Ukrainian poetic cinema: History and Key Facts

Ukrainian poetic cinema (Ukrainian: Українське поетичне кіно, romanized: Ukrayinske poetychne kino) was a cinematic and cultural movement which emerged in the mid-20th century in reaction to Soviet nationality policy. It and other art movements emerged in the Soviet cinema industry in the mid-1960s with the release of the film Shadows of Forgotten Ancestors.

In contrast to Soviet realistic cinema, Ukrainian poetic cinema focused on visual expressiveness, surreal and ethnographic motifs. It was influenced by Ukrainian folklore and early works of Alexander Dovzhenko.

The development of Ukrainian poetic cinema provoked another wave of repression by the Soviet ideological machine against Ukrainian cinema, national consciousness and non-traditional artistic search. Many films of this movement were banned in the USSR due to ideological censorship, and released only in the late 1980s and early 1990s.

The term "Ukrainian poetic cinema" is attributed to Polish movie critic Janusz Gazda, who proposed it in 1970.

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