VUFKU

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

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.

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.

To justify the fantastic adventures of the blacksmith Vakula, the authors of the film “simplify” Gogol’s plot: Vakula, having drunk too much at Patsiuk’s place, falls asleep. And he sees this dream where the devil takes him to the palace of Catherine II in Saint-Petersburg; and there Vakula takes off the little shoes of the Russian empress to give them to his fiancée Oksana. And, really, drunk Vakula takes off the shoes while sleeping… but from Patsiuk. Later, when Vakula unwraps the package with the “royal slippers” in front of Oksana, he finds only Patsiuk’s dirty shoes there.

The momentous film stars Mykola Nademskyi as the grandfather of Tymish, whom he alerts to the secret treasure buried in the mountains of Zvenygora – a 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. Sergei Eisenstein said 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.

The Government of the fictional country Norland has unleashed a war with the neighboring Galikania and is suffering one defeat after another. A group of conspirators who were dissatisfied with this state of affairs, led by the Social Democrat Frank Frey arrange a coup to overthrew the emperor of Norland. But the working class does not like the new order either. Workers expose Frank Frey's policy of continuing the war and a revolution breaks out in the country. The leader of the socialist revolution becomes a mechanic of the name Franz Stark.

Algeria, run by the French administration. Tamilla is a cheerful girl whose father, a respected member of the Méziane community of Kabylians, is looking for a favorable marriage. Mezian promises his daughter to the old merchant Lakhrash. This does not prevent him from selling Tamilla almost immediately for the second time, this time to a young handsome man named Akli, with whom the girl experiences short-term happiness. But later, Akli thinks about another wife. At the same time, Meziane is scheming to lure more money from Akli and pay off Lakhrash. Having already given birth to a child with Akli, Tamilla finally falls into Lakhrash's hands. Everything ends in tragedy, and Tamilla is imprisoned by an unjust sentence of French judges who are insensitive to Berber problems. Although Tamilla will be released, she is already "damaged goods". The film 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 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.

The film's plot is based on the real murder of the Soviet diplomatic courier Theodor Nette abroad. The pouch of the Soviet diplomat, which is stolen by British spies, is taken away by the sailors of a ship sailing to Leningrad who deliver it to the authorities. The intelligence agents make every effort to retrieve the bag.

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…

Exposing the customs of provincial philistinism in the years of NEP. Small town. Mitya, going to the party of his bride Shurochka, finds a dying woman with infants. When he comes to visit the child, everyone decides that he was the father - and kicks him out. Mitya decides to drown himself. Unknown saves him and helps to stage his own funeral. During the mourning ceremony, Mitya rise from the grave, thanks the inhabitants petrified by horror, and leaves the city forever.

A Soviet propaganda film based on material from the Bolshevik coup. 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.

Crimea. The middle of the 19th century. A proud and brave jigit Alim Aidamak who cannot put up with the workers’ abuse, works at the leather factory of the greedy Ali-bay. One day he responds in kind. He is fired, but he takes the memories of the beautiful daughter of his ex-master, Sara, with him. Young people went their separate ways. Alim takes the revolutionary path; he and his friends go to the mountains and start an underground struggle. Only his name is enough to terrify landlords, Mirzas and civil servants. Authorities send a Cossack detachment to catch the Crimean Tatar Robin Hood. The adventure film, which reminds an American western, was filmed based on a Crimean Tatar legend, which in 1925 was turned into a play by the repressed Crimean Tatar writer Ipchi Ümer. The shooting of the film under the script of the Ukrainian avant-garde poet Mykola Bazhan began in the autumn of 1925, when the indigenisation policy in the national republics caused demand on the national plots.

Lost film directed by Oleksandr Dovzhenko (his first film) and Favst Lopatynskyi. It is a satire of the NEP period. Vasia, the son of a factory’s worker, is attracted by the romance of adventures. And he goes to look for them. He saves a drowning drunkard who tries to beat him. Vasia escapes from him in a vehicle parked on the shore. However, the vehicle belongs to a superintendent who, when he does not find it, stages its theft. Meanwhile, Vasia exposes priests in the church. As a result, the church is turned into a cinema, and the priest becomes a cinema technician. And finally, Vasia’s last deed is catching a criminal at home and denouncing him to the militia.

The film is based on I. Nechui-Levystkyi’s work The Bargewoman. From dawn till dusk from early childhood, Vasylyna has been working on Pan Jastrzebski’s fields. The young nobleman likes the beautiful girl, and she starts working in his home as a maid. Vasylyna’s happiness does not last long: the man marries a girl of his social class. Vasylyna’s fiancé Vasyl, who feels insulted because of her unfaithfulness, instigates guys to cut off the braid of the landlord’s mistress. Vasylyna runs away from the village and hides from people. Soon, she gives birth to a child who dies shortly. Female workers from a factory find barely alive Vasylyna and help her become a weaver. Vasylyna starts a new life.

In the Caucasus, among the picturesque mountains there is a guerrilla war between the Whites from Bicherakhov’s division and the Red Army soldiers. The Chechen girl Dzhalma finds an injured Ukrainian guy Mykola in a valley. She saves his life and helps him to recover. Young people fall in love with each other, and after the Bolshevik’s victory both of them travel to Ukraine. Dzhalma ends up in a traditional Ukrainian village.