Olexandr Dovzhenko

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Olexandr Petrovych Dovzhenko (Ukrainian: Олександр Петрович Довженко, Russian: Александр Петрович Довженко; also referred to as Oleksandr, Aleksandr, Alexander, or Alexandre Dovjenko) (September 10 [O.S. August 29] 1894 - November 25, 1956) was a writer, producer and director of films, and is often cited as one of the most important early Soviet filmmakers, alongside Sergei Eisenstein and Vsevolod Pudovkin, whose films often celebrated the lives and work of his fellow Ukrainians. Dovzhenko's films were popular but ran into trouble with the Soviet authorities. They were not considered sufficiently doctrinaire and did not conform to the Soviet policy of Socialist realism.

Biography

Olexandr Dovzhenko was born in the district of Viunyshche in Sosnytsia, a townlet in the Chernihiv oblast of present-day Ukraine (at the time a part of Imperial Russia), to Petro Semenovych Dovzhenko and Odarka Ermolaivna Dovzhenko. (His ancestors were Cossacks who settled in Sosnytsia in the eighteenth century, coming from the neighboring province of Poltava.) Olexandr was the seventh of fourteen children, but due to the horrific rate of child loss he became the oldest child by the time he turned eleven.

Although his parents were uneducated, Dovzhenko's semi-literate grandfather encouraged him to study, leading him to become a teacher at the age of 19. He escaped military service during both World War I and the Russian Revolution because of a heart condition, but did join the Communist party in the early 1920s. He even served as an assistant to the Ambassador in Warsaw as well as Berlin. Upon his return to Ukraine in 1923, he began illustrating books and drawing cartoons in Kiev.

Dovzhenko turned to film in 1926 when he landed in Odessa. His ambitious drive led to the production of his second-ever screenplay, Vasya the Reformer (which he also co-directed). He gained greater success with Zvenigora in 1928 which established him as a major filmmaker of his era. His "Ukraine Trilogy," which included (Arsenal and Earth, went underappreciated by contemporary Soviet critics (who found some of its realism counter-revolutionary), but remains his most well-known work in the West.

Although he served as a wartime journalist for the Red Army during World War II, Dovzhenko began to feel ever more oppressed by the bureaucracy of Stalin's Soviet Union. After spending several years writing, co-writing and producing films at Mosfilm Studios in Moscow, he turned to writing novels. Over a 20 year career, Dovzhenko personally directed only 7 films.

Dovzhenko died of a heart attack on November 25, 1956 in Moscow.

Trilogy

Dovzhenko's "Ukraine Trilogy" is seen by many as three of the greatest films ever made.

Zvenigora

Звенигора (Zvenigora/Zvenyhora)
Directed by	Alexander Dovzhenko
Written by	Mike (Mykhailo) Johansen Yurko Tyutyunnyk Alexander Dovzhenko
Starring	Semyon Svashenko Mykola Nademsky Georgi Astafyev Les Podorozhnij
Cinematography	Boris Zavelev A. Pankratyev V. Horytsyn
Distributed by	VUFKU-Odessa
Release date(s)	1928 (Soviet Union)
Running time	65 min.
Language	silent film Russian intertitles
All Movie Guide profile
IMDb profile

Zvenigora, or Zvenyhora (Template:Lang-ru/uk) (1928) was a silent revolutionary epic, Dovzhenko's initial film in his "Ukraine Trilogy" (along with Arsenal and Earth). It is almost religious in its tone, relating a millennium of Ukrainian history through the story of an old man who tells his grandson about a treasure buried in a mountain. Although Dovzhenko referred to Zvenigora as his "party membership card," it is full of Ukrainian myth, lore and superstition. The magical recurrences and parallels used in the storytelling also invites comparisons to Nikolai Gogol.

Арсенал (Arsenal)
Directed by	Alexander Dovzhenko
Produced by	Alexander Dovzhenko
Written by	Alexander Dovzhenko
Starring	Semyon Svashenko Mykola Nademsky Amvroziy Buchma Les Podorozhnij
Music by	Igor Belza
Cinematography	Danylo Demutsky
Distributed by	VUFKU-Odessa
Release date(s)	1928 (Soviet Union)
Running time	92 min.
Country	Soviet Union
Language	Silent film Russian intertitles
IMDb profile

Arsenal

Arsenal (Russian and Ukrainian: Арсенал), (1928), is regarded by film scholar Vance Kepley, Jr. as "one of the few Soviet political films which seems even to cast doubt on the morality of violent retribution." This second film in Dovzhenko's "Ukraine Trilogy," it was originally commissioned as a feature that would glorify the battle in 1918 between Bolshevik workers at a Kiev munitions plant and White Russian troops. Dovzhenko's eye for wartime absurdities (for example, an attack on an empty trench) anticipates later pacifist sentiments in films by Jean Renoir and Stanley Kubrick. An amazing, wondrous and deeply profound work that more than a few viewers feel to be the finest of the director's "Ukraine Trilogy."

Earth

Земля (Earth)
Directed by	Alexander Dovzhenko
Written by	Alexander Dovzhenko
Music by	Levko Revutsky V. Ovchinnikov
Cinematography	Danylo Demutsky
Editing by	Alexander Dovzhenko
Release date(s)	1930 (Soviet Union)
Running time	76 min.
Language	Silent film Russian intertitles
All Movie Guide profile
IMDb profile

Earth (Russian and Ukrainian: Земля, translit. Zemlya literally translated "Soil") (1930) concerns an insurrection by a community of farmers, following a hostile takeover by Kulak landowners. It is Part 3 of Dovzhenko's "Ukraine Trilogy."

Earth was simultaneously lauded and derided by Soviet authorities due to its fairly ambiguous political message. Soviet influence is clear if one looks for it, particularly in the nearness to the "earth" of the peasants, but exactly why or how the symbol functions is unclear. Indeed, the film also deals with subjects such as death, destruction, and poverty.

Earth is considered by many as Dovzhenko's best film, and is often cited alongside Eisenstein's The Battleship Potemkin (1925) as one of the most important films of the Soviet era. Unfortunately, there are no high quality prints of "Earth" available for viewing. The best print available is the Kino version which is still below standard though it is watchable.

It was named #88 in the 1995 Centenary Poll of the 100 Best Films of the Century in Time Out Magazine. The film was also voted one of the ten greatest films of all time by a group of 117 film historians at the 1958 Brussels World's Fair and named one of the top ten greatest films of all time by the International Film Critics Symposium.

Filmography

• Love's Berries (Russian: Ягoдка Любви, translit. Yagodka lyubvi, Ukrainian: Ягідки кохання, translit. Yahidky kokhannya), 1926
• Vasya the Reformer (Russian and Ukrainian: Вася - реформатор, translit. Vasya - reformator), 1926
• The Diplomatic Pouch (Russian: Сумка дипкурьера, translit. Sumka dipkuryera, Ukrainian: Сумка дипкур'єра, translit., Sumka dypkuryera), 1927
• Zvenigora (Russian and Ukrainian: Звенигора, Ukr. translit., Zvenyhora), 1928
• Arsenal (Russian and Ukrainian: Арсенал), 1928
• Earth (Russian and Ukrainian: Зeмля, translit. Zemlya), 1930
• Ivan (Russian: Ивaн, Ukrainian: Iвaн), 1932
• Aerograd (Russian: Аэроград, Ukrainian: Аероград, Ukr. translit., Aerohrad), 1935
• Bukovyna: a Ukrainian Land (Russian: Буковина, земля Украинская, translit. Bukovina, Zemlya Ukrainskaya, Ukrainian: Буковина, зeмля Українськa, translit. Bukovyna, Zemlya Ukrayins'ka), 1939
• Shchors (Russian and Ukrainian: Щopc), 1939
• Liberation (Russian: Освобождение, translit. Osvobozhdeniye), 1940
• Battle for Soviet Ukraine (Russian: Битва за нашу Советскую Украину, translit. Bitva za nashu Sovetskuyu Ukrainu, Ukrainian: Битва за нашу Радянську Україну, translit. Bytva za nashu Radyans'ku Ukrayinu), 1943
• Soviet Earth (Russian: Cтpaнa poднaя, translit. Strana rodnaya), 1945
• Victory in the Ukraine and the Expulsion of the Germans from the Boundaries of the Ukrainian Soviet Earth (Russian: Победа на Правобережной Украине и изгнание немецких захватчиков за пределы украинских советских земель, translit. Pobeda na Pravoberezhnoi Ukraine i izgnaniye nemetsikh zakhvatchikov za predeli Ukrainskikh sovietskikh zemel, Ukrainian: Перемога на Правобережній Україні, translit. Peremoha na Pravoberezhniy Ukrayini), 1945
• Michurin (Russian: Мичурин), 1948
• Farewell, America, 1949
• Poem of the Sea (Russian: Поэма о море, translit. Poema o more), 1959

*codirected by Yuliya Solntseva

Legacy

Dovzhenko was one of the greatest film directors of the Soviet era. He was not a doctrinaire communist, and his work was criticized for its less than enthusiastic portrayal of communist virtues. He was a mentor to the young Ukrainian filmmakers Larisa Shepitko and Sergey Paradzhanov, as well as his wife, Yulia Solntseva, who continued his legacy by producing films of her own and completing projects Dovzhenko was not able to create.

The Olexandr Dovzhenko Film Studios in Kiev were named after him in his honor following his death.

See also

• See Ukrainian Wiki entry on his work: "[1]"

References

ISBN links support NWE through referral fees

• Dovzhenko, Alexander (ed. Marco Carynnyk). 1973. Alexander Dovzhenko: The Poet as Filmmaker. MIT Press. ISBN 0-262-04037-9
• Kepley, Jr., Vance. 1986. In the Service of the State: The Cinema of Alexander Dovzhenko. University of Wisconsin Press. ISBN 0-299-10680-2
• Liber, George O. 2002. Alexander Dovzhenko: A Life in Soviet Film. British Film Institute. ISBN 0-85170-927-3
• Nebesio, Bohdan Y., ed. 1994. The Cinema of Alexander Dovzhenko. Canadian Institute of Ukrainian Studies.
• Perez, Gilberto. 2000. Material Ghost: Films and Their Medium. Johns Hopkins University Press. ISBN 0-8018-6523-9

External links

• Chris Fujiwara's review Neglected Giant: Alexander Dovzhenko at the MFA
• Ray Uzwyshyn's Dovzhenko Study Icons or Dreams: Alexander Dovzhenko's Silent Trilogy (Multilingual Bibliographies)

• John Riley "A (Ukrainian) Life in Soviet Film: Liber's Alexander Dovzhenko", Film-Philosophy, vol. 7 no. 31, October 2003 — a review of George O. Liber (2002), Alexander Dovzhenko: A Life in Soviet Film
• Aleksandr Dovzhenko at IMDB
• Landscapes of the Soul: The Cinema of Alexander Dovzhenko,

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