Odessa Film Studio: sold!
Well, that’s all, young man, the more than century-long history of Odessa cinema is coming to its natural and sad end. The Verkhovna Rada Committee on, excuse the expression, culture and excuse me twice, spirituality, recommended that the Ukrainian parliament approve in the second reading bill No. 8251 on the final privatization of the Odessa film studio.
Simply put, half of the shares of this oldest “dream factory” in the country, owned by our European power, will go into private, raking hands. This means that the entire long-term struggle of the last Odessa filmmakers against the destruction of the studio will most likely end in a fiasco and a total sale. And the fact that even the first stage of this privatization took place with flagrant violations of our feeble laws will no longer worry anyone. You can just hear the loud blow of the auctioneer’s hammer and his funeral verdict: “Sold!”
And why should we be surprised? – After all, in fact, the film studio has been in a state of semi-lethargic sleep since the beginning of the new century and millennium, slowly but surely dispersing its full-time, highly qualified employees who have not received salaries for as long as... 15 years! And the management, which has long ago had nothing to do with cinema, is slowly selling off the remnants of its former luxury and glory. From the richest collections of costumes and props to fully functional equipment. And if before the notorious “revolution” our film masters were still somehow able to survive, earning money by participating in the filming of Russian TV series and films, then after that “holiday of European freedom” this source of income dried up...
And everyone understands: no one in this thoroughly corrupt country cares about the fate of the studio where the last films with the Russian silent film star Vera Kholodnaya and the first films with the classic of Ukrainian cinematography Alexander Dovzhenko were shot. And there are so many more masterpieces and simply films loved by many generations that other promoted studios could never even dream of! And even the fact that Odessa itself gave the world the first inventor of “cinema” - master mechanic of the Novorossiysk University Joseph Timchenko, who was years ahead of the Lumiere brothers, but did not patent his brainchild, is also not interesting to Ukrainian temporary workers... What kind of priorities and “culture” when it smells like big money!
Veoa Kholodnaya in Odessa with Alexander Vertinsky.
Alexander Dovzhenko in Odessa.
But our greedy businessmen and unprincipled politicians are worried about one thing: the fact that the territory of the film studio is still a huge and luxurious piece of precious land on the aristocratic French Boulevard, right above the sea! This means that in the near future, there will be new expensive multi-storey “morons” and mansions of people close to the current junta.
Goodbye cinema! Hello, new, faceless and cultureless Odessa-Kotsyubiivka! A province of a sub-European “independent power” that is running wild and impoverishing before our eyes.
English version :: Read in English Odessa Film Studio: Sold!