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GraphiTe®
introduces to your attention
THE CULTURAL HERITAGE: FILMS OF OLEKSANDR DOVGENKO
RENEWD BY digital Archiving & Restoration technologies
1. Love’s Berry *Yagodka lyubvi+ aka Love’s Berries
The first director work of Oleksandr Dovzhenko, 1926, 10 min
Screenplay by: Oleksandr Dovzhenko Director: Oleksandr Dovzhenko
Cinematography by: Danylo Demutskyi, Yosyp Rona
Production designer: Ivan Suvorov
Cast: Maryan Krushelnitskiy, Margarita Chardynina-Barskaya, Dmytro Kapka, Ivan Zamychkovskiy,
Vladimir Lisovskiy, A. Belov, Leonid Chembarskiy, Igor Zemgano, K. Zapadnaya, Mykola Nademskyi.
A mistress of the barber Zhan Kovbasiuk abandons an infant to him. Zhan decides to get rid of a “natural”
child, he puts it stealthily in a toyshop. The mess with a “doll” is cleared up soon. A shocked clerk palms the
baby off on one of his clients, who in his turn puts a live doll to the Zhan’s barbershop. Having no idea how to
pacify the little one, the “dad” feeds it with milk through a barber spray, and then again, the “love affair berry”
comes to be on a boulevard bench… Once Kovbasiuk receives a notice of appointment from a court investigator,
he rushes in search of the child. Meanwhile his mistress obtains “justice” in the People’s Court. Nevertheless,
Zhan without any particular enthusiasm takes a decision to become a model father. After he and his mistress
contracted a marriage, it turns out that Zhan in fact was not the father of the child. But it’s too late…
2. Zvenyhora [Zvenyhora] aka Zvenigora / 1927, 70 min
Screenplay by: Mayk Yogansen, Yu. Yurtik (Yuriy Tyutyunnik)
Director: Oleksandr Dovzhenko
Cinematography by: Boris Zavelev Production designer: Vasyl Krychevskyi
Cast: Mykola Nademskyi, Semen Svashenko, Les Podorozhnyi, M. Charov, Georgiy Astafyev, I. Selyuk, Leonid
Barbe, M. Parshina, O. Simonov, and others.
According to some folk legends, Zvenyhora, hill that towers up amidst the steppe, hides invaluable treasures of
Scythians. The whole sequence of events – the Varangians, the struggle against the Polish gentry, the
Haydamachyna, the First World War, the Revolution – is combined by a strand ploy in a figure of the
ingenious, yet crafty, Ukrainian old man, the personification of the Ukrainian peasantry. As if his entire life is
devoted to hunting for the Zvenyhora treasures, and all his endeavours are futile. The old man cherishes hopes

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that his grandson Tymish, the Red Army man, will discover the “treasures”. Another grandson of the old man,
Pavlo, who is a Petliura troop, after the defeat of the Ukrainian People’s Republic, escapes to the West. He
returns with the mission to blow up railway. He wants to exploit the old man to fulfil his task. A train frightens
the old man. The railway disaster does not happen. The workers, who travel by the train, take the old man with
them and the train speeds away as the unceasing revolution motion advances the bright future.
3. The Diplomatic Pouch [Sumka dipkuryera] aka Sumka Dipkuryera, 1927, 70 min
Screenplay by: Moisei Zats, Borys Sharanskyi (adapted by Oleksandr Dovzhenko)
Director: Oleksandr Dovzhenko
Cinematography by: Mykola Kozlovskyi Production designer: Georgiy Bayzengerts
Cast: Mattea Buyukli, Anton Klymenko, G. Zelendzhev-Shipov, I. Penzo, Borys Zahorskyi, Sergii Minin, G.
Skoretskiy,
The film is based on a story of the tragic death of Teodor Nette, the Soviet diplomatic courier. The Soviet
Embassy in England sends two couriers with a diplomatic pouch to Leningrad (nowadays St. Petersburg).
White, the Political police inspector, with a squad attacks the Soviet couriers at night. One of them perishes
in an unequal fight, another one, wounded, falls out of a train. A trackwalker, Englishman, gets the bag and
passes it to his son in Portsmouth, from where a steamer to Leningrad departs. The police find out that there is
the Soviet diplomatic documentation hidden on the English steamer, but they fails to intercept it.
The film survived without the first and second parts.
4. Arsenal (“The January revolt of 1918 in Kyiv”) / 1929, 70 min
[Arsenal] aka January Uprising in Kyiv in 1918
Screenplay by: Oleksandr Dovzhenko
Director: Oleksandr Dovzhenko
Cinematography by: Danylo Demutskyi
Production design by: Yosyp Shpinel, Volodymyr Miuller
Original music by: Igor Belza
Cast: Semen Svashenko, Mykola Kuchynskyi, Dmytro
Erdman, Sergii Petrov, Georgiy Kharkov, Amvrosii Buchma, F. Merlatti, Mykola Nademskyi, Borys Zahorskyi,
Tetiana Vagner, Petro Masokha, and others.
The First World War keeps going. A heart-broken torpid woman in the middle of a house – she has nothing to
feed her hungry children with. A legless cripple, a former soldier, beats a horse despairingly. “You’ve missed

3. 01103, Ukraine, Kiev, P.O. Box 54
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your aim, Ivan!” – says to him the thin, as a bag of bones, horse. A battlefield, a gas attack. Waves of “joyous”
gas(sarin) float over the field – it covers the dead soldiers’ faces with dreadful masks of eternal “laughter”.
Armies fall apart, soldiers desert entrenchments, disperse to their homes. The February Revolution of 1917
begins. The Central Rada (Council) is established in Kyiv. Tymish, a former worker of the “Arsenal” factory,
which comes to be a stronghold of revolutionary events, turns back form the battle- front. The Bolshevik party
urges workers to revolt against the Central Rada Government, but forces are unequal. Tymish is rounded up by
haydamaks. He has run out of ammunition for his machine- gun. Tymish rises over it to his complete height.
Haydamaks shoot him point-blank. But their bullets are useless against the hero… His worker body is immortal.
5. Earth [Zemlya] aka Zemlya aka Soil/ 1930, 60 min
Screenplay by: Oleksandr Dovzhenko Director: Oleksandr Dovzhenko
Cinematography by: Danylo Demutskyi Production designer: Vasyl Krychevskyi Original music by: Levko
Revutskyi
Cast: Stepan Shkurat, Semen Svashenko, Yuliya Solntseva, Yelena Maksimova, Ivan Franko, Petro Masokha,
Volodymyr Mykhailov, P. Petrik, Pavlo Umanets, Ye. Bondina, Luka Lyashenko, Mykola Nademskyi, Vasyl
Krasenko.
A poetical film-story about the events that describe the collectivization in Ukraine at the end of 1920’s, the
formation of the first collective farm communes (kolkhozes), the class struggle in the rural area.
The Ukrainian land is rich with its bearing… Mighty meditative oxen tow a plough cutting through the soil
and exposing a fat loam – the chernozem. Earth, it is like the very life… There is an ash-grey-headed old man,
dying in the garden among apple-trees and pear-trees. He was born on this earth, worked on it and will rest in
it. His place on this earth takes his smiling grandson Vasyl, a handsome lad. Here he rides on a “steel horse”,
ploughing down limits of the lots, with which the land is covered – “mine…”, “mine…”, “mine”… The land
belongs to everyone – this is the slogan, with which the next generation is ushered into the life. However, those,
who stick to their “lots”, do not share their concept. Horse in the open country gives a start in the moment of
the shot, Vasyl falls down to the ground.
The entire village comes to his funeral. Blooming trees bend over the face of the murdered Young Communist
Leaguer. The murderer Khoma, the son of the village rich man, gives his desperate confessions. He tries to find
shelter in the earth, but it does not want to host him...
On the Brussels World Exhibition (Belgium, 1958) the film was named one of the 12 best films of all times and
nations based on the international survey of critics.

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6. Ivan [Ivan] / 1932, 60 min
Screenplay by: Oleksandr Dovzhenko Director: Oleksandr Dovzhenko
Cinematography by: Danylo Demutskyi, Yuriy Yekelchik, Mykhailo Hlider
Production designer: Yuriy Khomaza
Original music by: Yuliy Meytus, Borys Liatoshynskyi Cast: Petro Masokha, Stepan Shagaida, K.
Bondarevskiy, Stepan Shkurat, Dmytro Holubynskyi, Oleksandr Zapolskyi, Terentii Yura, Feodosiya
Barvinskaya, Liudmyla Yaroshenko, Oleksandr Khvylia, Mykhailo Haivoronskyi, Maksym Hornatko, Mykola
Nademskyi, Lavrentii Masokha, and others.
The film poem about the construction of the Dnipro Hydroelectric Power Station, about the life of a country lad,
who along with other youths comes to build one of the greatest constructions of the Socialist industrial building.
The majestic panorama of the “Dniprohes” is open for the eye of the country boy. The roar of concrete mixers,
steam hammers, shrill train hooters suppresses the voice of an individual. A bucket broke loose and killed a
Young Communist Leaguer. His mother runs across the dam and it seems to her that terrible machines pursue
her. Nonetheless, strong, sinewy young bodies move undisturbed finding the rhythm in their labour. The lines
of the “Dniprohes” become more visible. Even long unshaven slovenly man, a shirker, a loafer, cannot spoil the
solemn appearance of the construction. He fidgets near the “black cash-box”; a wrathful voice of the radio
pursues him. In the meantime, Ivan, a last night’s country boy, mauls with a hammer in the centre of the
building. He realizes that strength alone is not enough. He has to learn. In the last scene of the film, Ivan is
admitted into the Communist Party. The doors of an institute of higher education fly open before him.
The Venice International Film Festival, 1934 – The Cup for the best program presented by a state (the USSR).
7. Air City [Aerograd] aka Frontier (USA) / 1935, 80 min
Screenplay by: Oleksandr Dovzhenko Director: Oleksandr Dovzhenko
Cinematography by: Eduard Tisse, Mikhail Gindin, Nikolay Smirnov
Production design by: Aleksey Utkin, Viktor Panteleyev Original music by: Dmitriy Kabalevskiy
Cast: Stepan Shagaida, Sergey Stolyarov, Yelena Melnikova, Stepan Shkurat, V. Novikov, Viktor Uralskiy,
Boris Dobronravov, Yelena Maksimova, G. Tsoy, L. Kan, I. Kim, M. Tabunasov, and others.
The onset of the 1930’s. The USSR experiences the height of the Socialist building. It is planned to lay the
foundation of a defence outpost in the Far East to protect eastern boundaries of the state.
Stepan Hlushak, a hunter and a former guerrilla warrior, accidentally spots in taiga the prints of the
Manchukuo saboteurs. Hlushak kills one of them, a Japanese Samurai. The other one manages to conceal
himself. Looking for him, Hlushak comes to his friend, Khudyakov, also a hunter and a former guerrilla. He
assures Hlushak that there are no saboteurs in his dwelling. Meanwhile, in a far village a plot is being hatched.
The rich man Shabanov attempts to incite Old Believers to revolt against the Soviet authorities, against the
Bolsheviks, which came to build in the midst of Taiga a new city – Aerograd. Shabanov promises Old Believers
that there will be a support from Japanese. A guerrilla troop, Van-Lin, a friend of Hlushak, reveals Khudyakov’s
treachery – he finds in Khudyakov’s dwelling a Japanese saboteur. Khudyakov kills Van-Lin. A rebellion breaks
out in the Old Believer’s village. Hlushak summons former guerrillas. The conspiracy is prevented. Hlushak
personally executes his ex-friend, now a traitor, Khudyakov… Planes soar over the Taiga, they carry builders of
the coming Air City
8. Shchors [Shchors] aka Shors (USA) / 1939, 120 min
Screenplay by: Oleksandr Dovzhenko Director: Oleksandr Dovzhenko
Co-director: Yuliya Solntseva
Cinematography by: Yuriy Yekelchik Production designer: Morits Umanskiy
Original music by: Dmitriy Kabalevskiy
Cast: Yevgeniy Samoylov, Ivan Skuratov, Luka Lyashenko, Fedir Ischenko, Nina Nikitina, R. Chalysh, Hanna
Borysohlibska, Oleksandr Khvylia, Sergey Komarov, Dmytro Miliutenko, Georgiy Polezhayev, Mykola

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Komissarov, Yu. Bantysh, D. Barvinskiy, Dmytro Kostenko, Petro Masokha, P. Radetskiy, P. Tatarenko, O.
Glazunov, Hans Klering, Valentin Dukler, Dmytro Kadnikov, O. Levchenko, Oleksii Zahorskyi, and others.
Year 1919. Germans retreated from Ukraine. The Directoire, presided by Symon Petliura, governs in Kyiv.
Meanwhile, Mykola Schors’s division head to Kyiv. According to Schors’s plan, the regiment of Bozhenko
liberates Vinnytsia, Zhmerynka and other Ukrainian cities concurrently. The Red troops, which defend
Berdychiv, yield to the pressure of Petliura’s forces and retreat. Relief comes with Schors, who serves as an
example to the retreating and encourages them. A bloody skirmish begins; the town changes hands many times.
When the town is finally liberated, Schors talkes to his soldiers during the battle break. They dream about the
future, about what their posterity will say of them. A short relaxation comes to an end, and another fight is
waiting. From north of Bakhmach general Dragomirov heads to Kyiv. Deadly wounded Bozhenko passes away.
Schors personally runs the parade of young commanders – students of the Young Commanders School, who are
professional, qualified personnel for the Soviet Army.
The film is awarded to the Stalin (State) Prize of the First Grade (1941).
9. Liberation [Osvobozhdeniye] aka Osvobozhdeniye / 1940, 80 min
Screenplay by: Oleksandr Dovzhenko
Directors: Oleksandr Dovzhenko, Yuliya Solntseva
Cinematography by: Yuriy Yekelchik, Grigoriy Aleksandrov, Mykola Bykov, Yuriy Tamarskiy
Production designer: Morits Umanskiy
Original music by: Borys Liatoshynskyi
Feature documentary film.
About dramatic times in the life of Western Ukraine and Western Belarus, the reunification of Eastern Ukraine
and Western Ukraine into a single state. The film contains the following scenes: the public meeting in a Hutsul
village, where Oleksandr Dovzhenko makes a speech, the beginning of the People’s Assembly of Western
Ukraine in Lviv on the 26th of October, 1939, the session of the People’s Assembly of Western Ukraine in
Bilostok, passing of the Act of the Reunification of Western Ukraine with the Ukrainian Soviet Socialist
Republic on the Third Session of the Supreme Soviet of the Ukrainian Soviet Socialist Republic and the Fifth
Session of the Supreme Soviet of the USSR.
10. Battle for our Soviet Ukraine [Bitva za nashu Sovetskuyu Ukrainu] aka Battle for Soviet Russia
(UK) aka Ukraine in Flames (USA) / 1943, 70 min
Art director and author of narration: Oleksandr Dovzhenko
Directors: Yuliya Solntseva, Yakiv Avdeienko
Cinematography by: V. Afanasyev, Kostyantyn Bohdan, Mykola Bykov, Boris Vakar, Mykhailo Hlider,
Solomon Golbrikh, Izrail Goldshteyn, I. Zaporozhskiy, M. Kapkin, Kasatkin, Isaak Katsman, V. Komarov,
Yuliy Kun, Mogilevskiy, Valentin Orlyankin, B. Rogachevskiy, S. Semenov, Viktor Smorodin, I. Sof’in, S.
Sheynin, V. Shtatland, Sergey Urusevskiy, V. Frolenko, and others
Narrator: Leonid Khmara
Original music by: Dmytro Klebanov, Andrii Shtoharenko
Sound editors: V. Kotov, Ye. Kashkevich
Conductor: D. Blok
The film depicts concrete events of the Great Patriotic War during 1941-1943: difficult battles for the liberation
of Kharkiv, Artemivsk, Kramatorsk, Donetsk, Mariupol, guerrilla camp of S.A. Kovpak. Episodes of joint
operations of Ukrainian and Czechoslovak units are included in the film. Soviet and German (captured)
newsreels are also used. The film was dubbed into 26 languages; it was widely presented in European countries
and America, the USA and Canada in particular.

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11. Victory in Ukraine and the Expulsion of the German Invaders from the Boundaries of the
Ukrainian Soviet Territory [Pobeda na Pravoberezhnoy Ukraine i izgnaniye nemetskikh
zakhvatchikov za predely ukrainskikh sovetskikh zemel] aka Victory on the Right Bank Ukraine
(UK) / 1944, min
Screenplay by: Yuliya Solntseva, A. Kuznetsov
Author of narration: Oleksandr Dovzhenko
Narrator: Leonid Khmara
Directors: Oleksandr Dovzhenko, Yuliya Solntseva
Cinematography by: Kostiantyn Bohdan, Boris Vakar, N. Vikhirev, Volodymyr Voitenko, Izrail Goldshteyn,
V. Dobronitskiy, D. Ibragimov, P. Kasatkin, Isaak Katsman, Oleksandr Kovalchuk, A. Krichevskiy, Yuliy Kun,
K. Kutub- Zade, A. Laptiy, G. Mogilevskiy, Valentin Orlyankin, M. Otsep, Pavel Rusanov, A. Semin, A.
Sof’in, Mykola Topchii, D. Sholomovich, and others (more than forty cameramen shot combat operations)
Original music by: G. Popov
Sound editors: V. Kotov, Ye. Kashkevich
Conductor: N. Anosov
The historical newsreel, which covers the events of 1943-1944: forcing of the Dnipro near Pereiasliv-
Khmelnytskyi, Kremenchuk and Vyshhorod, the liberation of Kyiv, Lviv, arrival of the Soviet Army in the
Carpathians; depicts self- sacrificing toil of the Soviet people in the rear.
12. Michurin [Michurin] aka Life in Bloom (USA), 1948, 100 min
Screenplay by: Oleksandr Dovzhenko Director: Oleksandr Dovzhenko
Cinematography by: Leonid Kosmatov, Yuliy Kun Production design by: Mikhail Bogdanov, Gennadiy
Myasnikov
Original music by: Dmitriy Shostakovich
Cast: Grigoriy Belov, Vladimir Solovyev, A. Vasilyeva, Nikolay Shamin, Fedor Grigoryev, Mikhail Zharov,
Konstantin Nasonov, Aleksey Zhiltsov, Ivan Nazarov, Viktor Khokhryakov, Dmitriy Dubov, Gennadiy
Pechnikov, Sergey Tsenin, Yuriy Lyubimov, V. Isayev, Ivan Kashirin, and others.
About the life and work of the prominent Soviet biologist, gardener, Ivan Michurin.
Rumours about unusual experiments of the Russian gardener Michurin can be heard far outside Russia.
Americans come to a little town, where Michurin dwells. They tempt the scientist to go to America, promise
him all wonders. However, Michurin is devoted to Russia, though tsarist government does not treat him
appropriately. Overcoming impediments of officials, Michurin keeps researching and experimenting with
garden plants and dreams about the times, when people in full extent will be able to use the results of his work.
The Revolution of 1917 brings such times. Michurin’s garden in a town of Kozlov becomes one of the centres of
the Soviet biology.
The film is awarded to the Stalin (State) Prize of the Second Grade (1949).
On the International Gothvald Film Festival (Czechoslovakia, 1949) the film was awarded to the Labour Prize.
13. Oleksandr Dovzhenko. The Contemplations After Life [Oleksandr Dovzhenko. Rozdumy pislia
zhyttia] / 1992, 10 min
Screenplay by: Bohdan Diatsenko, Hennadii Halchenko
Author of narration: Valentyn Artamonov
Director: Mykhailo Donets
Cinematography by: Yevhen Tsypl’onkov
About the life tragedy of Oleksandr Dovzhenko. About his childhood, the Revolution, the war, the Central
Committee of the All-Union Communist Party (Bolsheviks) Politburo meeting in January, 1944, when Stalin
lambasted Dovzhenko’s film story “Ukraine in Flames”… About the events, when by the will of “the high and
mighty” Dovzhenko was detached from Ukraine until he died. The film tracks the discernment phase of
Dovzhenko the Human, Dovzhenko the Artist, when the creative creed “beauty is larger than truth” changes
into “truth above all” – the Truth of Life, the Truth of History.