The Ukrainian Institute London presents a retrospective of Ukrainian cinema, showcasing five iconic Ukrainian films at The Garden Cinema.
This film series will uncover Ukraine’s rich cinematic heritage for London audiences, with each film introduced by a Ukrainian film expert. These screenings are held in partnership with Ukraine’s largest archive of classic films, the Dovzhenko Centre.
Full Programme
16 November 2023 Earth (Oleksandr Dovzhenko, 1930)
18 December 2023 The Eve of Ivan Kupalo (Yurii Illienko, 1968)
11 February 2024 Man with a Movie Camera (Dzyga Vertov, 1929)
27 February 2024 Stone Cross (Leonid Osyka, 1968)
18 March 2024 The Long Farewell (Kira Muratova, 1971)
Earth
16 November 2023 | 8:30pm
Director: Oleksandr Dovzhenko
Genre: Drama Year: 1930 Duration: 79 min
Language: Silent film with Ukrainian intertitles and English subtitles
Earth is the most well-known Ukrainian film, recognized as a masterpiece of world cinema. This avant-garde film — revered in Ukraine after the death of its director, Oleksandr Dovzhenko, and banned only nine days after its release in cinemas, has inspired countless controversial interpretations. Replete with lyric pantheism and utopian exaltation, Earth comprehensively demonstrated the uncertainty of decision in the 1920s that culminated in tragic collectivisation.
Oleksandr Dovzhenko was perhaps the most brilliant, and simultaneously, most controversial figure in Ukrainian culture during the Soviet period. In his creative work he conceived a political and cultural project in
Ukraine that was far from dogmatic communism; in this (in a sense avant-garde) project, he paradoxically combined Futurism, Traditionalism, Utopianism and Conservatism. Dovzhenko’s ability to think mythologically, and timelessly, all the while embracing entire historical epochs and associating them with his nation, makes him a figure of truly heroic stature.
This print was produced, and subtitled by the Dovzhenko Center. The musical score is written and performed by the band DakhaBrakha on the order of the Dovzhenko Center.
The Eve of Ivan Kupalo
18 December 2023 | 8:15pm
Director: Yurii Illienko
Genre: Drama Year: 1968 Duration: 72 min
Language: Ukrainian with English subtitles
Young peasant Petro falls in love with the daugter of his master, but her father refuses to let his daughter marry a laborer. The grieving Petro meets the diabolical Basavruk in a pub. Basavruk offers Petro a strange
proposal that would help the boy acquire a beautiful wife.
Based on a story of Nikolai Gogol, director Yuri Illenko hides an allegorical history of Ukraine, from the Cossack and Tatar raids to Potemkin settlements and pilgrimages to Kyiv Pechersk Lavra, behind this Ukrainian Faust. However, The Eve of Ivan Kupalo was ultimately banned by Soviet censorship, like Illenko’s previous work—The Well for the Thirsty.
Stone Cross
27 February 2024
Director: Leonid Osyka
Genre: Drama Year: 1968 Duration: 82 min
Language: Ukrainian with English subtitles
A Galician peasant decides to leave his ancestral home and seek a better life in Canada, erecting a stone cross on a hill in his own memory.
Inspired by stories of the Ukrainian writer Vasyl Stefanyk (1871-1936), this film is Ukrainian poetic cinema at its best. In a larger sense, Ivan Didukh’s stone cross is the monument to thousands of his compatriots who left and are still compelled to leave their homeland today.
Man with a Movie Camera
11 February 2024
Director: Dzyga Vertov
Genre: Experimental documentary Year: 1929 Duration: 72 min
Language: Silent
Man with a Movie Camera is one of the major manifestos of avant-garde world cinema. An extraordinary montage of urban life in Ukrainian megalopolises under New Economic Policy, the film shows the people of the city at work and at play, and the machines that keep the city going.
Dzyga Vertov’s pioneering experimentation with film theory and editing techniques transformed the film into a methodological guide for subsequent generations of filmmakers.
The Long Farewell
18 March 2024
Director: Kira Muratova
Genre: Drama Year: 1971 Duration: 95 min
Language: Russian with English subtitles
When a single mother lets her only son go on vacation with his father, he returns home a changed person and tells his mother he does not want to live with her anymore.
A deceptively simple tale of family drama, The Long Farewell is transformed into a masterpiece of visual sophistication by Kira Muratova’s dreamy editing and exquisite camerawork. Shelved by Soviet censors until 1987, this expressive family portrait is one of Muratova’s most original long-banned works.
