The great break: Ukrainian cinema in 1920–30s. From emancipation to Sovietisation with Ivan Kozlenko | Kino 2025
Date and time:
Tuesday 11 March, 2025
18:30 - 20:00
Location:
ONLINE
In the late 1920s, Ukrainian cinema reached its peak: due to well-thought-out policies of local culture elites, a peculiar school of Ukrainian film avant-garde, led by Oleksandr Dovzhenko, arose alongside highly popular commercial cinema. However, the triumph didn’t last long. In 1930, the local film production was placed under the control of Moscow authorities with the aim of turning film into a means of propaganda. This coincided with technical challenges: the emergence of sound dramatically changed the established avant-garde aesthetics.
Despite the pressure, Ukrainian filmmakers attempted to preserve the local film tradition, which was under attack from Moscow. In 1933, the autonomy of Ukrainian film production was restored for a short time. Under the guise of inventing a newly proclaimed official socialist realism style, Ukrainians created a specific version that blended the methods of avant-garde with local poetic and expressionist tradition. Destroyed shortly after 1936, it remains undeservedly forgotten in Ukraine and completely unknown elsewhere.
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Lecturer
Ivan Kozlenko
Ivan Kozlenko is a film scholar, curator and culture manager. He founded the esteemed Mute Nights silent film festival in Odesa, Ukraine and transformed the Dovzhenko Centre, Ukraine’s primary film archive, into a leading cultural attraction in Kyiv. Over a decade, he oversaw the restoration of over 70 Ukrainian films and their reintroduction to global audiences. Ivan curated significant film retrospectives, including In Transition: Ukrainische Träume (Arsenal – Institut für Film und Videokunst, Germany, 2023), Kira Muratova (Seoul Cinematheque, South Korea, 2019), Odessa in fiamme: occupation / liberation (Odesa IFF, 2015), Ukraine: The Great Experiment (Pordenone Silent Film Festival, Italy, 2013). He edited authoritative texts and catalogues on Ukrainian cinema, published by Dovzhenko Centre Publishing: Flights in Dreams and Reality (2020), Ivan Kavaleridze. Memoirs, Drama, Journalism (2017), Ukrainian Film Posters of the 1920s: VUFKU (2015), Dovzhenko’s EARTH Framed by Borys Kosarev (2013), Ukrainian Re-vision. The Film Collection Book (2012). His 2017 novel Tangier was a contender for the BBC Ukrainian Book of the Year, reflecting his influential role in Ukrainian cultural discourse.
