CHILDREN’S FILMS AND THE KHARKIV CITY SYMPHONY

The Adventures of a Penny, a 1929 Ukraine-USSR production directed by Axel Lundin, will be screened on Tuesday 7 October at 9 p.m. at Teatro Verdi in Pordenone. This film is the finest example of the cinematographic production that developed in Ukraine, which belonged to the Soviet Union at the time, falling under the category of “children’s cinema”, to which the Pordenone Silent Film Festival is dedicating a section this year. After the First World War and the Russian Revolution, orphaned children, estimated at numbers between three and seven million, flooded the cities and often banded together in gangs, representing a major problem for the government in its quest to construct a new society. Every tool was used to gather together these hordes of lawless children, socialise them and commence their ideological indoctrination. This brought about the birth of the Pioneer movement, which was based on the Scout model, and cinema was also used as the most powerful weapon for educational purposes. In Ukraine, VUFKU (the All-Ukrainian Photo-Cinema Administration) began recruiting both young film directors and well-known theatre directors, most notably, Alex Lundin. Born in Sweden, Lundin emigrated to Russia in 1905 and later moved to Ukraine. He began his career as an actor at the Saint Petersburg Drama Theatre, before moving to Kharkiv in 1912, where he appeared on screen for the first time. From that point on, he worked in both stage and film, becoming an innovative director after the creation of VUFKU in Kyiv in 1922. His reputation as master of children’s films is based on a series of titles, from Mariyka (1925), the first film of the genre in Ukraine, to Tom Sawyer and above all, The Adventures of a Penny (1929), inspired by Volodymyr Vynnychenko’s stories and with a screenplay written by futurist poet Mykola Bazhan. Shot almost entirely on location near Kyiv, the film was popular with audiences, in part due to the exceptional performances of its young protagonists. Still today, it is considered the finest children’s film of the silent film era in Ukraine. In total, 22 full-length and three short children’s films were produced in the country during the silent period, half of which have survived. This year’s festival programme would not have been possible without the collaboration of the Bundesarchiv as part of a special restoration project dedicated to Ukraine’s film heritage, which culminated in nine digitised Ukrainian films being transferred to the Dovzhenko Centre in Kyiv in 2024. The Festival’s presentation of The Adventures of a Penny will include musical accompaniment by a quintet including Olga Podgaiskaya (who composed the score), Vitali Darashuk, and three musicians from the Orchestra giovanile Filarmonici Friulani: Manuel D’Amico, Cinzia Jin and Ruggero Ottogalli.

Also hailing from Ukraine is the film to be shown next, Dmytro Dalskyi’s Sketches of a Soviet City (1929), a city symphony shot in Kharkiv, the capital of the Ukrainian Soviet Socialist Republic at the time. The film follows a train as it travels to the city, carrying country folk drawn by the allure of the metropolis. Pastoral scenes of a Ukrainian village are followed by images of the capital and symbolic locations like the Main Post Office and the iconic Derzhprom skyscraper, now a World Heritage Site severely damaged by Russian bombing.

Other screenings on Tuesday 7 October are also worthy of mention. At 10 a.m., the festival presents an often overlooked work due to its relatively short running time, and that may have never actually been released: L’illustre attrice Cicala Formica [The Illustrious Actress Cicala Formica] (1920) by Lucio D’Ambra. The film tells the story of the obsession of a young, spoiled and rich woman, who longs to become a film star. Despite assistance from her family, the film in the story is a flop, still she does not entirely give up on her dream. Lucio D’Ambra was a journalist, writer and producer, a very interesting figure on the Italian cultural scene in the early 1900s. The Illustrious Actress Cicala Formica perfectly embodies the author’s poeticism, and his aversion to the professional grandeur, stardom and provincialism that were the hallmarks of Italian cinema at the time. Jokes, irony, light heartedness and elegant understatement abound in the film.

At 4 p.m., as part of The Canon Revisited series, the festival presents Love and Duty (1931) by Richard Poh, featuring China’s first cinema star Ruan Lingyu. This two-and-a-half hour epic melodrama includes both Chinese and English captions, with the ambition of appealing to Western audiences as well.

The afternoon will also see a few jewels of Chaplin Mania, featuring the exuberant comic genius of Mabel Normand and Marie Dressler, along with other comedic stars such as Hal Roach, Mack Sennett, Harold Lloyd, Oliver Hardy and a young Charlie Chaplin.

The online offer on www.mymovies.it/ondemand/giornate-cinema-muto/ for Tuesday 7 October is Eleuterio Rodolfi‘s epic film about the ancient world, The Last Days of Pompeii, with musical accompaniment by Gabriel Thibaudeau. The film, a worldwide success when it was released in 1913, will be available from 9 p.m. (Italian time) for 48 hours.

The Pordenone Silent Film Festival / Le Giornate del Cinema Muto is made possible thanks to the support of the Regione Autonoma Friuli Venezia Giulia, the Ministry of Culture – Direzione Generale Cinema, the city of Pordenone, the Pordenone-Udine Chamber of Commerce, the Fondazione Friuli and with the participation of BCC Pordenonese e Monsile.