VUFKU

A cameraman wanders around with a camera slung over his shoulder, documenting urban life with dazzling inventiveness.

Vasyl, a member of the Komsomol, with the help of a local party organization, gets a tractor and plows private boundaries "on kulak fields". However, this enthusiasm will cost him dearly.

A lyrical documentary on the lives of Coal miners in the Donbass who are struggling to meet their production quotas under the Five Year Plan.

A soldier returns to Kyiv after surviving a train crash and encounters clashes between nationalists and collectivists.

The defeated remnants of vile Ukrainian nationalists, headed by the leader of the Ukrainian liberation movement, Symon Petliura, cannot accept their historical fate and are plotting an insurrection against the Soviet regime in Ukraine. There is nothing Petliura and his cohorts would not do to win back control over Ukraine, including selling it to the highest bidder, in this case, the Polish dictator Jozef Pilsudski. A group of plotters are coordinating an insurrection in Kyiv with an attack from Poland headed by Petliura’s general Yurko Tiutiunnyk. Predictably, the invincible Red Army defeats the nationalist plotters and proves that the Soviet borders are impregnable.

The film is dedicated to the achievements of the Ukrainian SSR for the eleventh anniversary of the October Revolution.

To justify the fantastic adventures of the blacksmith Vakula, the authors of the film “simplify” Gogol’s plot: Vakula, having drunk too much at Patsiuk’s place, falls asleep. And he sees this dream where the devil takes him to the palace of Catherine II in Saint-Petersburg; and there Vakula takes off the little shoes of the Russian empress to give them to his fiancée Oksana. And, really, drunk Vakula takes off the shoes while sleeping… but from Patsiuk. Later, when Vakula unwraps the package with the “royal slippers” in front of Oksana, he finds only Patsiuk’s dirty shoes there.

Jean, the hairdresser, is flabbergasted: what is that baby his girlfriend Lisa has put in his arms out of the blue? The fruit of love? Out of the question. From that moment on, the reluctant father has but one thought in his head: he must get rid of the cumbersome 'article'. And, take his word for it, all the ways are good.

The seamy Jewish underworld of Odesa is the setting for Isaac Babel's story based on the life of gangster king Mishka Yaponchik "Mike the Jap" Vinnitsky. Murder is a way of life for Benya and his gang until he finds himself ensnared in a Bolshevik trap.

The momentous film stars Mykola Nademskyi as the grandfather of Tymish (Semen Svashenko), whom he alerts to secret treasure buried in the mountains of Zvenygora – Treasure that rightfully belongs to his homeland. The film wonderfully blends both lyricism and politics and uses its central construct to build a montage praising Ukrainian industrialization, attacking the bourgeoisie, celebrating the beauty of the Ukrainian steppe and retelling ancient folklore. Said Sergei Eisenstein of the film, "As the lights went on, we felt that we had just witnessed a memorable event in the development of the cinema".

During the Russian civil war, the Whites, that anti-Communist force that fought against the Bolsheviks during that period, capture a Jewish Ukranian village; the gang commander threatens a pogrom, and will kill everyone in the village unless the inhabitants agree to give to the White Officers five virgin girls in wedding dresses. Under such terrible pressure, the Jewish council of the town decides, full of sorrow and despair, to sacrifice their daughters to the drunken officers but fortunately and just in time, a detachment of partisans that belong to the Red Army, comes and frees the village.

The Government of the fictional country Norland has unleashed a war with the neighboring Galikania and is suffering one defeat after another. A group of conspirators who were dissatisfied with this state of affairs, led by the Social Democrat Frank Frey arrange a coup to overthrew the emperor of Norland. But the working class does not like the new order either. Workers expose Frank Frey's policy of continuing the war and a revolution breaks out in the country. The leader of the socialist revolution becomes a mechanic of the name Franz Stark.

The story concentrates on a single 48-hour period during the Russian Revolution. The central character, played by Y. E. Samchykovski, is an old servant who staunchly supports the Royal Family. Even when his master is placed in prison and his son is appointed a commissar, the servant remains faithful to the Czarist regime. But when his village is invaded by the White Russian army and his son is summarily executed, the old man realizes that his homeland is far better off in the hands of the revolutionaries, who seek to build rather than destroy. A "cleansing" fire brings this propaganda piece to an appropriately symbolic conclusion.

In Spring is a masterpiece of the Ukrainian film avant-garde, a non-fiction film created by Mykhail Kaufman. In it, the now almost unknown Kyiv of 1929 appears. Shots of the awakening of the city, renewal of its life, echo with lyrical pictures of the revival of nature. Kaufman's attentive camera stops for a long time on the smiling faces of the children, painting a lyrical picture of a confession of love for Kyiv.

An opportunistic Kyivan Apollon Shmyguyev, whose peaceful bourgeois life is interrupted by the civil war, decides to wait out the trouble in the South of Ukraine, which is under the rule of the Russian White Army. After gathering left off goods on Andriyivskyi descent in Kyiv, he goes on a journey with a camel, which somehow had strayed to his house. In the midway he is stopped by the Red Army: the camel gets confiscated for the needs of revolution, and Apollon appears in the disposal of the Bolshevik commissar. Zealous and cunning, Apollon quickly takes lead of the local commissariat. But the ingrained thirst for a profit once again puts his life in danger.

The Whites enter the city, and they come over to Nadiia for search and seizure. They do not find the package, but they arrest Nadiia. A White counterintelligence officer interrogates her at the house-headquarters for a long time. However, Nadiia is silent and keeps the location of the package in secret, even though they blackmail her and threat her son, her husband and even her common sense.

The heroine of the film leaves her husband, who does not allow her to study, takes her child with her and goes to medical school.

Jimmy Higgings is a worker of the plant making weapons for the Tsarist Russia and the German Empire. During World War I, Jimmy speaks at a spontaneous rally against the war. He is arrested. When released, he becomes unemployed. He is happy to hear the news about the revolution; he volunteers into the American expeditionary force thinking that having the weapons he can fight against Germans – the enemies of the Russian revolution. However, finding himself in Russia, Jimmy soon realises that the expeditionary force of American volunteers fights not against the Germans, but against the young Socialist Russia. Without any hesitations, he takes the path of revolutionary struggle, he spreads propaganda among the American soldiers and distributes Bolshevik leaflets. Captured by the American military police, Jimmy Higgings does not betray his friends. He is sentenced to twenty years in a military prison. Jimmy cannot stand it and loses his mind…

The film's plot is based on the real murder of the Soviet diplomatic courier Theodor Nette abroad. The pouch of the Soviet diplomat, which is stolen by British spies, is taken away by the sailors of a ship sailing to Leningrad who deliver it to the authorities. The intelligence agents make every effort to retrieve the bag.

The owner of the gladiator school buys two slaves, the Thracian Spartacus and the Gaul Artorix. During the first fight in the arena, Spartacus wins over the Colloseum audience and his freedom. When freed from gladiator slavery, Spartacus calls slaves and Rome plebs for a rebel. The dictator Sulla dies. Spartacus and rebellious slaves lay out a camp near Vesuvius. The Roman commander Crassus is unable to take Spartacus’s camp by storm, so he lays siege to it. Spartacus is betrayed; he dies with his friend Artorix in a battle. The film is based on Raffaello Giovagnoli’s novel of the same name.