Odesa Artistic Film Studio

Odesa Artistic Film Studio (Одеська кіностудія художніх фільмів; Odeska kinostudiia khudozhnikh filmiv). Established in 1919 on the basis of several private film ateliers. It became the Odesa Department of the All-Ukrainian Film Committee (1920), the Odesa Film Factory of the All-Ukrainian Photo-Cinema Administration (1922), and the Odesa Film Factory Ukrainfilm (1929) and has had its current name since 1938. It was evacuated to Central Asia in 1941 and then reappeared as the Black Sea Film Factory (actually a branch of Mosfilm), its name until 1955. In the 1920s it was the key center of development of Ukrainian cinema art and produced artistic films, newsreels, cinema journals, documentaries of historical events, and screen versions of literary works. In the 1930s its importance declined as the Ukrainian content was forcibly restricted, and since 1945 it has produced only a few Ukrainian films, such as Bahriani berehy (The Scarlet Shores, 1979). The Odesa Artistic Film Studio trained such notable Ukrainian film directors as Oleksander Dovzhenko, Yurii Stabovy, Arnold Kordium, and Ivan Kavaleridze and the cameramen Danylo Demutsky and Yo. Rona. In the 1920s such important theater and literary figures as Les Kurbas, Favst Lopatynsky, Mykhailo Semenko, Yurii Yanovsky, and Mykola Bazhan, worked in the Odesa Artistic Film Studio.

[This article originally appeared in the Encyclopedia of Ukraine, vol. 4 (1993).]