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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Final Rehearsal

A Day / 1905

1930, Kyiv Film Studio VUFKU, 6 parts / 1,800 m, 53 min.

Director:
 Myron Bilynskyi, Pavlo Kolomoitsev
Scriptwriter:
 M. Oliinichenko
Cameraman:
 Ivan Shekker, Mykhailo Kariukov Карюков
Artist:
 Volodymyr Kaplunovskyi
Cast:

Haivoronskyi (a sailor), Ivan Franko (an old soldier), Ivan Malikov-Elvorti (an agent provocateur), Borys Ferdynandov (a Bolshevik), Volodymyr Voishvyllo (a Bolshevik worker), S. Smyrnova (a girl), P. Petryk (a student), Arsenii Kuts (Nicholas II), Mykola Nademskyi (a Menshevik), A. Kutyrkin, Ivan Marks, V. Rakovskyi, I. Syzov

The film depicts and reconstructs the events of the Revolution of 1905: the struggle against tsarism, episodes of the Russo-Japanese War, demonstrations of the Black Hundreds, Jewish porgorms, crackdowns on the intelligentsia. 

An ironic image of Leon Trotsky is embodied by the talented actor Mykola Nademskyi who just like his character soon fell into disgrace and was repressed in 1937.

The film was shot in Kyiv, Odesa, Horlivka and Leningrad as a reply to Battleship Potemkin for the 25th anniversary of “the great rehearsal of the October Revolution.” 

The avant-garde film language is almost entirely based on close-ups and sudden changes of angles which serve as a metaphor of power. If representatives and supporters of “Tsarist autocracy” find themselves in the top position at the beginning of the film, from the second half of the film, when the uprising gains momentum, angles change dramatically. 

The film director Myron Bilynskyi and cameraman Ivan Shekker are the young generation of filmmakers who were the last to join the avant-garde tradition just before the switch of the art to socialism. Later, the cameraman Ivan Shekker will work with the director of benchmark films of the Stalin era Leonid Lukov and one of the founders of the school of Ukrainian poetic cinema Sergei Parajanov.

The film is stored at the Russian Gosfilmofond. 

The film was released on 25 September 1931 in Kyiv and on 07 November 1931 in Moscow.

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