Dovzhenko Film Studio – the Main Filmmaking Hub of Ukraine
Nearly a century has passed since the establishment of the O. Dovzhenko Film Studio, one of Ukraine's leading film production enterprises. This year also marks the 130th anniversary of the birth of the man whose name the film studio bears – Ukrainian director and playwright Oleksandr Dovzhenko, a man who faced difficult trials in life, including service in the army of the Ukrainian People's Republic, German occupation, Soviet concentration camps, and Polish captivity.
The birth of the studio can be traced back to 1925, when the All-Ukrainian Photo Cinema Administration (VUFKU) announced a competition among architects to design a full-cycle film factory – the first and largest in the Soviet Union at the time. The winning project was by renowned Ukrainian architect Valerian Rykov, whose work includes such iconic Kyiv buildings as the Zhovten Cinema, the Pechersk Hippodrome, the People's Auditorium, and the National Bank of Ukraine. The experience gained in constructing the Kyiv film factory was later used for building similar enterprises in other cities of the Soviet empire.
Photo: The construction of the "Ukrainian Hollywood"
The construction of the "Ukrainian Hollywood" began in the spring of 1927. The most convenient site for the future film factory was chosen near Ivan Bahrianyi Park (formerly Pushkin Park during Soviet times), where there was access to water, sewage, and the possibility of supplying electricity to the filming pavilions. The construction was based on German models on a 40-hectare field with a central pavilion (110 by 40 metres; 3,600 square metres of usable space), where up to 24 feature films and 12 other films could be shot simultaneously, with a capacity of 13,000 amps of direct current and 6,000 amps of alternating current. From its inception, the Dovzhenko Film Studio was responsible for about 50% of all film production at the time. In nearly a century of work, the studio has produced around a thousand feature and documentary films.
Photo: Oleksandr Dovzhenko, Source: Izhytomyryanyn.com
The first film produced by the studio was the silent children's adventure film Vanka and "The Avenger" by Ukrainian cinema pioneer Aksel Lundin. Filming began in 1927, during the construction of the pavilions, so most of the shooting took place at night so that the builders would not interfere with the film crew and vice versa. That same year saw the release of two documentaries: Nurseries by M. Kaufman and The Eleventh by future world cinema avant-garde master and leading theorist of documentary cinema, Ukrainian director Dziga Vertov.
With the arrival of Vertov, one of the brightest representatives of the "Ukrainian Renaissance", and other experienced and talented members of Ukraine's creative elite of that time, including the world cinema classic, Ukrainian director and playwright Oleksandr Dovzhenko, along with other famous directors, screenwriters, and cinematographers such as Arnold Kordium, Ivan Kavaleridze, Oleksiy Pankratyev, and Mykola Bazhan, the studio's creative life flourished. It was during this time that one of the most famous documentaries of the 20th century, Man with a Movie Camera by Dziga Vertov, was filmed, which was named among the 12 best documentaries of all time at the 13th Mannheim International Film Festival in 1964.
Vertov also filmed the first Ukrainian sound film Symphony of the Donbas (1931) at the Dovzhenko Studio, and the first colour film was The Sorochinsky Fair by Mykola Ekk, based on the works of Mykola Hohol, released in 1939. During this same period, Oleksandr Dovzhenko directed his cinematic epic Earth, which ranks second on the list of the 100 best films in Ukrainian cinema history and, in 2015, was included in UNESCO’s top five world cinema masterpieces.
During the next, post-war period, many talented and globally recognised directors and playwrights worked at the Dovzhenko Studio, including Serhiy Paradzhanov, who filmed his renowned movie Shadows of Forgotten Ancestors there, and Yuriy Illienko, the director of the film The White Bird with a Black Mark, which won an award at the Sorrento Film Festival in 1972.
Today, the O. Dovzhenko National Film Studio is a modern film enterprise capable of solving the most complex tasks in filming projects of various genres and levels of difficulty. The Dovzhenko Studio continues to operate even now, during the full-scale invasion. Over 300 directors, cinematographers, artists, decorators, make-up artists, and sound engineers of high professional qualification work at the studio.
Source: Knuba.edu.ua
Covering an area of over 17.5 hectares, the studio has four filming pavilions. One of them, covering an area of 2,520 m², is the largest in Europe, designed to accommodate ten film crews simultaneously. The other three pavilions have an area of 775 m² each. The pavilions are equipped with three pools, and there is also an outdoor pool with a wave generation system, allowing for the shooting of sea battles, shipwrecks, underwater scenes, and other water-related scenes without leaving the studio.
The highlight of the studio's grounds is a natural lake located next to the outdoor pool and the famous Dovzhenko Garden, which covers over one hectare.
The studio boasts domestic and foreign filming equipment, a stunt machine, optical printing facilities, a complete set of woodworking equipment, an extensive costume collection, five sound studios equipped with modern sound technology, an arsenal of domestic and foreign weaponry, as well as light and heavy transport. This extensive infrastructure ensures that the Dovzhenko Film Studio remains fully competitive and capable of producing high-quality, creative Ukrainian content that, despite the war and Russian aggression against Ukraine, will continue to impress audiences worldwide.