Pavlo Dolyna at the Odesa Film Factory in the 1920s

Abstract

This article profiles the actor and film director Pavlo Dolyna, who worked closely with leading figures of the “Executed Renaissance”— Les Kurbas, Oleksandr Dovzhenko, and Vasyl Krychevsky. He was also among the pioneers of Ukrainian Soviet cinema in the 1920s. The artist worked at the Odessa Technical School of Cinematography, acted in films, directed four films, and engaged in film studies. Archival materials allow us to reconstruct the intense work at the film studio, the socialist competition among creative collectives, and the surveillance of filmmakers by the repressive authorities. Due to ideological persecution, he was forced to switch to non-fiction film and was able to avoid repression. Overall, Pavlo Dolyna’s life story vividly illustrates the processes that took place in the literary and artistic milieu during the reign of the Bolshevik regime in Soviet Ukraine. The artist had a significant influence on the development of Ukrainian cinema in the 1920s as an actor, director of the first films at the Odesa Film Factory of the All-Ukrainian Photo-Cinema Administration, and a theorist of cinematic art.