Screening of the film Poem of the Sea (1958, 115`) by Yuliya Solntseva

Ihnat Fedorchenko returns to his native village he left in search of a better life. Nova Kakhovka lies nearby, the Kakhovka hydroelectric power station is being built, and almost all men left their home villages, flocking to the massive construction site. However, Ihnat’s old acquaintances, also absent from the village for decades, unexpectedly return to their birthplace at the same time he does. Among them, we see a famous architect, a polar explorer, a pilot, a writer, a deputy minister, six colonels... They all came back to take a last look at their native village. At the time of writing the Poem of the Sea script, Oleksandr Dovzhenko was already seriously ill. Nevertheless, he hoped, till the last, that he would have enough time to shoot the film. Dovzhenko also made haste to capture the panorama of the Kakhovka HPP construction on film; in this, he was aided by chronicler cameramen who filmed the damming of the Dnipro, the flooding of the pit and other stages of the construction for the upcoming film. Eventually, having finished all preparatory work, Dovzhenko died right before the first day of shooting. His wife Yulia Solntseva took it upon herself to complete the film project. A former actress, Solntseva frequently helped her husband to shoot his films, including Zvenyhora (1927), Shchors (1939), Michurin (1949), and Goodbye, America! (1951). Poem of the Sea marked Solntseva’s independent debut as a filmmaker. To achieve her goal of making the film, however, Solntseva had to overcome numerous bureaucratic obstacles and the mistrust of film industry officials. Upon its release three years later, Poem of the Sea caused a big controversy in the press. Some considered that the film successfully carried on Dovzhenko’s cinematic traditions; others criticized it for its pomposity and pathos. Still other voices singled out the film’s innovative components whose presence could be traced back to Dovzhenko’s original film script. After Poem of the Sea, Solntseva continued to direct, making four more films based on the scripts and stories by Oleksandr Dovzhenko. In English