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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Forest Beast

Forest Beast

1925, First Film Studio VUFKU (Odesa), 8 parts / 2,560 m

Director: 
Aksel Lundin
Scriptwriter:
 Dmytro Buzko
Cameraman:
 Yevgeniy Slavinskiy, Hryhorii Drobin
Artist:
 Solomon Zarytskyi, Ivan Suvorov
Cast:
 Mykola Saltykov (otaman Zabolotnyi), Arkadii Malksyi (bandit Fotiy / a priest), Ivan Kapralov (bandit Yukhym), V. Piddubnyi (Yukhym’s brother, a worker), Dmytro Erdman (a young guy “Smushkova Shapka”), Leonid Yureniev (Savchenko, head of the revolutionary committee), Hoarina Hoarik (Nata, his wife), Dmytro Fedorovskyi (head of Cheka / a bandit), Nikolay Panov (nationalist Brovko), Pavlo Hierov (Teslia, an agent of the People’s Commissariat), A. (O.?) Olenich-Aleksieieva (Kitty, his wife), Mykola Kuchynskyi (nationalist Sumyrnyi), Lazar Bodyk (a passerby), Osyp Merlatti (nationalist), Anastasii Symonov (nationalist), Aleksandr Sashyn, Hershunenko, Vasyl Viktorov, Leonid Kann, Vladimir Uralskyi, I. Doroshenko (Zabolotnyi’s people), Anton Klymenko (a sentry at the People’s Commissariat), Teodor Brainin, Kostiantyn Ihnatiev (agents of the revolutionary committee), A. Nazarov (a Romanian officer), T. Ruzhytskyi (a Romanian general)

1921. The struggle for Ukraine’s liberation is going on. The leader of the haidamak movement in Odesa region, otaman Zabolotnyi, holds off the attack of the Red Army. His first officer Yukhym becomes disillusioned in the “kulak” otaman, joins the Soviet units and helps to make a trap for Zabolotnyi.

The film is based on the short novel by the writer-reemigrant Dmytro Buzko, who used to fight next to the real Semen Zabolotnyi. Moreover, real witnesses of the otaman’s activities and the Red Army soldiers who fought with him were shot in the film.

The film was released on 17 June 1925 in Kyiv and on 28 June 1925 in Moscow. The film is lost.

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