Alexander Dovzhenko was a Soviet filmmaker. Dovzhenko was born on August 29, 1894 ([Old Style]; September 10, 1894 [New Style]) to Petro Semenovych Dovzhenko and Odarka Ermolaivna Dovzhenko in Viunyshche, a district in the small town of Sosnytsia in the Chernihiv Province of Ukraine. He died on november 25, 1956 in Moscow. His best known films include Arsenal and Earth.
The future filmmaker was born to a family of Ukrainian peasants, Cossacks who in the eighteenth century migrated to Sosnytsia from the neighbouring province of Poltava. Alexander became the seventh of fourteen children. But due to the multiple losses in his family, he became the oldest child by the time he turned eleven.
Dovzhenko became a teacher and only at age 32 turned into a filmmaker.
Films
- Yagodka lyubvi , 1926
- Vasya reformator,(Vasya, the Reformer ) 1926
- Sumka dipkuryera, 1927
- Zvenigora, 1928
- Arsenal, 1928
- Zemlya (Earth), 1930
- Ivan, 1932
- Aerograd ("Air City"or "Frontier"), 1935
- Bukovina, zemlya Ukrainskaya (Bukovina, a Ukrainian Land), 1939
- Shchors, 1939, codirected by Yuliya Solntseva
- Osvobozhdeniye (Liberation), 1940, codirected by Yuliya Solntseva
- Strana rodnaya (Soviet Earth ),1945
- Pobeda na Pravoberezhnoi Ukraine i izgnaniye nemetsikh zakhvatchikov za predeli Ukrainskikh sovietskikh zemel (Victory in the Ukraine and the Expulsion of the Germans from the Boundaries of the Ukrainian Soviet Earth , 1945
- Michurin (Life In Bloom), 1948
- Farewell, America, 1949
- Poema o more (Poem of the Sea), codirected by Yuliya Solntseva
Writings
- Alexander Dovzhenko, The Poet as Filmmaker: Selected Writings. Edited by Marco Carynnyk (Cambridge, MA, 1973)
Secondary Literature
- Vance Kepley Jr, The cinema of Alexander Dovzhenko : in the service of the state, Madison : The University of Wisconsin, 1986
- George O. Liber, Alexander Dovzhenko: a life in Soviet film, British Film Institute 2002
- Bohdan Y. Nebesio (ed.), The cinema of Alexander Dovzhenko, Edmonton, AB, Canada : Canadian institute of Ukrainian studies 1994