“Slovo House: a film about the Executed Renaissance premiered in Kyiv
10 May 2024 13:07
On Wednesday, 8 May, the Ukrainian House in Kyiv hosted the premiere of the feature film Slovo House. An Endless Novel”. This is the first Ukrainian feature film telling the story of Ukrainian artists killed and repressed by the Soviet authorities in the 1930s, "Komersant Ukrainian" reports
At the Kyiv premiere, the film was presented by the creative team: director Taras Tomenko, screenwriter Lyubov Yakymchuk, producer Oleg Shcherbyna, director of photography Mykhailo Lyubarsky, actors Viacheslav Dovzhenko, Dmytro Oliynyk, Maryna Koshkina, Yevhen Lamakh, Yulia Chepurko and others.
The film’s director, Taras Tomenko, emphasised that the film is being released at a “fateful time for Ukraine”.
“I just urge Ukrainians to come and watch it, because it’s not just a trip to the cinema, it’s a mission, a tribute to our executed poets and writers. And this must be done because the strength they gave us must now be used to fight Russian aggression. It is important for me that people see this film now, because Ukrainians are now looking for help in historical figures, in the power of the word of Ukrainian writers,”
– said the director.
He said that work on the film lasted for more than 10 years. In 2013, the script for the documentary Slovo House was written, which was later transformed into a feature film script.
The film was produced by FRESH PRODUCTION GROUP with the support of the Ukrainian State Film Agency and the Solidarity Charitable Foundation. According to the foundation’s representative, Anzhelika Petrovska, the film had been on the shelf unfinished for a long time. However, they managed to find funding.
“This film has been on the shelf for a long time, waiting for its patron or a person who will hear it and help it to happen. I am very proud that my family took part in it. Partly thanks to us, this premiere took place. The most terrible thing for a film of this level is not to be finished. It has to show everything to its audience, to find its audience,”
– Petrovska said.
The feature film Slovo House. An Endless Novel is based on real historical events and tells the story of Ukrainian writers who were gathered under the roof of one house by Stalin’s order to make them work for the benefit of the communist regime. The film offers a new look at the figures of such writers as Mykola Khvylovy, Pavlo Tychyna, Volodymyr Sosiura, Mykhailo Semenko, and Mike Johansen.
The world premiere of the film took place in 2021 at the Warsaw Film Festival. In Ukraine, the film was first screened on 17 June 2022 in Chernivtsi as part of the Mykolaichuk OPEN Film Festival. The film won the Best Feature Film award at the Košice International Film Festival in Slovakia in 2022, and the Best Feature Film award at the I Will Tell Film Festival in Florida (USA).
The film has now been widely released and is being screened in Ukrainian cinemas.
Shot to Death Revival
The Executed Renaissance is a term applied to the generation of Ukrainian artists and cultural figures of the 1920s and 1930s who were repressed by the Stalinist regime on charges of “bourgeois nationalism” and counter-revolution. The Executed Renaissance included such well-known Ukrainian artists as Valerian Pidmohylnyi, Marko Voronoi, Mykola Kulish, Mykola Khvylovyi, Mykhailo Semenko, Yevhen Pluzhnyk, Mike Johansen, Mykola Zerov, Les Kurbas, Ivan Bahrianyi, Borys Antonenko-Davydovych, and others.
The beginning of the Executed Renaissance is considered to be the arrest of the poet and prose writer Mykhailo Yalovyi on 12 May 1933 and the suicide of Mykola Khvylovyi, which he committed directly in the Slovo house on 13 May 1933. One of the most tragic dates of those events is 3 November 1937, when several dozen leading Ukrainian artists were executed, including Les Kurbas, Mykola Kulish, Valerian Pidmohylnyi, Marko Voronoi, and others.
There is no clear figure on the number of repressed artists during the Executed Renaissance, but it is known that it was thousands of people. Among others, the figure of 30,000 repressed people is mentioned. According to the estimate of the emigrant Association of Ukrainian Writers “Slovo”, 259 Ukrainian writers were published in Soviet Ukraine in 1930, and only 36 after 1938. According to the organisation, 192 of the 223 “disappeared” writers were repressed (shot or exiled to camps with the possibility of further execution or death), 16 went missing, and 8 committed suicide.
