Oleksandr Dovzhenko

Oleksandr Dovzhenko, born in 1894, was a Ukrainian Soviet screenwriter, film producer, and director. He is often cited as one of the most important early Soviet filmmakers, alongside directors such as Sergei Eisenstein Vsyevolod Pudovkin, and a pioneer of Soviet montage theory. Dovzhenko’s route to cinema was peripatetic; by the time he enrolled in the Odessa Film Studio at 32, he already had stints as a soldier, teacher, diplomatic assistant, cartoonist, graphic designer, and journalist. Cinema represented for him the surest means of synthesising his multifaceted perspective on Soviet life: “What can an artist show on canvas? Only a small part, an episode of what happens here. But film can capture everything completely, show it during its development, show its rhythm, breathing, and human fate.” Earth is the most famous example of this synaesthetic worldview. The Dovzhenko Film Studios in Kyiv is named in his honour.