Oleksandr Dovzhenko’s Silent Trilogy: Earth

Oleksandr Dovzhenko’s Silent Trilogy: Life and Death in the Times of Revolution – Earth

The screening is followed by a panel discussion featuring Rory Finnin (Head of Slavonic Studies and Director of Ukrainian Studies at the University of Cambridge) and Philip Cavendish (Reader in Russian and Soviet Film Studies at School of Slavonic and Eastern European Studies at UCL)

The discussion is moderated by Marina Pesenti, Director of the Ukrainian Institute in London

‘Its title, Earth, is more than just a name – it is a religion,’ said Siegfried Krakauer. Earth, the final part of Dovzhenko’s silent trilogy, is undoubtedly the most famous and controversial movie of the Ukrainian Soviet silent film heritage. Full of lyrical pantheism and utopian exaltation, it demonstrated the ambiguity of Ukrainian geopolitical choice in the late 1920s.

The simple plot tells the story of a small Ukrainian village on the eve of collectivisation. Vasyl, the leader of the activist youth, is trying to engage villagers into the collective farm movement while waiting for a technical miracle: a tractor, the forerunner of the new era. Finally, he ploughs a boundary separating the private plots from the collective ones. This enthusiasm costs Vasyl his life, but makes him a martyr – a necessary sacrifice for the new social order.

Although Earth fits the tradition of Soviet propaganda films, Dovzhenko’s interest in human condition and its bond with nature takes the film beyond the propaganda realm. As told by Dovzhenko, an ordinary tale of a class struggle becomes a universal philosophical parable about life and death.

About the music
DakhaBrakha is world-music quartet from Kyiv, Ukraine. Reflecting fundamental elements of sound and soul, DakhaBrakha creates a world of unexpected new music. Accompanied by Indian, Arabic, African, Russian and Australian traditional instrumentation, the quartet’s astonishingly powerful and uncompromising vocal range creates a transnational sound rooted in Ukrainian culture. DakhaBrakha has performed internationally.

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