VUFKU

A cameraman wanders around with a camera slung over his shoulder, documenting urban life with dazzling inventiveness.

Vasyl, a member of the Komsomol, with the help of a local party organization, gets a tractor and plows private boundaries "on kulak fields". However, this enthusiasm will cost him dearly.

A soldier returns to Kyiv after surviving a train crash and encounters clashes between nationalists and collectivists.

The first years of industrialisation. Disguised as a hunter, an ex-White officer Poloz, who is connected to the international intelligence, is hiding in the forest where the construction of a new power station has begun. An intern making photos of the buildings suddenly notices Poloz. Frightened to be exposed, Poloz kills the guy and makes a cut in the base of the scaffolding of the main building of the power station. In face of a failure, counting on his ex-wife Katia’s help, Poloz kidnaps a 10-year-old boy. Hrai, an engineer and the father of the kidnapped boy, finds Poloz’s hiding place in the forest, and his assistant Varrava shoots the White officer at that very moment when he tries to explode the main building of the power station. The film is lost.

The film is dedicated to the achievements of the Ukrainian SSR for the eleventh anniversary of the October Revolution.

A lyrical documentary on the lives of Coal miners in the Donbass who are struggling to meet their production quotas under the Five Year Plan.

The momentous film stars Mykola Nademskyi as the grandfather of Tymish (Semen Svashenko), whom he alerts to secret treasure buried in the mountains of Zvenygora – Treasure that rightfully belongs to his homeland. The film wonderfully blends both lyricism and politics and uses its central construct to build a montage praising Ukrainian industrialization, attacking the bourgeoisie, celebrating the beauty of the Ukrainian steppe and retelling ancient folklore. Said Sergei Eisenstein of the film, "As the lights went on, we felt that we had just witnessed a memorable event in the development of the cinema".

Heroic war adventures of an orphan shepherd boy, who saved two Red Army scout soldiers from the pursuit by White Army and as a reward was admitted into the squadron.

Jean, the hairdresser, is flabbergasted: what is that baby his girlfriend Lisa has put in his arms out of the blue? The fruit of love? Out of the question. From that moment on, the reluctant father has but one thought in his head: he must get rid of the cumbersome 'article'. And, take his word for it, all the ways are good.

Ukrainian agitprop film from 1929 that was banned and long forgotten until its rediscovery in the 1970s, imaginatively shot by the gifted cameraman Oleksii Pankratiev, whose panoramic long shots feature dynamic compositions. The background, barren field and bare sky, raise the agricultural subject matter to the level of an epic poem. Using innovative editing, Shpykovskyi transformed an incredibly simple plot into an avant-garde work. Created the same year as Earth (Zemlya), the film forms a paradoxically conceptual, ideological, and aesthetic pair with Dovzhenko’s movie.

The heroine of the film leaves her husband, who does not allow her to study, takes her child with her and goes to medical school.

Tamilla is a 1927 film written by Maria Moraf and directed by Muhsin Ertugrul. The screenplay was adapted from Ferdinand Duchêne's work of the same name. It is one of the two films Muhsin Ertugrul made while working at the Ukrainian Photo-Cinema Administration (VUFKU) in Kiev. It was premiered in Turkey 92 years later with a special screening at the 56th Antalya Golden Orange Film Festival.

Freedom-loving Mykola Dzheria goes away from the village because of poverty and villainage. He leaves his senior parents, his young wife Nemydora and escapes to the sugar-mill. His friend dies because of slave work. Mykola goes to the Dniester reed beds. Working with other escapees, Mykola falls in love with the daughter of the cooperative leader. The girl also likes the handsome guy. However, their fate is decided by the landlord’s servants; they set the reed beds on fire, shackle Mykola and take him to Verbivka. The film was released on 01 April 1927 in Kyiv and on 24 May 1928 in Moscow. The film is lost.

The film adaptation of Taras Shevchenko’s biography of 1925 is the first Ukrainian biopic. At that time, it was one of the most expensive films, as for the first time experts in history, ethnography, and literary studies were involved in pre-production. The famous Modernism artist, academician Vasyl Kryvhevskyi designed the film, and professor Serhii Yefremov served as a consultant.  Consisting of numerous short stories, the film that shows the life of Shevchenko as an adolescent, a soldier, a poet, was successfully demonstrated in Ukraine and abroad and became the most acknowledged cinema project of 1926. Amvrosii Buchma played Taras Shevchenko.

Directed by Grigori Gritscher-Tscherikower.

Set in Odesa at the end of the Civil War when the town is occupied by the Whites. The night coachman, fifty-year-old Hordiy Yaroshchuk, lives with his daughter Katya who gets involved with a Bolshevik and revolutionary.

The seamy Jewish underworld of Odesa is the setting for Isaac Babel's story based on the life of gangster king Mishka Yaponchik "Mike the Jap" Vinnitsky. Murder is a way of life for Benya and his gang until he finds himself ensnared in a Bolshevik trap.

In Spring is a masterpiece of the Ukrainian film avant-garde, a non-fiction film created by Mykhail Kaufman. In it, the now almost unknown Kyiv of 1929 appears. Shots of the awakening of the city, renewal of its life, echo with lyrical pictures of the revival of nature. Kaufman's attentive camera stops for a long time on the smiling faces of the children, painting a lyrical picture of a confession of love for Kyiv.

Set in an imaginary land where the threat of revolution spurs the Emperor to seek exile in one of the most distant parts of his realm. There he meets Elka, the daughter of a revolutionary who has been banished here due to his confrontational activities. The two fall in love but meet a violent end when the revolutionaries, led by Elka's father, destroy the palace.