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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Darkness / Dusk / Priests of the Darkness

1928, VUFKU's First Film Studio (Odesa), 6 parts / 1,506 m

Director:
 Pavlo Dolynа
Scriptwriter:
 І. Strelchuk 
Cameraman: 
Yosyp Hudyma
Artist:
 Vasyl Krychevskyi
Cast:
 Serhii Kharlamov (grandfather Hysiar, a village witch doctor), Zynaida Kordiumova (Teklia, his worker), A. Kharytonov (Sydir, a shopkeeper), O. Harnyk (Petro, his son, a thief and hooligan), P. Osadchii (Oleksii, a young cooperator), Anastasiia Kozhevnikova (Oksana, a young rural girl), Varvara Kryvoruchko (Maryna, a medical assistant), Viktor Komar (a secretary of the village council), Yefymenko (Mykola, a hooligan), Bilmach (Andrii, his friend), Mykola Nademskyi (Ivan, a poor man), Anton Klymenko (a head of the village council), Volyntsev (a physician), Ya. Reinich (a new mother), Hryhorii Viunyk (a rural man with a broken leg), K. Saksahanska (a rural woman in the shop), T. Kochkina (an old woman visiting Hysiar

The film is about the struggle against political and cultural backwardness in the depths of Ukraine in the middle of the 1920s.

The witch doctor Hysiar is the most popular person in the small village of Haniievka.  Hysiar stuffs money in his pockets at the expense of credulous and backward fellow villagers, but he only cripples them with his healing while remaining unpunished. Because of this, he has an intractable conflict with the medical assistant Maryna, who came to the village from the city. To get rid of the unwanted competitor, Hysiar uses Maryna’s sister to steal her fiancé’s keys from the cooperative and puts the stolen goods into the flat where the girl lives. Desperate Maryna commits a suicide. The investigation commission from the city solves Hysiar’s crime. The witch doctor is given a show trial.