Dovzhenko Centre Online (Digital Cinema Platform of the Oleksandr Dovzhenko National Centre)

History and Founding

Dovzhenko Centre. Online is the digital cinema and online access platform of the Oleksandr Dovzhenko National Centre, the state film archive of Ukraine and the largest film archive in the country. The National Centre itself was founded in 1994 by a decree of the President of Ukraine, on the basis of the largest Soviet Ukrainian film duplication factory established in 1948 (some sources trace origins to 1938). In 2000 the Centre merged with the Kyiv Film Printing Factory. The online platform was launched in January 2025, crowdfunded through the support of organisations and individuals including British film researchers, and quickly attracted large numbers of users at its debut. The platform was created to make previously festival-only digitised films accessible to global audiences.

Collections and Holdings

Dovzhenko Centre. Online provides streaming access to a curated selection drawn from the Centre's broader collection of over 7,000 titles of Ukrainian, Russian, American, and European feature, documentary, and animated films, as well as thousands of archival documents on the history of Ukrainian cinema from the beginning of the twentieth century to the present. Available curatorial collections on the platform include films of director Oleksandr Dovzhenko, the Top 100 Best Ukrainian Films, Ukrainian comedy, literary film adaptations, a documentary Documents of the Era series, and Ukrainian Poetic Cinema. The platform also features a Lecture Room with free educational content, including the multi-part series How to Stop Worrying and Love Ukrainian Cinema. Films are available for purchase on a per-screening basis. A separate VUFKU Lost & Found collection documents the output of the All-Ukrainian Photo Cinema Administration of the 1920s.

Notable Materials Related to Journalism and Media

The archive includes key works of early Ukrainian documentary cinema, such as Dziga Vertov's Man with a Movie Camera (1929), which was named the best documentary of all time in the Sight and Sound poll. Documentary and newsreel materials from across the Soviet and post-Soviet Ukrainian periods are part of the broader non-film archive managed by the Centre, which includes over 7,000 paper archive documents and a library of more than 4,000 publications.

Access and Usage

Dovzhenko Centre. Online is accessible globally. Individual full-length films are available for purchase at per-screening rates. Select educational lecture content is available free of charge. The platform is distinct from the physical Centre in Kyiv, which operates a climate-controlled film vault, film laboratory, Cinema Museum, mediatheque, and 300-seat performing arts venue (Scene 6). Since July 2022, the Centre has been under the supervision of the Ukrainian State Film Agency.