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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Jimmy Higgings

1928, First Film Studio VUFKU (Odesa)
8 parts / 2,600 m (2,365 m)

Director: 
Heorhii Tasin
Scriptwriter: 
Isaac Babel, Heorhii Tasin
Cameraman:
 Mykhailo Belskyi
Artist:
 Heinrich Beisenherz, Solomon Zarytskyi
Cast:
Amvrosii Buchma (Jimmy Higgings), Ye. Adamaitis (Lizzy, his wife), Borys Shlikhting (Bill Murray), V. Kolpashnikov (Abel Grenich, the owner of Empire), Kostiantyn Koshevskyi (Lassi, his son), L. Lanskoi (Edwin Wood), Yuliia Solntseva (Ellen, his wife), Ivan Zamychkovskyi (Servius, a physician), B. Honcharov (Shneider, a brewer), Nikolay Panov (Hannet (Hacket), a colonel), H. Marynchak (Kalinkin), Polina Skliar-Otava (Mabel Smith), Kharytonov (farmer Cooter), Borys Shelestov (a contract killer), Onysym Suslov, Speshynskyi, Komaretskyi (farmers)

The film is based on the novel of the same name by the American writer Upton Sinclair.

Jimmy Higgings is a worker of the plant making weapons for the Tsarist Russia and the German Empire. During World War I, Jimmy speaks at a spontaneous rally against the war. He is arrested. When released, he becomes unemployed. He is happy to hear the news about the revolution; he volunteers into the American expeditionary force thinking that having the weapons he can fight against Germans – the enemies of the Russian revolution.

However, finding himself in Russia, Jimmy soon realises that the expeditionary force of American volunteers fights not against the Germans, but against the young Socialist Russia. Without any hesitations, he takes the path of revolutionary struggle, he spreads propaganda among the American soldiers and distributes Bolshevik leaflets. Captured by the American military police, Jimmy Higgings does not betray his friends. He is sentenced to twenty years in a military prison. Jimmy cannot stand it and loses his mind…

Première: 09 October 1928 (Kyiv); 15 January 1929 (Moscow)

The film has not survived (only one part has been found)

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