Odesa's Bookstore-Café hosted a film discussion about a movie banned in the USSR

The screening of Mykola Shpykovsky 's film Bread, which was banned by Soviet censors immediately after its premiere, took place on May 26 at the Bookstore-Café in Odesa.

The film, which is now ranked 25th in the list of the 100 best films in the history of Ukrainian cinema, was strictly banned for decades.

It was only in 2012 that the Dovzhenko Center was able to buy a copy of the film, returning this masterpiece to Ukraine. The director tackled the complex topic of collectivization, but created a visual language so powerful and ambiguous that the Soviet government was afraid of its own mirror. The story is based on the drama of a father and son, a conflict of ideologies, and the question of whether grain can grow on the land that has been taken away.

The visitors of the Café will analyze this unique silent feature film together, and we will talk about the fate of the director and the context of the era.

According to the film, a Red Army soldier, Luka, returns to his native village after the Civil War and plans to create a collective farm. The land for this farm is taken away from the peasants ("kulaks"), and the grain for sowing is taken from the townspeople. The main conflict is the struggle against the kulaks, and an additional conflict is the protagonist's confrontation with his own father. The latter does not believe that the stolen grain will grow on the stolen land. But when it does sprout, the grandfather takes his son's side, convinced that it is possible to break written and unwritten laws for the sake of the common good.

Completed in October 1929, the film was sent for review to the Chief Repertory Committee, which banned the film by a protocol dated March 7, 1930, and, after revisions, again in 1931, stating that the film gave a false impression of the struggle for bread. The middle man was completely removed from the painting. The period of restoration (restriction of the kulak), the relative economic strengthening of the kulak (NEP), the class struggle, the preparation of political preconditions for the liquidation of the kulak, and collectivization (industrialization) all dropped out of the picture.

Кирило Бойко