Reconstruction of the National Reality of Ukrainians through the Artwork of Ivan Kavaleridze

The purpose of the article is to highlight the problem of the national reality of Ukrainians through the directing and staging heritage of I. Kavaleridze: independent films, produced during the 1930s and 1960s. The research methodology includes the use of the following methods: historical, comparative-historical, analytical, and biographical. Scientific novelty the study is that it first reproduces the chronology of the director’s work related to the search for original means of cinema visualization of the historical past of the Ukrainians, in particular, the use of folk music, as well as their symphonic adaptation. Conclusions. The basis for showing the historical past of Ukraine and the Ukrainians for I. Kavaleridze was above all things the literary works of a leading writer T. Shevchenko. In particular, his poems “The Haydamaks”, “A Dream” and “The Caucasus” (“Hard Rain”, 1929; “Koliyivshchyna”, 1931; “Prometheus”, 1937). The philosophy of Ukrainians’ reality became the focus of the director in the adaptations of folk songs and classical operas (“Natalka Poltavka” by M. Lysenko, 1936; “Cossack beyond the Danube” by S. Hulak-Artemovsky, 1937), where, without breaking the foundations of pieces of music, the director revealed their deep meaning by the means of editing and the vivid cinematic embodiment of theatrical conventions. I. Kavaleridze in the films “Hryhorii Skovoroda” (1958) and “Poviia” (The Loose Woman) (1961, based upon the novel by P. Myrny) introduced the rooted psychologism and the high accuracy of the artistic characteristics of the generalized images of Ukrainian peasants (folk types that are stylistically close to the Dovzhenko’s movie heroes)