Ukrainian Silent Cinema — From VUFKU to Dovzhenko

The upcoming exhibition focuses on two decades of Ukrainian cinema from 1920 to 1930 — from the founding of VUFKU (All-Ukrainian Photo-Cinema Administration, 1922) to the feature-length sound reform of 1932. The centrepiece is the work of Oleksandr Dovzhenko (1894-1956), a Ukrainian director from Sosnytsia in Chernihiv region, whose 'earth trilogy' — Zvenyhora (1928), Arsenal (1929), Earth (1930) — entered the canon of world cinema. The exhibition shows original frames, editing sheets, directorial notes, and Dovzhenko's correspondence with Sergei Eisenstein, Dziga Vertov, and Kurbas. A separate section is silent-cinema equipment from the museum holdings: Pathé projection units, editing tables, Bell-Howell handheld cameras, lighting devices from the Odesa and Kyiv VUFKU studios. Archival posters, programmes, and photographs of the filming process return the viewer to the atmosphere of the first Ukrainian film studios. The programme emphasises: Ukrainian silent cinema is a distinct national school with its own poetics (associative montage, landscape metaphor, peasant themes), not a peripheral branch of 'Soviet cinema'. The lecture programme is led by film scholars, film restorers, and historians of VUFKU.