Ivan

Director: Oleksandr Dovzhenko

1932 / 86min / 35mm

In making his first sound film, Dovzhenko proved himself every bit as much an innovator in the realm of the aural as he had been in that of the visual, creating a rich sonic tapestry in this melic ode to the construction of the Dnipro Hydroelectric Station and the men and women conscripted into its accomplishment, among them the eponymous Ukrainian villager. (Some critics, however, observed that Dovzhenko took a little too much pleasure in the doings of Ivan’s antagonist, a layabout kulak who refuses to bust his hump slaving away for the glory of the state.) As influential, arguably, as Earth before it, on the Ukrainian poetic cinema of the 1960s, and an achievement of towering stature.

35mm print courtesy of Austrian Filmmuseum, Vienna

Distributor: Dovzhenko Center

Part of Oleksandr Dovzhenko: Earth and Empire