Dovzhenko Studio in the 1960s: Between the Politics of the Auteur and the Politics of Nationality

Abstract

This article examines the aesthetics and politics of filmmaking in Soviet Ukraine in the 1960s as a lens through which to view the mechanisms of defining and representing national difference in Thaw-era Soviet culture. Management at Dovzhenko Studio in Kyiv during this time gave a green light to young filmmakers to explore a modernist and ethnographic poetic by reasoning that such a style was rooted in the traditions of Ukrainian national cinema, the founder of which was the studio’s namesake, Oleksandr Dovzhenko. While always controversial, director-auteurs such as Sergei Paradzhanov, Iurii Illienko, and Leonid Osyka consistently justified their works of “poetic cinema” on the basis of fulfilling the studio’s explicit goal to represent Ukraine through “traditional” means. Kyiv filmmakers, however, found their freedom curtailed not solely by central authorities concerned with ideological problems, but also by a film industry increasingly concerned with its ability to make a profit. Today in Ukraine, the legacy of so-called poetic cinema is fraught with accusations of elitism as the purveyors of cultural memory try to uncover a more popular history of Ukrainian cinema.