The following essay is based on a recent Works-in-Progress seminar

In the spring of 2024, Concordia University’s Visual Collections Repository (VCR) launched a project to address the discovery of a series of Soviet Ukrainian documentaries from the 1970s and 1980s. The collection consists of thirty-seven 16mm and twenty-four 35mm films, most of which were produced by a film studio in Kyiv, with spoken Ukrainian dialogue and added English voiceover.

Conflicting agendas of the Cold War have shaped both the contents and the murky provenance of the documentary films in the Ukrainian sub-collection. Added complexities of the current political and cultural context of the Russo-Ukrainian War inform the archival practices employed and further entangle the collection’s interpretations. These complexities are addressed in a variety of ways: through transnational approaches in the archive, cataloguing strategies for conflicting sources of information, and consideration of broader ideological and ethical concerns. 

The films can simultaneously be described as Soviet, Soviet-Ukrainian, and Ukrainian—each a distinct category—as they were produced by state-operated film studios in Ukraine, then part of the broader ideological and political structure of the Soviet Union. While the studios operated under Soviet control, many films explore themes rooted in Ukrainian culture and history, including periods predating Soviet rule. Paradoxically, some even convey anti-Ukrainian agendas, further complicating their classification. For instance, the 35mm film titled To the Last Minute (1973) from the Odessa Film Studio recounts a story based on true events that centers a writer who hunts down Ukrainian nationalists. These ideological conflicts across the collection might have been brought about either by generalised metonymic grouping of the films or as a reflection of multiple conflicting truths that co-existed in the Soviet Union during the 1970s and 1980s. Although the 1970s and 1980s saw greater visibility and promotion of Ukrainian culture—following decades in which writers, artists, academics, and other intelligentsia were suppressed, censored, or persecuted (especially during the 1960s)—the figure of the Ukrainian nationalist was brandished as the enemy of the Soviet state since the moment of its formation, especially if they challenged party control or Soviet narratives about identity and history.

In small, resource-limited archives like Concordia’s VCR, effective archiving and cataloguing strategies include transnational methodologies, student involvement, and flexibility in terms of timelines and support. From the outset of the project, our team consisted of multiple people fluent in Ukrainian and Russian, myself included, and multiple senior experts on Soviet and Cold War film in supervising roles. With the encouragement and guidance from my colleagues, I became involved in film inspection, cataloguing and translation efforts. As a Ukrainian, I was keenly aware that language is a delicate and politically charged issue, especially as Ukraine’s struggle for sovereignty continues under Russian occupation and as Russian aggression extends into the cultural sphere.

In my work I was heavily invested in issues of transliteration and marginalization of language, as well as bias check for film descriptions. Some of the metal cans housing the film reels were titled in Russian, yet those titles did not correspond to the majority of film titles on the celluloid reels, which were in Ukrainian. How does one catalogue this information while reflecting this difference? The titles on the reel itself took primacy for me as the most accurate reflection of the film’s contents, yet the issues of language have not been exhausted at this stage. Transliteration from Cyrillic languages to English is a thorny process. Historically, priority has been given to Russian pronunciation and spelling over Ukrainian. “Kyiv not Kiev”, a slogan often encountered on posters in support of Ukraine, serves as the most prominent example of the politically charged nature of transliteration. Some other examples of spelling inconsistencies that had to be corrected across the documentation pertaining to the Ukrainian sub-collection included: Bukovyna instead of Bukovina, Ternopil instead of Ternopol, L’viv instead of L’vov, Dnipro instead of Dnepro, Babyn Yar instead of Babi Yar. 

Seeing as most of the films in the collection have English voiceover, and with considerations of convenience of use, the cataloguing language priority was constructed in the following way:

1. English as primary language of records, original title in English translation as primary title and, where applicable, with transliteration from Ukrainian.

2. Ukrainian as original document title as seen on the reel itself, with a few exceptions where Russian served as original document title.

3. Documentation of Russian metal can markings and various ephemera. 

It is unknown who authored some of the original records describing this collection, which brings me to my next point of intervention - bias check. Some of the film descriptions in the original catalogue records were colored with what Nicholas Avedisian-Cohen from the VCR referred to as “brashly anti-communist undertones”. Here is an example of one such description (italics mine):

“Documentary about an American-Ukrainian choir visiting Soviet Ukraine [sic]. Typical communist propaganda with happy Ukrainian villagers in traditional costumes singing and dancing with tourists from the U.S. However, there is an interesting episode at the end of the 1st part about the traditional Ukrainian wedding ceremony.”

As a Ukrainian working on processing of a Ukrainian film collection, I will undoubtedly produce subjective results. Yet respect to the historic contents and context is a baseline of archival ethics. Knowing the history of film production in the USSR countries helps contextualize what was allowed to be produced. Film studios were government funded rather than privatised, yet it would be unfair to deny the agency of local productions. Ukrainian film crews had creative liberties and agendas, and the people and cultures captured in the documentaries weren’t just “happy Ukrainian villagers dancing with tourists”. Additionally, the American tourists here are shown visiting a museum of traditional architecture and lifestyle – an attraction of the same kind as Upper Canada Village and other historical re-enactment villages, where dancing and music are an expected part of the experience, a fact which would be hard to deduce for non-Ukrainian speakers. In short, the meanings which the original records attach to such practices reveal more about the archival process biases than the contents of the films themselves. While the new catalogue records cannot be entirely bias-free, they are designed to foreground Ukrainian positionality. 

Sadly, Ukrainian archives are consistently underfunded and now in danger altogether because of war. Some of the films at the VCR might prove to be unique copies or copies uniquely well-preserved. One of the films in the collection, I Really Love Theatre (1982) features the late Bohdan Stupka in the leading role, perhaps the most famous Ukrainian actor.

fig.2 Bohdan Stupka in I Really Love Theatre (Ukr.: Я Так Люблю Театр), 1982, dir. Yana Liniychuk. 35mm.

I have not yet found any mention of the film’s existence in Ukrainian sources. In this light, Concordia VCR and other archives housing Ukrainian cultural material should assume the responsibility of safeguarding such works. While Paolo Cherchi Usai refers to celluloid films as “orphan films” in the digital age, I want to take this idea a step further and suggest that while celluloid in general is dispossessed, Ukrainian celluloid in North America is, in a sense, a “double orphan.” It is incumbent upon film scholars, institutions and other stakeholders to actively support projects like this one, along with advocating for the preservation of celluloid archives, including Concordia’s Visual Collections Repository. 

As Concordia's VCR faces budget cuts as part of a broader economic crisis for post-secondary institutions in Quebec, such projects are key to ensuring that its unique celluloid collection of 11,500 films – along with the small sub-collection of Ukrainian films within it – remains accessible and well-cared for.