Mykola Shpykovskyi and the visual style of late VUFKU films

This essay focuses on an editing strategy repeatedly found in Mykola Shpykovskyi's films The Self-Seeker (Shkurnyk, 1929) and Bread (Khlib, 1929) that relies on limited camera set-ups and axial cutting. The aim of this analysis is to situate these films and Shpykovskyi in relationship to the stylistic influence of late silent-era films both within the Soviet Union and across Western Europe – a consideration of how Soviet montage aesthetics were appropriated in Soviet films overall. The intention is to begin making a case for how late silent Ukrainian cinema can be considered a national cinema – distinctive not only in terms of its content and themes but also by virtue of its stylistic norms.