National Oleksandr Dovzhenko Film Centre

The National Oleksandr Dovzhenko Film Centre, also known as Dovzhenko Centre, is the state film archive of Ukraine and a cultural cluster located in Kyiv. Established in 1994 by presidential decree, it serves as the country's largest repository of Ukrainian and international cinema, housing more than 7,000 titles of feature, documentary, and animated films alongside extensive archival materials. The Centre functions as both a preservation institution and an active cultural venue, operating film laboratories, a cinema museum, a mediatheque, and performance spaces. It has been a member of the International Federation of Film Archives since 2006 and plays a central role in safeguarding Ukraine's audiovisual heritage while promoting its study and public access.

The Centre was founded on 10 September 1994 by decree of the President of Ukraine, coinciding with the centenary of filmmaker Oleksandr Dovzhenko's birth, though its activities began in earnest in 1996. Its origins trace to the Kyiv Film Copy Factory, established in 1948 as the largest film printing facility in the Ukrainian Soviet Socialist Republic, which was itself rebuilt after wartime destruction on the site of an earlier factory founded in the 1930s. The Centre formally acquired the factory's vaults and buildings on Vasylkivska Street in 1996, inheriting its industrial infrastructure and film collections. In 2000, the Centre merged with this factory, taking over its property, facilities, and film collection. A significant transformation occurred between 2016 and 2019, when the former industrial premises underwent complete renovation and refurbishment to become a multi-artform cultural cluster. The Ukrainian Animation Film Studio (Ukranimafilm), established in 1990, was attached to the Centre in 2019. In September 2019, the Centre opened the first Film Museum in Ukraine. A governance shift occurred in July 2022, when directorship was transferred from the Ministry of Culture and Information Policy to the Ukrainian State Film Agency, which subsequently announced plans to restructure the Centre into three separate institutions.

The Centre's film collection encompasses over 7,000 Ukrainian, Russian, American, and European feature, documentary, and animation films, representing the history of Ukrainian cinema from the beginning of the 20th century to the present. The oldest film print preserved by the Centre dates to 1910, while the oldest Ukrainian feature film in its collection was produced in 1922. As of January 2020, the film fund comprised 56,043 storage units with over 6,000 titles, the majority preserved on original 35mm negative and double-negative film stock, with remainder on positive prints and digital media. The collection includes works from the All-Ukrainian Photo Cinema Administration (VUFKU, 1922-1930), the state monopoly that controlled early Ukrainian film production. Beyond film materials, the Centre holds thousands of archive documents, photographs, posters, screenplays, and subtitles. Its archive also contains over 7,000 non-film materials and a library exceeding 4,000 publications on cinema and visual culture. The film fund is recognized as national cultural heritage, with portions designated to the National Archive Fund of Ukraine. Acquisition efforts have included purchases from the Gosfilmofond of Russia between 2003-2010 and 2011-2014, collections from regional distribution centres, and transfers from former archives in Zhytomyr, Lviv, and Odesa.

The Centre preserves significant works spanning Ukrainian cinema history, including films by its namesake Oleksandr Dovzhenko such as Earth (1930), the third film in his Ukrainian trilogy alongside Zvenigora and Arsenal. Its collections feature works by major Ukrainian directors including Sergei Parajanov, Yurii Illienko, and Ivan Mykolaichuk. The Centre has undertaken restoration programs for films from the 1920s and 1980s, including avant-garde works and documentaries about the Chernobyl disaster. Notable restoration projects include Mamay and A Prayer for Hetman Mazepa. The Centre has also compiled influential film canons such as the top 100 Ukrainian films. Through its online cinema platform, it distributes curated collections including 'Sergei Parajanov. Samples,' 'TOP 100 Best Ukrainian Films,' 'Ukrainian Comedy,' 'Literary Film Canon,' 'Documents of the Era,' and 'Ukrainian Poetic Cinema.' In 2024, the Centre received restored digital copies of Ukrainian films long considered lost, preserved in the German Federal Archives, with assistance from Adelheid Heftberger and the Bundesarchiv team.

The Centre occupies an eight-storey building in Kyiv's Holosiivskyi District, located on Vasylkivska Street. This structure originated as the Kyiv Film Copy Factory, constructed in the late 1940s using labor from prisoners of war after the destruction of earlier facilities during World War II. The building was completely renovated and refurbished between 2016 and 2019, transforming former industrial spaces into a multi-artform cultural cluster. The facility now houses climate-controlled film vaults, chemical and digital film laboratories, the Film Museum with over 1,500 square metres of exhibition space including a lecture hall, a paper film archive, and a mediatheque. The Centre also operates Scene 6, a 300-seat performing arts venue on the sixth floor, which hosts several independent theatre, music, and performing arts companies and collectives. This performance platform has been active since September 2017.

The Dovzhenko Centre is located in Kyiv, Ukraine, with its main entrance in the Holosiivskyi District. The institution operates as a state-owned entity, though its governance has shifted: from the Ministry of Culture and Information Policy until July 2022, when directorship transferred to the Ukrainian State Film Agency. The Centre maintains an online cinema platform offering digitized films for streaming via affordable digital tickets, priced between 45 and 85 hryvnias per screening. This platform features films previously accessible only at festivals and special screenings, now available globally. The Centre also offers educational programming through its Lecture Series, including materials from the award-winning educational programme 'How to Stop Worrying and Love Ukrainian Cinema,' which received the Kinokolo Prize in 2023. Its cultural activities include organizing national stands at international film festivals in Cannes, Berlin, and Karlovy Vary, as well as hosting retrospectives, the Nimi nochi festival dedicated to silent cinema and contemporary music, and annual programmes in partnership with the Odesa International Film Festival.