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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Famine and the Fight Against It

1922, First Film Studio VUFKU (Odesa), 4-5 parts / 950-1,650 m

Director: 
Mykola Saltykov
Scriptwriter:
Mykhailo Kapchynskyi
Cameraman:
Heorhii Drobin, Louis Forestier
Cast:
 Leonid Chembarskyi, Andrii Malskyi, Bela Biletska

This is a documentary-feature agitfilm about hunger in Ukraine in 1921-1922. The film mentions drought and the revolution as possible causes of the disaster. There are swollen children, ruined factories and plants, burning villages, dead cattle shown in the film, as well as a number of activities aimed at helping the victims: the work of the Committee for Assistance of Starving People at the All-Ukrainian Central Executive Committee, organisation of feeding points, workers donating their three-day salaries to help the victims, etc.

This is the first film made in Odesa under the authority of the newly established VUFKU in the nationalised studios which until recently belonged to moguls of the film industry, Kharytonov and Borysov. The director of the First Film Studio VUFKU Mykhailo Kapchynskyi recalled, “We could make only three copies from the negative. Tens of thousands of people watched this film in the cinemas of regional administration.”

The film was shot in December 1922. It was released that same year.