Abstract

For ten years, the University of Cambridge has showcased the best of Ukrainian cinema from its beginnings to the present day at the Annual Cambridge Festival of Ukrainian Film.

Admission is free, but seating is limited and online registration is required. Click HERE to register for tickets.

The films are in the Ukrainian and Russian languages with English subtitles.

The Fall of Lenin 2017 / dir Svitlana Shymko / 11 mins

This new award-winning documentary short from Svitlana Shymko is a ghost story. Inspired by Ukraine’s 2015 ‘decommunisation’ laws, it confronts the phantoms of Vladimir Lenin and the Soviet Union in Ukraine, presenting the dawn and the twilight of idols and the curious afterlife of the ghosts of history.

Arsenal 1929 / dir. Oleksandr Dovzhenko / 92 mins

Dovzhenko’s silent classic is one of the world’s first anti-war films. It follows Tymish Stoyan, a Ukrainian soldier who returns home from the front in the First World War to find revolution engulfing his homeland and a new Ukrainian People’s Republic centred in Kyiv. The film is a powerful reminder that what is commonly called the ‘Russian Revolution’ was in fact a series of revolutions: entangled, mutually antagonistic struggles not only about land and economic justice, but also about national self-determination and the abuses of colonialism. The screening will be introduced with a primer about the film by Rory Finnin, Director of Cambridge Ukrainian Studies.

Wine reception to follow the screenings.