Stories of Ukrainian cinema

Exclusively for Inalco and then in the middle of shooting a new film, Myroslav Slaboshpytskiy, one of the most important contemporary Ukrainian filmmakers, Prix de la révélation and Grand Prix de la Semaine de la critique at Cannes in 2014 for his first feature, "The Tribe" (shot entirely in sign language, with no subtitles or voice-overs), tells "his" Ukrainian cinema story, a strange and tumultuous, but fascinating one.

Les Chevaux de feu (film de Serguei Parajdanov) © DR. Collection Christophe L.‎

The birth of Ukrainian cinema

Myroslav Slaboshpytskiy: "Legend has it that Ukrainians invented the cinematograph two years before the Lumière brothers. In fact, in Odessa lived a certain Josyp Tymchenko who invented a cinematographic device like the Lumière brothers' and started showing films. In Odessa, anything can happen; even if this theory may make you smile[1].

In general, Odessa is a very important city for Ukrainian cinema. At the time, Ukraine was an integral part of the Tsarist Empire, where anti-Semitic laws forced Jews to live in specific "residence zones". As a result, most Jews were not allowed to settle in the capital. Many migrated to the United States. As a result, some Hollywood stars descend from Odessite, Ukrainian or Belarussian Jewish backgrounds. Strictly speaking, some of these people founded Hollywood. Even today, Odessa hosts one of Europe's most important film festivals every July[2]. After the Bolsheviks came to power, the first important director was Dziga Vertov (1896-1954). He is the author of a magnificent documentary film entitled La Symphonie du Donbass (Soviet Union / Ukraine, 1930. 65 min). Donbass is the region of Ukraine currently at war[3].
Dziga Vertov was the first director to be catalogued as Ukrainian, as he made films based on Ukrainian society. Vertov died in Moscow. Moving to Moscow was something of an obligatory step for all great Ukrainian filmmakers of the time.

The Symphony of Donbass : View film (no guarantee of link permanence)
Dziga Vertov was also the 1929 author of the famous film The Man with the Camera.
View film (no guarantee of link permanence)

Alexandre Dovjenko, canon of Ukrainian cinema

Alexandre Dovjenko (1894-1956) was another great Ukrainian director. He was a three-time winner of the Stalin Prize. His film La Terre (Soviet Union / Ukraine, 1930, 75 min) became to Ukrainian cinema what Goethe is to German literature. Dovjenko is the founding father of Ukrainian cinema, for he instituted a kind of canon, consisting of making films in an imaginative and unique cinematic language. Dovjenko eventually left Ukraine too, and died in Moscow. Dovjenko's name was given to the largest Ukrainian film studio (opened in 1927 in Kiev), which is now experiencing difficult times.

Dovjenko's output came to the fore in the 1960s, when the Communist Party decided to promote national cinemas. It has to be said that, in one way or another, his films were ethnographic. In the USSR, anything national was considered ethnographic. As a result of this promotion policy, attributed to Mikhail Souslov[4], studios were given the task of producing national films. Outside these state studios, it was not possible to make a film, as there was no private capital. The studio system existed in Ukraine until the late 1990s.

The Earth: View the film (no guarantee of link permanence)

Serguei Paradjanov Armenian ethnologist of Ukrainian cinema

The leading Ukrainian director of the 1950s-60s was Sergei Paradjanov (1924, Tbilisi; 1990, Yerevan), who penned The Horses of Fire (USSR/Ukraine, 1964, 97 min). This is a loose adaptation of 19th-century Ukrainian writer Mykhaïlo Kotsiubynskyl's novel, The Shadows of Forgotten Ancestors. This was not the first of his films shot in the Dovjenko studios. He also signed some interesting films there, such as Andriesh (USSR/Ukraine, 1954) or Ukrainian Rhapsody (USSR/Ukraine. 1961), among others. He went to shoot Les Chevaux de feu in the mountainous regions of Ukraine, in the Houtsoules region, and He shot some utterly captivating scenes there. I think he saw these people as aborigines. It was like an ethnological expedition to Micronesia. He was Armenian and had studied in Moscow, After the release of Chevaux de feu, he was imprisoned in 1973 for five years on charges of nationalism and homosexuality[5]. In the USSR, this was a crime. After his release from prison, li left Ukraine and never returned.

The Horses of Fire. See the film (no guarantee of link permanence)

Ukrainian Rhapsody. See film (no guarantee of link permanence)

Then he directed the great Armenian film Sayat Nova (The Color of the Pomegranate. Soviet Union/Armenia, 1969, 73 min) and the great Azerbaijani film Achik Kerib, Tale of a Loving Poet (Soviet Union/Georgia, 1988, 83 min). Sergei Paradjanov is an Armenian from Georgia, and we owe that major Ukrainian film The Horses of Fire to him. He shot in a very particular way. This film is perhaps the greatest pride of Ukrainian cinema.
Andrei Tarkovski, one of the greatest Soviet directors was particularly fond of Paradjanov's films. Paradjanov himself considered Pasolini his favorite director. Many illustrations of this influence can be seen in his work. With Horses of Fire, Paradjanov made the most Ukrainian of his films, and in creative terms is considered the direct heir to Dovjenko.

Sayat Nova, The Color of Pomegranate. View the film (no guarantee of link permanence)

Achik Kérib, Tale of a Poet in Love. View the film (no guarantee of link permanence)

Myroslav Slaboshpytskiy, Ukrainian filmmaker (see his filmography below)

Notes
[1] Like many of his fellow European scientists who were looking to develop projection devices, Ukrainian mechanical engineer Joseph Tymtchenko, for his part, invented a film drive mechanism, known as a snail, but by no means cinema.
[2] Odessa lnternational Film Festival: http://oiff.com.ua.
[3] Interview conducted in 2015.
[4] Soviet politician and ideologue (1902-1982).
[5] See this archive from TF1's 1977 TV news: https://www.ina.fr/ina-eclaire-actu/video/caa7700267201/serguei-paradjanov

Filmography by Myroslav Slaboshpytskiy
2006: The Incident (Жах, short film)
2009: Diagnosis (Діагноз, short film)
2010: Deafness (Глухота, short film)
2010: Мудаки. Арабески (short film)
2012: Nuclear Waste (Ядерні відходи, short film)
2012: Україно, goodbye! (short film)
2014:The Tribe (Плем'я) (feature film)

The Tribe - See the full feature (no guarantee of link permanence)

Deafness - See the full short (no guarantee of link permanence)