Metrograph, the cinema at 7 Ludlow Street, opens a seven-film series devoted to Ukrainian director Oleksandr Dovzhenko on Monday, October 26, with five of the seven titles screening from 35mm prints. Oleksandr Dovzhenko: Earth and Empire runs on four weekday dates through Tuesday, November 3, and was co-organized with Razom, the Ukrainian American nonprofit, with screening rights from the Dovzhenko Center in Kyiv. Anri Vartan curated the program.

Metrograph places Dovzhenko alongside Eisenstein, Vertov and Pudovkin as one of the major directors of early Soviet cinema, and credits him with shaping Ukrainian poetic cinema and influencing later filmmakers including Andrei Tarkovsky and Terrence Malick. The theater notes that his films tend to be personal and lyrical, and that he often clashed with authorities in Moscow over what his pictures were supposed to say.

The schedule

  • Arsenal (1929, 92 minutes, 35mm): Monday, October 26, at 4 p.m. Dovzhenko's international breakthrough follows a 1918 workers' uprising at Kyiv's Arsenal Factory. It screens with a recorded score, from a print lent by the Filmoteka Narodowa in Warsaw.
  • Earth (1930, 84 minutes, digital): Monday, October 26, at 6 p.m. His last silent feature, set in a Ukrainian village where the arrival of the first tractor sets landowning peasants against poorer neighbors. This screening uses the score the Ukrainian band DakhaBrakha composed for the film in 2012.
  • Shchors (1939, 135 minutes, 35mm): Tuesday, October 27, at 4 p.m. Co-directed with Yuliya Solntseva, a biographical film about a Civil War-era commander that Metrograph values more for its imagery of the Ukrainian countryside than for its story. Also a print from Warsaw.
  • Ivan (1932, 86 minutes, 35mm): Monday, November 2, at 4 p.m.
  • Aerograd (1935, 87 minutes, 35mm): Monday, November 2, at 6 p.m.
  • Poem of the Sea (1958, 105 minutes, 35mm): Tuesday, November 3, at 6 p.m. Directed by Solntseva, Dovzhenko's widow, from a screenplay he wrote.
  • The Enchanted Desna (1964, 80 minutes, digital): Tuesday, November 3, at 8:10 p.m. Also directed by Solntseva.

Why the double bills matter

The calendar is built in pairs, which makes it easy to see two films in one trip. Monday, October 26, puts Arsenal and Earth back to back, two of the silent films Metrograph presents as a trilogy. Monday, November 2, pairs Ivan and Aerograd, his early sound features from the 1930s. The closing night, Tuesday, November 3, is given over to the two films Solntseva directed after his death, so the series ends with the work that carried his scripts and ideas forward.

Earth anchors the opening night. Metrograph ranks it among the major silent films and points to the long debate over whether it argues for collective farming or celebrates Ukrainian folk life. Hearing it with DakhaBrakha's score, commissioned in 2012, gives the 1930 film a contemporary Ukrainian soundtrack.

Metrograph's film pages list introductions by programmer Edo Choi and curator Anri Vartan for several titles. Dates for those introductions vary on the site, so check each film's page before you buy.

Tickets and getting there

General admission at Metrograph is $18. Members pay $11, and membership starts at $5 a month. Seniors 65 and older and guests with disabilities pay $12, buying in person at the box office. Tickets are sold through each film's page on metrograph.com. Note that the theater is closed on Wednesday, October 28, for a private event.

Metrograph is at 7 Ludlow Street. Take the F train to East Broadway, or the F, J, M or Z to Delancey St-Essex St and walk south on Ludlow. The building also has a restaurant, the Commissary, which takes reservations with or without a film ticket, and a shop, Metrograph Editions, open seven days a week.

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