EVENING WITH UKRAINIAN CINEMA: DOVZHENKO VS GOGOL

From the series Masterpieces of World Cinema. The work of Ukrainian director Olexandr Petrovich Dovzhenko (1894-1956), (Ukrainian: Олександр Петрович Довженко), is one of the treasures of European art. The world-famous director highlighted the life and work of ordinary Ukrainians in his films. In his famous works from the silent era, especially in the trilogy Arsenal, Zvenigora and Zemlya, he focused on the beauty of his homeland. He extolled the charms of the Desna River and the surrounding villages, showing the Ukrainian nation as a people deeply connected to nature and the land. He worked in Zhytomyr, Kharkov, Odessa and Kiev. He was subsequently persecuted by the Communists and forced to collaborate with the regime during the dictatorship of J. V. Stalin. A special relationship developed between him and Stalin on the subject of the dictator and artistic freedom. They often discussed things together and Dovzhenko succumbed to the pressure of Russian propaganda. Nevertheless, his importance is unquestionable; despite the ban on his work, he was and still is (along with Eisenstein and Pudovkin) one of the greatest classics of Soviet and world cinema. Towards the end of his life, Dovzhenko commented on his tragic fate: "I will die in Moscow without ever having seen Ukraine! Before I die, I will ask Stalin to remove my heart from my chest and bury it in my native land, in Kiev, somewhere on a mountain above the Dnieper, before I am burned in a crematorium." In addition to Dovzhenko's visual opuses, we touch on the work of another great and world-famous Ukrainian artist, the brilliant satirist Nikolai Vasiliyevich Gogol and his works mapping Ukrainian folklore in a romantic way. Dovzhenko was also active in literature and as an outstanding graphic artist created a number of film posters and contributed to the avant-garde magazine Hammer. His work uses metaphors, images, fragments of songs and poems, proverbs, folk sayings, satire, irony, and a combination of humor and tragedy.

The lecture and film evening is led by film critic and publicist Mgr. Martin Jiroušek