SU
A cameraman wanders around with a camera slung over his shoulder, documenting urban life with dazzling inventiveness.
May 1929
The momentous film stars Mykola Nademskyi as the grandfather of Tymish, whom he alerts to the secret treasure buried in the mountains of Zvenygora – a treasure that rightfully belongs to his homeland. The film wonderfully blends both lyricism and politics and uses its central construct to build a montage praising Ukrainian industrialization, attacking the bourgeoisie, celebrating the beauty of the Ukrainian steppe and retelling ancient folklore. Sergei Eisenstein said of the film, "As the lights went on, we felt that we had just witnessed a memorable event in the development of the cinema".
Apr 1928
Vasyl, a member of the Komsomol, with the help of a local party organization, gets a tractor and plows private boundaries "on kulak fields". However, this enthusiasm will cost him dearly.
Apr 1930
A lyrical documentary on the lives of Coal miners in the Donbass who are struggling to meet their production quotas under the Five Year Plan.
Nov 1930
A soldier returns to Kyiv after surviving a train crash and encounters clashes between nationalists and collectivists.
Feb 1929
The defeated remnants of vile Ukrainian nationalists, headed by the leader of the Ukrainian liberation movement, Symon Petliura, cannot accept their historical fate and are plotting an insurrection against the Soviet regime in Ukraine. There is nothing Petliura and his cohorts would not do to win back control over Ukraine, including selling it to the highest bidder, in this case, the Polish dictator Jozef Pilsudski. A group of plotters are coordinating an insurrection in Kyiv with an attack from Poland headed by Petliura’s general Yurko Tiutiunnyk. Predictably, the invincible Red Army defeats the nationalist plotters and proves that the Soviet borders are impregnable.
Sep 1926
The bourgeois wedding of Dekabryukhova is interrupted by the machine-gun fire of revolution. He flees abroad, leaving his wife. Oktyabryukhov stays and adapts to the new life. At the end of the picture there is an attempt at universal reconciliation and the poet's tormenting theme "three-way love". Dekabryuhov returns to his homeland. His wife is already married to Oktyabryukhov. Having learned about it, Dekabryukhov tries to leave, but the newlyweds force him to stay.
Set in an imaginary land where the threat of revolution spurs the Emperor to seek exile in one of the most distant parts of his realm. There he meets Elka, the daughter of a revolutionary who has been banished here due to his confrontational activities. The two fall in love but meet a violent end when the revolutionaries, led by Elka's father, destroy the palace.
Feb 1923
Neighbors, priest Sylvestr Izhekheruvymskyi and deacon Hordii Sviatoptitsyn, had a bloody feud with each other over a cherry tree that grew on the border between them and one day unexpectedly bore abundant large juicy berries.
Jul 1925
The seamy Jewish underworld of Odesa is the setting for Isaac Babel's story based on the life of gangster king Mishka Yaponchik "Mike the Jap" Vinnitsky. Murder is a way of life for Benya and his gang until he finds himself ensnared in a Bolshevik trap.
Apr 1926
Jean, the hairdresser, is flabbergasted: what is that baby his girlfriend Lisa has put in his arms out of the blue? The fruit of love? Out of the question. From that moment on, the reluctant father has but one thought in his head: he must get rid of the cumbersome 'article'. And, take his word for it, all the ways are good.
The poor tailor Perchyk who dreams to buy a she-goat lives in a small town. Meanwhile, Perchyk’s daughter Frida falls in love with the unemployed Elia Perchyk is totally against their marriage, as he cannot buy a she-goat if the son-in-law does not have any money. Finally, Perchyk buys a she-goat from a rich tavern owner but he gives him… a goat. Moreover, a police officer dissatisfied with the tailored uniform forges a document, according to which Perchyk and his whole family are expelled from the town as troublemakers.
A documentary fiction propaganda film about the famine in Ukraine in 1921-1922. Among the causes of the catastrophe, in addition to drought, the film mentions the consequences of revolutionary events. It shows swollen children, destroyed factories and plants, burning villages, dead cattle, and a number of actions aimed at helping the victims: the work of the Commission for the Relief of the Starving under the All-Ukrainian Central Executive Committee, the organization of feeding stations, workers donating their three-day salary to help the famine victims, etc. The very first film made in Odesa under the auspices of the newly founded VUFKU in nationalized pavilions that until recently belonged to film magnates Kharytonov and Borysov. Mykhailo Kapchynskyi, director of the First Film Factory of the VUFCU, recalled: "We were able to print only three copies from the negative. Tens of thousands of people watched the film in the cinemas of the regional administration."
Jan 1922
The action takes place in the late 1920s in Ukraine. The exposure of a counter-revolutionary agent who has infiltrated the Soviet scientific community. The film has survived without the 6th part.
Feb 1930
Based on the novel of the same name by N.Mizgir about the collapse of a noble family.
Dec 1927
Freedom-loving Mykola Dzheria goes away from the village because of poverty and villainage. He leaves his senior parents, his young wife Nemydora and escapes to the sugar-mill. His friend dies because of slave work. Mykola goes to the Dniester reed beds. Working with other escapees, Mykola falls in love with the daughter of the cooperative leader. The girl also likes the handsome guy. However, their fate is decided by the landlord’s servants; they set the reed beds on fire, shackle Mykola and take him to Verbivka. The film was released on 01 April 1927 in Kyiv and on 24 May 1928 in Moscow. The film is lost.
Apr 1927
Based on the novel “The Three of Us“ by Oles Dovitnyi. Student Viktor Borovskyi becomes a member of an illegal student revolutionary organization, which soon becomes of interest to the police. Once in jail, Viktor cannot stand the interrogations, gives out the addresses of the organization's members and becomes an informant. He informs the police about the upcoming assassination of one of the tsarist generals. During the assassination attempt, the police arrest a girl terrorist, but the general is killed by the bullet of another revolutionary.
Oct 1928
Set in Odesa at the end of the Civil War when the town is occupied by the Whites. The night coachman, fifty-year-old Hordiy Yaroshchuk, lives with his daughter Katya who gets involved with a Bolshevik and revolutionary.
Apr 1929
A Soviet propaganda film based on material from the Bolshevik coup. During the Russian civil war, the Whites, that anti-Communist force that fought against the Bolsheviks during that period, capture a Jewish Ukranian village; the gang commander threatens a pogrom, and will kill everyone in the village unless the inhabitants agree to give to the White Officers five virgin girls in wedding dresses. Under such terrible pressure, the Jewish council of the town decides, full of sorrow and despair, to sacrifice their daughters to the drunken officers but fortunately and just in time, a detachment of partisans that belong to the Red Army, comes and frees the village.
Mar 1930
An opportunistic Kyivan Apollon Shmyguyev, whose peaceful bourgeois life is interrupted by the civil war, decides to wait out the trouble in the South of Ukraine, which is under the rule of the Russian White Army. After gathering left off goods on Andriyivskyi descent in Kyiv, he goes on a journey with a camel, which somehow had strayed to his house. In the midway he is stopped by the Red Army: the camel gets confiscated for the needs of revolution, and Apollon appears in the disposal of the Bolshevik commissar. Zealous and cunning, Apollon quickly takes lead of the local commissariat. But the ingrained thirst for a profit once again puts his life in danger.
Nov 1929