The event will showcase Oleksander Dovzhenko’s silent masterpiece Zvenyhora, 1927. The picture is the first part in his filmic triptych of Ukraine that also includes Arsenal and Earth. It is Dovzhenko’s metaphor of a thousand years of Ukrainian history, from the first Kyivan princes to the Russian Bolshevik war against independent Ukraine. The main protagonist is an old man, ageless, ingenuous, enterprising, cunning and indestructible – Dovzhenko’s personification of the Ukrainian spirit. The old man’s life is a hunt for a hidden treasure, a symbol of Ukraine’s sole and its, yet unlocked, spiritual potential.

Yuri Shevchuk, the Director of the Ukrainian Film Club and Lecturer of Ukrainian Language and Culture at the Columbia University, will introduce the film and mediate the post-screening discussion. A recently restored VUFKU 1927 original edition of Zvenyhora will be screened with the English translation of Ukrainian intertitles. The event is free and open to the public.

Synopsis:
There is a mysterious place in the midst of the Ukrainian steppes, the Zvenyhora, or the Ringing Mountain. According to folk legends it harbors invaluable treasures of the Scythians. The entire chain of historic events that left their trace on the face of Ukraine – the Varangians, the nomad invaders, the struggle against the Polish gentry, the Haidamaka uprising, the First World War and the Bolshevik Revolution – are connected by one image of a Ukrainian old man, ageless, ingenuous, enterprising, cunning and indestructible – Dovzhenko’s personification of Ukrainian identity itself. The old man’s entire life is devoted to hunting for the illusive hidden treasures, which, as the film unfolds increasingly appear as a metaphor of Ukraine’s national sole and its – yet unlocked – spiritual potential. In the process, the old man is torn between his grandson Pavlo, epitome of the Ukrainian nationalist cause, and Tymishko, forward-looking, proletariat-oriented Bolshevik. The old man, instigated by Pavlo attempts to derail the Bolshevik train of progress. He is captured by Tymish’s comrades-in-arms, forgiven and taken on board the train speeding away towards the bright new day.