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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Exhibition Arrow

THE CITY, DRUGS, AND THE CINEMA

THE CITY, DRUGS, AND THE CINEMA

Installation “The City”

Experimental urban planning was one of the most important vectors of the Soviet utopia aimed at creating new architectural designs for a new person – a collective creature.

It is no wonder that the “leading minds” like Kazimir Malevich (Architecton Gota) and Vladimir Tatlin (Tatlin’s Tower) worked on the image of a perfect Soviet city.

In the 1920s, Ukraine was mainly a rural country: only one sixth of the population lived in cities.

Therefore, industrial production, the newest transport infrastructure and huge crowds in the streets – the experience, which was extreme even for city dwellers – changed former peasants’ perception of space and reality forever. 

The Suprematist structure of our imaginary Soviet city, on the one hand, refers to the rational urban projects of Soviet engineers intended to organise human masses in parades and demonstrations; and, on the other hand, it reflects the bewilderment and disorientation, anxiety and discomfort experienced by city residents and visitors in the 1920s. The sound installation by the sound artist Heorhii Potopalskyi adds sounds of a contemporary city to this somewhat chaotic space, thus combining two temporal dimensions and the experience of two different generations’ living in the city. 

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