).