Retrospective «Ukrainian Cinema: Poetry and Resistance» at BAMPFA
March 21–April 13, 2025
The historian Timothy Snyder considers Ukraine to be part of the “bloodlands,” a blighted region in Eastern Europe that was invaded and occupied by the major totalitarian regimes of the twentieth century. The symbolic value of a land or landscape that, alongside its splendor and generosity, has also displayed a capacity for resilience and resistance has been no less evident to Ukraine’s poets, artists, and filmmakers. Starting with Oleksandr Dovzhenko’s Earth (1930), Ukrainian cinema has demonstrated a profound connection to nature and the land, a connection at odds with the coercive project of Soviet modernization, which sought to sacrifice Ukraine’s natural wealth to the idea of progress.
This program offers an overview of Ukrainian Soviet film history from the perspective of Ukrainian landscapes depicted by filmmakers. Mikhail Kaufman’s In Spring (1929) explores how the Kinoks’ gaze may admire not only machinery but also Ukrainian urban poetry. Ivan Kavaleridze’s Prometheus (1935) considers the common fate of Ukrainian and Caucasian peasants in the era of serfdom. Mark Donskoi’s At Great Cost (1957) continues this exploration of Ukrainian history and its modernist reinterpretation. Finally, the directors of Ukrainian poetical cinema of the Thaw period—Yurii Illienko, Leonid Osyka, and, of course, Sergei Parajanov—juxtapose the motifs of the Ukrainian landscape with the rediscovered idiom of Ukrainian folklore and the radically innovative cinema language of the 1960s.
From lyrical to epic genres, from the deep social conflicts to the joy of liberty, this program also expresses the character of the Ukrainian people, who continue to resist Russian imperialism in the ongoing war.
—Oleksandr Teliuk, Guest Curator
Film program:
Earth (1930) Oleksandr Dovzhenko
In Spring (1929) Mikhail Kaufman
At Great Cost (1957) Mark Donskoi
Poem of the Sea (1958) Yuliya Solntseva
Ukrainian Rhapsody (1961) Sergei Parajanov
Shadows of Forgotten Ancestors (1965) Sergei Parajanov
Prometheus (1935) Ivan Kavaleridze
A Spring for the Thirsty (1965) Yurii Illienko
The Stone Cross (1968) Leonid Osaka
Arsenal (1929) Oleksandr Dovzhenko
On April 12, will be held Ukrainian Film Symposium cosponsored by the Institute of Slavic, East European, and Eurasian Studies; the Armenian Studies Program; and the Department of Slavic Languages and Literatures, UC Berkeley.
Participants:
Harsha Ram, Associate Professor in the Department of Slavic Languages and Literatures at UC Berkeley.
Oleksandr Teliuk, film scholar, archivist, and artist. He is a graduate student at the University of Rochester, New York.
Vincent Bohlinger, professor in the Department of English and the Film Studies Program at Rhode Island College.
Elizabeth Astrid Papazian, Associate Professor of Cinema & Media Studies and Russian, and a core faculty member of the Program in Comparative Literature at the University of Maryland.
Polina Barskova, associate Professor in the Department of Slavic Languages and Literatures at UC Berkeley.
Bohdan Nebesio, Associate Professor of Film Studies at Brock University, Niagara Region, Canada.
Ana Hedberg Olenina, Associate Professor of Comparative Literature and Media Studies at Arizona State University.