Ninety Seconds of a Kharkiv Procession, September 1896: The Photographer Fedetsky

On September 30, 1896, a long procession carrying an icon moved through the streets of Kharkiv — the annual transfer of the icon of the Ozerianska Mother of God from the Kuriazh Monastery outside the city into Kharkiv. That day, Alfred Fedetsky (Альфред Федецький), who ran a photography studio, filmed the procession. The next day’s local newspaper Yuzhnyi Krai reported that he had filmed it “for a minute and a half.”

The Енциклопедія історії України (Encyclopedia of the History of Ukraine, “IEU (history)” below) states that Fedetsky began shooting “the first documentary films in Ukraine” from 1896. That footage cannot be seen today. What follows is the record of just over a year in which a man who had made his name as a photographer took up film. The broader history of film connected to Ukraine is left to our article on Ukrainian cinema.

A Photographer Born in Zhytomyr

According to IEU (history) (written by Petro Bondarchuk, 2013) and the state’s electronic Велика українська енциклопедія (Great Ukrainian Encyclopedia, “VUE” below; written by Volodymyr Myslavskyi, 2022), Fedetsky was born in Zhytomyr in 1857. VUE describes his father as a theater impresario, director, and actor, and Myslavskyi’s research monograph (2010) as coming from a Polish theatrical family. Fedetsky studied at the photography school attached to Vienna’s Academy of Fine Arts and, per VUE, graduated in 1880 and went on to work at a photography studio in Kyiv.

The year he moved to Kharkiv is given differently by different sources. IEU (history) says “in Kharkiv from 1894,” while VUE says he moved and opened a studio in 1886. Myslavskyi writes that he found, in a regional archive, a request for a business permit addressed to the Kharkiv provincial governor, dated June 3, 1886.

According to VUE, Fedetsky photographed the actors Marko Kropyvnytskyi and Mariia Zankovetska, the composer Tchaikovsky, and the painter Aivazovsky, among others, and also photographed the scene of the imperial train’s derailment near Borky station outside Kharkiv in 1888. From 1896 he also experimented with X-ray photography, and later tried color photography and photographs that give an embossed, relief-like appearance.

1896: Film Comes to Kharkiv

Film projection had already reached Ukrainian cities before Fedetsky’s own shoot. The Canadian Institute of Ukrainian Studies’ Internet Encyclopedia of Ukraine (IEU) entry “Film” (first published 1984) states that in 1896 the Lumière brothers’ works were first screened in Odesa, then spread to other cities. Myslavskyi’s monograph gives the Lumière Cinématographe screening in Odesa as July 11-28, and states that in Kharkiv, the first public film screening was on July 7, at the theater in the garden of the Commercial Club. It also introduces the view of film historian Veniamin Vyshnevskyi that this was done with a machine from the British firm of Robert Paul.

According to Myslavskyi, in the summer of 1896 Fedetsky bought, from Léon Gaumont of France, a camera designed by Georges Demenÿ, a single machine capable of filming, developing, and projecting. The September 30 shoot is, in Myslavskyi’s and VUE’s wording, “the first documented instance” of Fedetsky filming in Kharkiv. The procession passed along the street where Fedetsky had first opened his studio, and Myslavskyi surmises that he must have filmed from near the studio.

“Kinetograph,” “Cinematograph”: the Names of the Time

The name for the machine itself hadn’t yet settled on one word. A period newspaper advertisement quoted by Myslavskyi describes the projecting machine variously as a “chronophotograph, cinematograph, kinematograph, animatograph.” Fedetsky’s own advertisements used “kinetograph,” while newspaper articles also used “cinematograph.” In today’s Ukrainian, film is called кіно (kino).

A Record of Filming and Screenings, 1896-1897

Here are the dated events, drawn from VUE and Myslavskyi’s monograph. Dates are given as the sources state them.

The December 2 screening was held in what is now the building of the Kharkiv Philharmonic (VUE). According to the newspaper advertisement from the previous day that Myslavskyi quotes, the film was projected onto a screen 12 arshins wide (about 8.5 meters) and 10 arshins high, showing scenes from an imperial ceremony in Paris and, from Kharkiv, the procession and a display of horsemanship by an Orenburg Cossack regiment. At the second screening on the 7th, a charity event whose proceeds went to help people redeem winter clothing from pawnshops, a new scene was added, showing a train departing Kharkiv station.

On the August 21, 1897 shoot, VUE writes that it was one of the earliest instances in the Russian Empire of filming a scene actors performed specifically for the camera, and notes that around the same time, Georges Méliès in France was attempting something similar.

What “the First Film in Ukraine” Actually Counts

Fedetsky is often called “the first,” but what is being counted, and by whom, changes the claim.

• The first screening: not Fedetsky. IEU begins with Lumière’s 1896 screening in Odesa, while Myslavskyi gives Kharkiv on July 7 and Odesa on July 11-28. These two sources alone don’t settle which Ukrainian city was first.
• The first documentary film shot in Ukraine: IEU (history) states “began shooting the first documentary films in Ukraine from 1896,” and IEU’s own “Kharkiv” entry states that Ukrainian cinema began in the late 1890s with Fedetsky’s short documentary films in Kharkiv.
• The first in the Russian Empire: Myslavskyi’s monograph calls him “the first cinematographer in the Russian Empire,” and the Kharkiv Oblast State Administration, introducing a 2013 commemorative plaque, called him “the author of the first documentary film in the Russian Empire.” The same monograph also notes that Lumière cameraman Camille Serf was filming in Moscow in May 1896, so “first” is used here in the sense of the earliest among photographers active within the empire.

Fedetsky himself was born to a Polish family and was active in Kharkiv, a city of the Russian Empire. What the phrase “Ukrainian cinema” itself refers to is covered in our article on the five things “Ukrainian film” can mean.

Does the Film Survive?

Myslavskyi writes that Fedetsky’s film “probably does not survive.” His own view is that it could turn up among the many early documentary films of unknown cameramen preserved at French film archives. He explains that Fedetsky’s camera used 60mm-wide film, while most other companies’ machines used 35mm, which limited the market for the footage he shot and led him to withdraw from filmmaking.

Fedetsky died on July 21, 1902, in Minsk, and was buried in Kharkiv (IEU (history), VUE). In Kharkiv, a commemorative plaque was placed on the Oblast Philharmonic building in 2010, and another on the building at 3 Sumska Street, where he had lived, in 2013 (VUE, Kharkiv Oblast State Administration). The later history of Ukraine’s film studios is covered in our article on the Odesa Film Studio, and the national film archive in our article on the Dovzhenko Centre.