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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Heorhii Stabovyi

(1894-1968)

Heorhii Stabovyi

Heorhii Stabovyi was a Ukrainian scriptwriter and film director. He was born in the town of Kozelets in Chernihiv region in a family of a military man.

By family tradition he finished a Cadet Corps training course and a military school. He was mobilised for World War I, and then from 1919 to 1923, he served in the Red Army.

In 1924, as a young play writer, Stabovyi was invited to Odesa Film Studio VUFKU.

In co-authorship with Mykola Borysov he wrote scripts for the first Ukrainian adventure film Ukrasiia (1925) and Aksel Lundin’s adventure drama P. B. P. (Pilsydskyi Bought Petliura, 1926). When P. B. P. was partially made, Lundin was suspended from work because of excessive alcohol use, and Stabovyi was appointed to finish the film.

B. P. was successful, and Stabovyi got an opportunity to make Fresh Wind (1926) himself. This was also a début for Danylo Demutskyi, the future cameraman of Dovzhenko’s masterpieces. Man from the Forest filmed by Stabovyi next year (with Demutskyi again) had the essential elements of adventure and was acclaimed by critics.

That same year, he finished Two Days, the most prominent film in the director’s filmography and the first Ukrainian film screened in the USA.

Heorhii Stabovyi filmed his last film in Ukraine, Don’t Prevent Movement, in 1930.

From 1930 to 1934, he filmed a number of documentary propaganda films, then in 1934, he left Ukraine for Moscow. There he wrote scripts for Maly Theatre (e.g. Colleagues based on Vasily Aksyonov’s novel), and some of them were very popular with the audience.