Germany Presents Kyiv With 9 Recovered Films, Including That About Bolshevik Atrocities in Ukraine

The German Federal Archive has handed over a hard drive with nine films from its collection related to Ukraine to Ukrainian Foreign Minister Andrii Sybiha. This was reported by the Archive and the Ukrainian Dovzhenko Centre on their websites.

The films will be provided to the Oleksandr Dovzhenko National Centre for preservation and analysis.

Employees of the Federal Archive, together with Ukrainian film scholars and archivists, identified and digitised the films.

‘These unique works of art and documentary footage provide an insight into Ukraine's century-long struggle for independence, as well as the Soviet totalitarian rule of the 1930s and 1940s,’ said Ukrainian Foreign Minister Sybiha.

Olena Honcharuk, the director of the Dovzhenko Centre, said that cooperation with the German Federal Archive in repatriating Ukrainian film heritage began long before the war, back in 2014. The passionate work of Ukrainian and German film researchers and archivists helped fill in the gaps in the Ukrainian cultural process of the 1920s and 1930s.

‘This unique acquisition gives us a sense of unity and new energy to protect and nurture our cultural identity,’ Honcharuk said.

Andrea Hänger, Vice President of the Federal Archives, said that the transfer of the recovered films was a ‘signal of solidarity and support’.

‘Films are special testimonies of a country's cultural identity that archives should preserve. The rich cultural heritage of Ukraine should also be accessible to the general public in this country,’ Hänger added.

In particular, the Dovzhenko Centre received three feature films, one short film, two animated films and three documentaries. Some of these films have been preserved only in the Federal Archive as unique modern copies on cellulose nitrate carriers.

The oldest of the films was made in 1919. It is a film entitled Bolshevik Atrocities of 21 August 1919 or the Kyiv Days of Terror. It shows the unvarnished cruelty of the civil war. Also among the donations is a children's film by one of the few female filmmakers in Ukraine in the 1930s, Iva Hryhorovych, Congratulations on the Transition (1932), which was thought to be lost.

The full list of films (some of which can be viewed online at the website of the German Federal Archive) is available here.