Oleksandr Dovzhenko

Oleksandr Petrovich Dovzhenko is a writer, film director, screenwriter, artist, classic of world cinema.

Place of Birth, Education

He was born on September 10, 1894 in the village of Vyunyshche, Chernihiv region, in a family of peasants. His parents were illiterate. In total, there were 14 children in the family, but only two survived – Alexander and Polina.

He received his primary education at a school in Sosnytsia. Since 1911, he continued his studies at the Hlukhiv Teachers’ Institute.

In 1917, he entered the Kyiv Commercial Institute (now Kyiv National Economic University) at the Faculty of Economics, where he received higher education. The reason for admission was that Dovzhenko’s certificate did not allow him to enter other higher education institutions. Because of this, he tried to get at least some higher education.

Early Soviet years

After graduating from the Hlukhiv Teachers’ Institute, he worked as a teacher in Zhytomyr and Kyiv.

Carried away by the revolution, Dovzhenko joined the ranks of the army led by Symon Petliura. In 1919, he was arrested for this and sentenced to imprisonment in concentration camps, but he eventually managed to escape punishment.

In 1920, he became a member of the Communist Party (Bolsheviks) of Ukraine (CP(b)U), but was later expelled from its ranks.

In 1921, he was sent abroad for diplomatic service – he was in Warsaw, Paris and London.

During 1922 – 1923 he lived in Berlin, where he held the position of Secretary General of the Consulate General of the Ukrainian Soviet Socialist Republic (Ukrainian SSR) in Germany.

In 1923, he returned to Kharkiv and began working as an illustrator in the newspaper “Vesti VUTSVK”, and also created caricatures. He attended meetings of the literary association “Hart”, and later became one of the founders of the Free Academy of Proletarian Literature (VAPLITE).

The Way of Cinema

Since 1925, Dovzhenko worked as an intern on the film “The Red Army”. A year later, he moved to Odessa to complete work on the film. There, at the film factory, he collaborated with Yuri Yanovsky as a director. In the same year, he shot his first films – “Vasya the Reformer” and “The Berry of Love”, the scripts for which he wrote on his own.

The real recognition came in 1929 after the premiere of the film “Zvenyhora”.

In 1932, he shot the film “Earth” and went with it to Europe. In 1958, the film was recognized as one of the 12 greatest films of all time according to film critics.

Later, he made the film “Ivan” on the topic of industrialization. The initiator of the work was the management of Ukrainafilm, and the film became one of the most controversial in Dovzhenko’s work.

In 1933, he moved to Moscow, and after that to the Far East.

At the beginning of World War II, Dovzhenko was first in Ufa, and then in Ashgabat. He went to the front as a volunteer, working as a war correspondent in the newspaper “Krasnaya Armiya”.

In 1943, he completed work on the film story “Ukraine on Fire”, but Stalin banned it.

Until the end of his life, Dovzhenko lived in Moscow, where he continued to work at the Mosfilm film studio.

He died on November 25, 1956 in Moscow – it was on this day that the filming of the film “Poem about the Sea” was supposed to begin.

Dovzhenko’s works

Among Dovzhenko’s works:

story “The Will to Live”
film story “The Enchanted Gum”
film story “Earth”;
the story “Mother”;
the story “The Night Before the Battle”;
film story “The Tale of Flaming Years”;
dramatic poem “Descendants of the Cossacks”;
film story “Ukraine on Fire”;
film story “Poem about the Sea”;
film story “Antarctica”;
film story “Arsenal”;
film story “Shchors”
film story “Michurin”;
the play “Life in Bloom”;
story “Dream”.