Retrospective of Oleksandr Dovzhenko’s works
Plivka films, in partnership with the Ukrainian Institute and the Oleksandr Dovzhenko National Centre in Kyiv, Ukraine, presents a retrospective of Oleksandr Dovzhenko's silent film masterpieces – the so-called 'Ukrainian trilogy': Zvenyhora (1928), Arsenal (1929), and Earth (1930) in Arsenal – Institute for Film and Video Art in Berlin. These films were restored by the Oleksandr Dovzhenko National Centre, and these modern versions feature new soundtracks created by contemporary composers.
Dovzhenko’s trilogy was produced by the All-Ukrainian Photo-Cinema Directorate (VUFKU) during two short-lived policies of the Soviet State in the 1920s: the New Economic Policy (known as NEP) and the 'indigenization' policy (known as korenizatsiya), which created a unique environment for the revival of Ukrainian culture. The creation of VUFKU in 1922, powered by its economical and political autonomy from Moscow as well as the emergence of a generation of bold revolutionary artists such as Dovzhenko, Vertov, Ivan Kavaleridze and Heorhii Stabovyi, brought to life a unique phenomenon of Ukrainian experimental film in the 1920s.
Oleksandr Dovzhenko’s Berlin period (1922-1923) is most commonly discussed as biographical material. However, the wide circle of acquaintances he made within Berlin’s art world made it an extremely fruitful period for his development as an artist.
ZVENYGORA (Olexandr Dovzhenko, USSR 1927, 3.7.) In Zvenigora, there lives an old man who is "as old as the steppe itself". He watches over a treasure buried deep in the mountains. In twelve episodes woven together with the logic of a dream, the whole history of the Ukraine is narrated from the Varangians of the 8th century all the way up to the civil war. “I am Zvenigora”, wrote Dovzhenko, "so contrary, so visionary, oft-uncontrollable, pierced by an acute sense of conflict and the rhythm of all time".
ARSENAL (Arsenal, Olexandr Dovzhenko, USSR 1929, 10.7.) An outstanding example of how historical processes can be boiled down to their essence by means of poetic montage. Dovzhenko emphasizes that in the face of the "giganticness" of the events, it was the task of film to "push together the material under the pressure of many different atmospheres". ARSENAL tells the story of a central episode of the revolution: the workers' rebellion in the Kyiv munitions factory in January 1981. A structure of visual echoes enables the pre-revolutionary era and the time of the First World War to reverberate. (ev, gw)
EARTH ( Olexandr Dovzhenko, USSR 1930), which to this day is considered one of the best Ukrainian films, was supposed to be the first Ukrainian sound film. In Earth, Dovzhenko returns to a more conventional narrative form. Moreover, this is his first film on a modern, not historical, subject. Exuberant nature, noble faces of peasants, full-blooded and human-like animals – the director strives to bring into this pantheistic world agricultural machinery and the new order, without disturbing the natural status quo. Dovzhenko could not possibly foresee that collectivization would turn into a tragedy for the Ukrainian people and would start the flywheel of Holodomor as a reaction to civil disobedience. In Earth, Dovzhenko speaks the language of pagan rites – here, the arrival of the new always comes with the demise of the old.
