Home

Smoldering. To Be a Formalist (2022) [N/A]

Release Date:
October 5, 2022

Original Title:
Жевріння. Бути формалістом

Genres:
Documentary

Production Countries:
Ukraine

Ratings / Certifications:
 N/A

Runtime: 29

Overview from TheMovieDB

In an effort to perpetuate its ideology, the Soviet authorities filled the cities and villages of Ukraine with propaganda sculptures, frescoes, and mosaics. Over time, the style of some authors transformed from realism to formalism. But they still had to balance between the fulfillment of the party's order and the embodiment of universal plots. The majestic works of one of the monumental artists Ivan Lytovchenko are now slowly being destroyed under the influence of forces of nature and radiation on the buildings of the once young and flourishing, but now abandoned city of Prypiat. Numerous works and other authors of the past century still shape the space of Ukrainian cities and villages. What is it like to be a formalist artist in a totalitarian system? Does the monumental legacy of the Soviet Union have the right to be preserved in today's independent Ukraine?

Click the heading above to show or hide the text.

Additional information:

The Search Form


Production

Camera Operator:
Serhiy Karapyschenko
Svitlana Koval
Antonina Kutsyba
Yevhenii Zhuravlov

Director:
Nadiia Mykolaienko

Editor:
Serhii Baidetskyi

Executive Producer:
Lukian Halkin

Click the heading above to show or hide the list.

About the Movie Section

Most data and links to images for the Movies section come from TheMovieDB (TMDB).

Additional data for Film Titles come from The Open Movie Database (OMDb).

At least one plug-in comes from IMDb.

Data are -- hey, it's a plural -- subject to the limitations of their sources. (For example, TMDB search results currently max out at 20.) I am limiting myself to free data sources for now. (No, a "free trial" is not free.)

While much of the above data are retrieved directly from outside APIs and other such sources, data from American Film Institute (AFI) and British Film Institute (BFI) were manually entered the old fashioned way into a MySQL database. Re BFI I took the following liberties:

  • I added "runners up" to Top 10 lists, treating them as ties where applicable and numbering them accordingly at the bottom of each list.
  • Regarding those polls wherein "franchise" movies were submitted as one project until BFI's policy changed to regard them separately, I treated them as ties and renumbered the affected lists accordingly (e.g. the Godfather films).

Regarding profile removals and data corrections:

  • If you would like your profile removed from this site, please contact the source of this data directly, TheMovieDB. My assumption is: once it's gone from their site, it should soon be gone from this site.
  • If you would like to correct movie data on this site, please contact the source of this data directly, TheMovieDB. My assumption is: once it's corrected on their site, it should soon be corrected on this site.
  • For additional corrections and profile removals, please e-mail The Open Movie Database (OMDb).

Filtering is applied here to film projects flagged as "adult" by TheMovieDB. Pending "popular demand" I am contemplating a login and profile system with preferences (such as whether to allow adult images to appear) and permissions (such as data entry).

Whereas the overall purpose of this website is to serve as a personal demo/portfolio/workshop of web and data skills, this Movies section is not meant to compete with or substitute for far more definitive movie websites.

Whether or not he still clings to an award which he won in 1986 as a film critic for his college's newspaper, Jeffrey Hartmann is not responsible for the texts of overviews and biographies supplied by external data sources.