AUPCA KYIV FILM STUDIOS AND OLEKSIY KAPPLER’s FILM “RIGHT FOR WOMAN”: STORY OF ONE BAN

Abstract

The article addresses the issue of a ban placed on the film “Right for Woman” (Pravo na Zhinku) by Oleksiy Kappler produced in 1930 by the newly established Kyiv Film Studios of the All-Ukrainian Photo Cinema Administration (AUPCA). The author reviews the main difficulties its production faced and the film itself had with assessment by the repertoire committee and shift in the emancipatory ideologemes at the verge of the 1920-30s. The research discusses the insufficiency of the analysis of the phenomenon of the film’s “ban” in the modern historiography. The article suggests viewing the film with the help of the notions “gender conflict” and “culture shock”. Their application makes it possible to uncover a significant layer of the latent information: manifestations of the “men’s protest”, gender conflict of interests, change of the regime’s gender policy, the phenomenon of feminization of medical education, transformation of the institute of family, confrontation between the cinema artist and the state, competition between Kyiv and Odesa Film Studios. The author concludes that the film is a peculiar artistic monument to the Soviet policy of “women’s emancipation” with a significant amount of hidden, forbidden, conflicted, and shocking information. The history of the ban proves that the content and significance of the film can have numerous readings in different historic times and become a marker of the watershed from the 1920s to the 1930s in the Soviet regime’s emancipatory ideologemes. The research shows the necessity to further study the film as a unique historic source on women’s emancipation of the Soviet times.