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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Lazar Frenkel

(1904-1978)

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Lazar Frenkel was a Ukrainian director of children’s films, an actor and scriptwriter.

He was born in Dnipropetrovsk in a family of a doctor. In 1923, he graduated from faculties of acting and directing of M.V. Lysenko Music and Drama Institute in Kyiv. Together with Hlib Zatvornytskyi and Oleksii Kapler he tried to create an independent film studio by Kyiv Komunkult theatre.

He worked at the legendary Berezil theatre. He was married to the actress Yevheniia Sadovska. He played in films Vasia the Reformer (1926) and Love (1933). However, he became popular due to children’s films.

His most successful works were Street Kids (1928), The Dam Burst (1928), Robinson for Himself (1929), Together with the parents (1932), Amazing garden (1934).

In 1936, in collaboration with Hlib Zatvornytskyi he filmed the children’s adventure film Tom Sawyer based on Mark Twain’s novels The Adventures of Tom Sawyer and The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn. This film was the last Frenkel’s full-length feature film.

After the war, he shot only documentary films, and in 1947, he became a full-time director of Ukrainian Studio of Newsreels and Documentary Films. Here, he shot dozens of films: Pioneer Holiday (1947), Complex Mechanization (1950), At One School (1952), Cherries (1953), First Steps, USSR Spartakiad (1955), Hearts of the Young (1957), Wonderful Gift, The Road to Life (1958), Youth of the Liberated Land (1959), Living Towards, The Young Cossacks (1960), where he regularly raised his favourite topic of youth and adolescence.

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