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How Russia stole Ukrainian movies – explained by Oleksandr Teliuk

How Russia stole Ukrainian movies – explained by Oleksandr Teliuk

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How Russia stole Ukrainian movies – explained by Oleksandr Teliuk
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In a project of Suspilne Culture – “No brotherhood – there wasn't one, isn't and will never be” people from across Ukraine's creative and cultural industries explain in their columns, how Russia has been trying to destroy Ukrainian identity for years (or even centuries).

All materials will be published in both Ukrainian and English. Russia's informational aggression has been a part of the daily discourse in Ukraine for a long time, especially after Maidan in 2014. Now we need to make this context available abroad to show that we've been fighting this war for way more than just a month.

Oleksander Teliuk, the chief archivist of Dovzhenko CentreThe state film archive and a cultural cluster in Kyiv, Ukraine – Editor`s Note, explains why many of Ukraine's films are still in Russian archives and how Russia stole them.

Ukrainian version is available here.

Translated from Ukrainian by Ivan Korniienko.

According to the legend, when DerzhfilmfondState Film Fund – Translator was founded in 1948 near Moscow, KGBCommittee for State Security, the main security agency for the Soviet Union – Editor`s Note took original films from Kyiv and Odesa movie studios (everything they had in stock back then). Basically, all of the inter-war movies, especially the VUFKUAll-Ukrainian Photo Cinema Administration, was a cinematographic state monopoly that united the entire film industry in Ukraine (1922–1930) – Editor`s Note reels – the best works of DovzhenkoOleksandr Dovzhenko, Ukrainian screenwriter, film producer and director – Editor`s Note, KaufmanMykhailo Kaufman, Ukrainian and Russian director, cinematographer and photographer, KavaleridzeIvan Kavaleridze, Ukrainian sculptor, filmmaker, film director, playwright and screenwriter – Editor`s Note, ShpykovskyiMykola Shpykovskyi, Ukrainian screenwriter and director – Editor`s Note shot there – ended up in Russia.

According to the International Federation of Film Archives, the country that produced the film has prime rights to ownership of the said film. But when USSR fell apart, Russians didn't hurry much to give the films back. Volodymyr Malyshev, then-head of the Derzhkomfilmfond chauvinistically explained it away, saying that republican (aka local) film archives didn't have the proper technical accommodations.

So gems of Ukrainian cinema of the early XX century started coming back to Ukraine only in the 2010s after Dovzhenko-Centre's film archive made a stand. Masterpieces of early Ukrainian cinema had to be bought, traded for, and sometimes fished out. But after 2014, that process gradually died out.

Trying to get back uncut negatives of "Brekhnia" (Lies), 1918, a unique document of revolutionary years, based on a screenplay by Volodymyr VynnychenkoUkrainian statesman, political activist, writer, playwright, artist, who served as the first Prime Minister of Ukraine – Editor`s Note, was the last effort. Derzhkomfilmfond, though, put bureaucratic walls in the way and the Ministry of Culture of Ukraine didn't do much to understand the value of this masterpiece either, so the deal fell through.

A number of other notable films by VUFKU are still not returned from Derzhfilmfond, along with one of the first Ukrainian Soviet movies "Ne spiymaniy, ne zlodiy", 1923 (You're not a thief if you're not caught); a film by a rather crafty Arnold KordiumUkrainian actor, screenwriter and director – Editor`s Note "Sprava 128" (Case 128), 1926, works of Heorhii Hrycher-CherykoverUkrainian screenwriter and director – Editor`s Note "Kryshtalevyi Palats" (Crystal Palace), 1934, and dozens of others. If we were able to get those back, our idea of the "Ukrainian hollywood" of the twenties and overall visual understanding of the inter-war times would be much improved.

Nevertheless, the separation of Ukrainian films from Russian and Soviet ones is just one of the aspects of Dovzhenko-Centre's work in the last decade. It's no easy task because a lot of films, actors, and directors were in between several cultural identities, not only ethnic and linguistic ones but also class and ideological. At the same time, all those were polarized by the Soviet Union's imperial core. The relatively hegemonical model was always opposed by relatively dissident one (called "bourgeois-nationalistic", "formalist" and "cosmopolitical" at times).

According to principles of the inclusive identity of Ukrainian cinema, we tried to include as wide a list as possible, mainly referring to the country of production. Only after that, we used post-colonial optics in regards to the makers and co-creators of those films to try and understand how and if it was russified or sovietized.

Number of artists and directors are still a topic of historical discussion. For instance, a lot of Russians made movies in Ukrainian studios (1930-1940s), as if they were exiled here. Classics like Ivan Pyriev Soviet-Russian film director and screenwriter – Editor`s Note and Abram RoomSoviet-Russian film director – Editor`s Note. Nikolai EkkSoviet-Russian film director and screenwriter – Editor`s Note made the first Ukrainian color film in Kyiv, Marko Donskyi Soviet film director, screenwriter, and studio administrative head – Editor`s Notemade his proto-neo-realist war masterpiece "Raiduha" (The Rainbow), 1943. Sometimes, though, language is enough for Russians to claim a movie their own. Kira MuratovaSoviet-Ukrainian award-winning film director, screenwriter and actress of Romanian/Jewish descent – Editor`s Note made films exclusively in Russian, filming Chekhov's works, but all but one of them were made in Odesa and there's no arguing about that.

So by calling spade a spade we realize just how flimsy and non-monolithic some of the Soviet films, biographies and intentions are. We stress the Ukrainian component linked to folk arts (or pre-modern entities), local economical basis, or the locality of the characters.

The views and opinions expressed in this column are those of the authors and do not necessarily reflect the official policy or position of Suspilne Culture.

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