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.

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".

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.

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.

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.

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

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.

The Whites enter the city, and they come over to Nadiia for search and seizure. They do not find the package, but they arrest Nadiia. A White counterintelligence officer interrogates her at the house-headquarters for a long time. However, Nadiia is silent and keeps the location of the package in secret, even though they blackmail her and threat her son, her husband and even her common sense.

During the Russian civil war, the Whites, that anti-Communist force that fought against the Bolsheviks during that period, capture a Jewish Ukranian village; the gang commander threatens a pogrom, and will kill everyone in the village unless the inhabitants agree to give to the White Officers five virgin girls in wedding dresses. Under such terrible pressure, the Jewish council of the town decides, full of sorrow and despair, to sacrifice their daughters to the drunken officers but fortunately and just in time, a detachment of partisans that belong to the Red Army, comes and frees the village.

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.

Jimmy Higgings is a worker of the plant making weapons for the Tsarist Russia and the German Empire. During World War I, Jimmy speaks at a spontaneous rally against the war. He is arrested. When released, he becomes unemployed. He is happy to hear the news about the revolution; he volunteers into the American expeditionary force thinking that having the weapons he can fight against Germans – the enemies of the Russian revolution. However, finding himself in Russia, Jimmy soon realises that the expeditionary force of American volunteers fights not against the Germans, but against the young Socialist Russia. Without any hesitations, he takes the path of revolutionary struggle, he spreads propaganda among the American soldiers and distributes Bolshevik leaflets. Captured by the American military police, Jimmy Higgings does not betray his friends. He is sentenced to twenty years in a military prison. Jimmy cannot stand it and loses his mind…

The film is set in the 17th century, when social antagonism is at its peak. The poverty of peasants and poor Cossacks is opposed to the lavish lifestyle of the Ukrainian and Polish noblemen, priests, and Cossack officers. Cossacks fight off Tatars’ attacks, however, they start to realise that the real enemy is much closer. Taras Triasylo raises Cossacks to help the rebellious peasants. A dramatic historical narrative, masterly mass shootings of horse attacks, hand-to-hand combats and public festivities contrast with lounge scenes in the palace – balls, feasts, and entertainment of rich people and their family members wearing brocade clothes. On a grand scale and with an eye for detail, the director draws the texture of the film and its characters. The leading actors of Les Kurbas’s theatre Berezil played film protagonists. The film based on Volodymyr Sosiura’s verse novel of 1925 was considered lost for a long time.

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.

The defeated remnants of vile Ukrainian nationalists, headed by the leader of the Ukrainian liberation movement, Symon Petliura, cannot accept their historical fate and are plotting an insurrection against the Soviet regime in Ukraine. There is nothing Petliura and his cohorts would not do to win back control over Ukraine, including selling it to the highest bidder, in this case, the Polish dictator Jozef Pilsudski. A group of plotters are coordinating an insurrection in Kyiv with an attack from Poland headed by Petliura’s general Yurko Tiutiunnyk. Predictably, the invincible Red Army defeats the nationalist plotters and proves that the Soviet borders are impregnable.

The building of Sevzapkino. Columns of demonstrators are moving along Bolshaya Dmitrovka, Dzerzhinsky square, Pushkinskaya (Strastnaya) square, Kamenny Most (The Big Stone Bridge) and Red Square. Decorated cars and trucks. This is a Military parade on Red Square. L.D. Trotsky, N.I. Muralov, S.S. Kamenev are among the commanders. The demonstrators are carrying the models of a boat, plane and globe. The theatrical march. The members of the government and guests including K. Tsetkin are watching from the tribunes. There are lots of planes on the airdrome and square. M.M. Litvinov, N.I. Rikov and others stand near the plane. The plane builds jp speed, soars in the air, leads for landing and lands. Hordes of people gathered at the aerodrome. Camera operator is shooting. The church on the corner of Ulitsa Myasnitskaya (Kirovskaya), the building of GUM (State Department Store) and Khamovnichesky (Frunzensky) Council. Illuminated building.

This revolutionary epic likens the push for industrialization of Soviet Ukraine with the battle for Perekop during the Civil War. A missing plow blade is presented as a symbol of the country's backward peasant economy that needs to be transformed in the course of the industrial construction. In an onslaught of rapidly changing images, Ukrainian village with its peasants suspicious of everything new, dramatically collides with the frenzy of working factories, plants, and mines.