The Odesa Film Studio Where Dovzhenko Began Making Films

Odesa, on the Black Sea, is home to a film studio that has operated continuously since 1919: the Odesa Film Studio (Одеська кіностудія). It was the center of Ukrainian filmmaking in the 1920s, and it was here that Oleksandr Dovzhenko, who later became one of Ukrainian cinema’s foremost directors, began making films.

This article is based on the Internet Encyclopedia of Ukraine (published by the Canadian Institute of Ukrainian Studies, University of Alberta — CIUS; hereafter IEU), the National Academy of Sciences of Ukraine’s Encyclopedia of Modern Ukraine (ESU; 2022, updated 2023), the Dovzhenko Centre’s filmography data, and decisions of Ukraine’s Cabinet of Ministers and court records.

1919: from nationalized film companies

According to ESU, the studio was founded on May 23, 1919, as the film unit of the political department of the Red Army’s 41st Division. It was built on the foundation of nationalized private film companies — Mirograf, Mizrakh, and Borisov’s film factory. Its first work was the feature film The Spider and the Fly (1919). IEU likewise states that it was founded in 1919 on the basis of several private film ateliers.

The studio’s name has changed many times. Laying out the two encyclopedias’ accounts side by side gives the following.

Where Dovzhenko began making films

According to IEU, Dovzhenko began working as a director at the Odesa studio in 1926. His first works were Vasya the Reformer and The Fruit of Love (both 1926) and The Diplomatic Pouch (1927), and in 1927 he made Zvenyhora, on a subject from Ukrainian history. IEU describes Zvenyhora as the work considered the beginning of a national Ukrainian cinema. The Dovzhenko Centre’s filmography data likewise lists Zvenyhora as a 1927 production of VUFKU (Odesa).

ESU adds Arsenal (1929) to the list of works made at this studio, stating that it was here that Dovzhenko’s poetic, expressionist style took shape, and his partnership with cinematographer Danylo Demutsky began (the Dovzhenko Centre’s filmography data lists Arsenal’s studio only as “VUFKU”). His next film, Earth (1930), was made at the studio in Kyiv. What happened up to its suspension from screening is covered in our article on Dovzhenko’s Earth, pulled from screens nine days after its release.

Many other filmmakers gathered in Odesa in the 1920s. According to ESU, the director Les Kurbas made Macdonald (1924) and Arsenalivtsi (1925) with actors from the Berezil theater, and the sculptor-turned-filmmaker Ivan Kavaleridze made Perekop (1930) and Koliivshchyna (1933), the first sound-era historical drama based on a poem by Shevchenko. IEU calls this studio in the 1920s “a key center in the development of Ukrainian film art.”

The era when Ukrainian-language film disappeared

Things changed once the 1930s arrived. IEU’s entry on “Film” states that in the 1930s the Odesa studio was used almost entirely for Moscow’s Mosfilm and Leningrad’s Lenfilm, and its entry on the studio itself states that Ukrainian content was forcibly restricted and its importance declined, with only a handful of Ukrainian-language films made after 1945 (citing, for example, Crimson Shores of 1979). ESU likewise states that from 1945–53, the studio effectively became a production base for Russian studios.

From 1954, the studio began releasing works under its own logo. According to ESU, the logo — a picture of a brigantine (sailing ship) accompanied by the sound of a ship’s bell — was created in the mid-1960s. Directors from this period at the studio, such as Kira Muratova, went on to gain recognition at festivals abroad. ESU records that Muratova’s The Long Farewell (1971) won the International Federation of Film Critics prize at the 1987 Locarno International Film Festival, and that Asthenic Syndrome (1989) won the Silver Bear at the 1990 Berlin International Film Festival.

Whether films from this period can simply be called “Ukrainian films,” however, is a separate question. IEU states that, in the 1970s, the studios in Kyiv and Odesa also made Russian-language films that were not distinguished from Ukrainian ones, making it difficult to count how many Ukrainian films were actually made. A way of sorting this out by where, by whom, and in what language a film was made is covered in our article on the five things “Ukrainian film” can mean.

Current ownership, and the court battle over its shares

According to ESU, the studio became a joint-stock company from a state enterprise in 2005, and has been the private joint-stock company (PrAT) “Odesa Film Studio” since 2014. ESU also states that, from the 1990s to the early 2000s, the studio was at risk of disappearing through the privatization of more than 50% of its assets in shares. In July 2020, the state news agency Ukrinform reported that, since becoming a joint-stock company in 2005, the state has held 50% plus one share, with the remainder held by two private companies.

On July 19, 2017, the Cabinet of Ministers, by Order No. 496-r, transferred management of the state’s shares in this company from the State Property Fund to the Ministry of Culture. A court dispute over the state’s stake followed.

Ukrinform reported that, had the first-instance ruling stood, the state’s stake would have fallen from 50% plus one share to 38%, causing the state to lose control of management. In 2026, the State Property Fund notified shareholders that it would hold an extraordinary general meeting remotely on June 24.

According to ESU, a Cabinet of Ministers decision of January 26, 2011 designated the studio as one of the producers of “national films.” The site includes a film museum, and ESU states that facilities such as its seaside filming pool are still used by production companies from Ukraine and abroad.