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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Hryhorii Dovzhenko

(1899–1980)

Григорій Довженко

Hryhorii Dovzhenko (1899-1980) was a Boichukist and a sculptor of monuments, and during the 1920s he was also a film artist.

He was born in Poltavka (now Bashtanka), Mykolaiv region, in a family with many children. In search of a better life after the Stolypin reform, the Dovzhenko family moved to Akmolin (now Omsk) region to work on virgin lands. As a child, Hryhorii worked as a loader and gatekeeper, though he did want to study. In 1916-1917, he learned the skills of painting in oils from the Itinerants Yu. Kurtukov and V. Volkov. In 1921, the Dovzhenko family returned to Bashtanka, and Hryhorii entered the Art Institute in Odesa where he studied at the studio of the artist and professor Danylo Krainiev, and later at his colleague H. Komar. Visiting Kyiv, Dovzhenko was interested in the works of Mykhailo Boichuk’s studio at Kyiv Art Institute.

In 1927, Hryhorii Dovzhenko and H. Komar painted the Eastern Chamber of Commerce in Odesa, and next year, together with a group of artists, he painted the Farmers’ Sanatorium of the All-Ukrainian Central Executive Committee in Khadzhibey Estuary, and in 1929, it was Mykhailo Kotsiubynskyi Press House in Odesa. After graduation, Hryhorii Dovzhenko started to work at the First Film Studio VUFKU in Odesa, where he got acquainted and became friends with Ivan Kavaleridze and Oleksandr Dovzhenko.

He was involved in filmmaking. In the film Museum Guard (1930), the 31-year-old Dovzhenko assisted Yosyp Shpinel who was seven years older than him, and played a secondary role of a Red Army soldier. At the same time, Dovzhenko also worked as an artist for the kulturfilm For Woman About a Woman (1930), the propaganda film Twenty-Five Thousand (1930), Ivan Kavaeridze’s epic film Perekop (1930), and the drama Право батьків (1931).

In 1930, Hryhorii was invited to teach painting at the Faculty of Architecture of Kyiv Art Institute, where he worked until 1936 when he was fired.

During World War II, Dovzhenko was in evacuation in Tajikistan. In 1945, the artist returned to Kyiv and began working at the newly created Institute of Monumental Painting and Sculpture at the Academy of Architecture of the Ukrainian SSR, and he worked with monumental forms more and more often. One of Hryhorii Dovzhenko’s most famous works is the monumental mosaic Kyi, Shchek, Khoryv and their sister Lybid on the façade of the cinema Rovesnyk (1971, later the Puppet Theatre).