{"id":5570,"date":"2025-09-17T12:24:19","date_gmt":"2025-09-17T10:24:19","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/kilok.art\/?p=5570"},"modified":"2025-09-19T14:16:13","modified_gmt":"2025-09-19T12:16:13","slug":"ukrayinskyj-chornyj-kvadrat","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/kilok.art\/en\/ukrayinskyj-chornyj-kvadrat\/","title":{"rendered":"Ukrainian Black Square"},"content":{"rendered":"
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\"Malevich\"<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Screenwriters: Darya Onyshchenko, Anna Palenchuk<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Director: Darya Onyshchenko<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Cinematographer: Oleksandr Roshchyn<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Cast: Vitalii Azhnov, Oleksii Horbunov, Irma Vitovska, Maryna Koshkina, Sasha Novikov, Kostiantyn Temliak, and others<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Ukraine, Switzerland, Italy, Serbia, 2024.<\/p>\n<\/div>\n\n\n\n

The war for cultural heritage is an important component of Ukraine\u2019s struggle for survival. In particular, since the beginning of the full-scale invasion, thanks to the efforts of activists, some world museums have \u201creturned\u201d to Ukraine artists once appropriated by Russia: Illia Repin, Ivan Aivazovsky, Arkhip Kuindzhi\u2026 Among these victories was the recognition by Amsterdam\u2019s Stedelijk Museum of Kazimir Malevich as a Ukrainian, not Russian, artist.\n\nThe fight for Malevich has been ongoing for quite some time: Dmytro Horbachov has consistently developed the theme of the Ukrainian avant-garde, with Malevich as one of its central figures (he is, in particular, the compiler of the anthology \u201cHe and I Were Ukrainians. Malevich and Ukraine\u201d (2006)). The books \u201cKazimir Malevich. The Kyiv Period 1928\u20131930\u201d and the multilingual \u201cKazimir Malevich. The Kyiv Aspect\u201d, edited by Tetiana Filevska, were published in 2016 and 2019 respectively.\n\nIn 2013, Jean-Claude Marcad\u00e9\u2019s monograph \u201cMalevich\u201d (first published in 1990), in which considerable attention is devoted to the Ukrainian period of the artist\u2019s work, was translated and released in Ukraine. Documentary filmmaking also made its contribution: \u201cMalevich. The Ukrainian Square\u201d by Dmytro Dzhulai (2018), produced by the Ukrainian bureau of Radio Free Europe\/Radio Liberty, and \u201cMalevich. Born in Ukraine\u201d by Volodymyr Lutskiy and Ihor Malakhov, written by Tetiana Filevska (2019).<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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The feature film became a logical continuation of Malevich\u2019s \u201creturn.\u201d Darya Onyshchenko\u2019s motion picture focuses on the artist\u2019s creative explorations, from the staging of the futuristic opera \u201cVictory over the Sun\u201d in Moscow in 1913 to his teaching at the Kyiv Art Institute. The filmmakers slightly shifted the chronological framework of Malevich\u2019s stay in Kyiv, so that in the plot the artist becomes a witness to the Holodomor during his \u201cKyiv period\u201d (in reality, he taught there until 1930). They likewise \u201cshifted\u201d the teaching years at the KAI of another avant-gardist appropriated by Russia\u2014Kharkiv-born Volodymyr Tatlin, who in fact taught there between 1925 and 1928.\n\nThe ambivalent love\u2013hate relationship of the two artists (\u201cmy honest enemy and best friend\u201d), portrayed by Vitalii Azhnov (Malevich) and Sasha Novikov (Tatlin), became one of the film\u2019s key \u201cenergy lines.\u201d Together they are representatives of what was once the most progressive artistic movement, necessary to the Soviet system yet despised by it for their freedom-loving, rebellious spirit. This system is embodied by a Ukrainian-born former Moscow art professor who chooses to serve the new regime as an OGPU officer (Oleksii Horbunov). The filmmakers cleverly symbolized the inherently conservative spirit of Stalinist times by making the chief executor of the new regime\u2019s orders a representative of the pre-revolutionary, \u201cold-regime\u201d world\u2014someone who had understood and accepted neither avant-garde art under the tsarist authorities nor under the Bolsheviks.\n\nMalevich himself also becomes a symbol; in Vitalii Azhnov\u2019s interpretation, he appears as a complex, enigmatic figure who never fully reveals himself to the viewer. While in a biographical film this might normally be seen as a flaw, here it harmoniously fits the concept\u2014just as Malevich\u2019s image in public and scholarly thought repeatedly demands new reinterpretation. In truth, the artist himself is a black square\u2026<\/p>\n\n\n\n

A successful device was the attempt to convey the restless creative spirit of the time through cinematic means. The film maintains a balance between \u201cauteur\u201d and \u201caudience-oriented\u201d cinema (notwithstanding the conditionality of both terms), using unexpected camera movements, angles, and a soft color palette punctuated with bright, ringing, \u201cavant-garde\u201d tones to evoke the feeling of the era. Cinematographer Oleksandr Roshchyn once again demonstrates the high level of the Ukrainian school of cinematography.\n\nThe animated inserts are particularly engaging\u2014an experimental play with avant-garde forms that at one moment transforms a girl\u2019s face into a portrait, at another \u201cdeconstructs\u201d the artist\u2019s figure into basic shapes. Painting in \"Malevich\" is not simply a backdrop to the plot or even just the meaning of the artist\u2019s life\u2014it is a metaphor for the time itself, with its demiurgic pathos and the dramatic contrast between avant-garde experiments to transform the world through art and communist experiments to transform the world through violence.\n\nPainting seems to try to break through the wall of the screen: sometimes disrupting the space of the photographic image through the aforementioned animation, sometimes marking a link between eras in a scene where contemporary peasants with painted faces appear as figures from Malevich\u2019s canvases. This striking image is essentially an artwork within an artwork, a happening inside the film.\n\nThis approach is not new for Onyshchenko: in \"The Forgotten,\" sculptor Mariia Kulykovska, playing a Russian sniper, shoots her own sculptures, theatrically reenacting the real story of militants destroying her works in Donetsk\u2019s \"Izolyatsia\" in 2014. Yet, as we see, in \"Malevich\" the approach is not merely repeated but reinterpreted, gaining a new form and new meaning.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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The connection between eras is another important message of the film, and its realization is the only aspect that invites criticism. If the final \u201chappening,\u201d with the peasants covered in paint, vividly transports the viewer from the famine-stricken Ukrainian village of the 1930s to the Ukrainian village of the 2020s devastated by Russian shelling, then the framing of Malevich\u2019s story with that of a modern couple\u2014a soldier and his girlfriend\u2014seems rather awkward and overtly ura-patriotic.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In the end, \"Malevich\" is an undeniable success, the best (so far) film by Darya Onyshchenko. Yes, it is an overt piece of cultural weaponry, but it is also an artwork\u2014one that is engaging to watch (and rewatch) even beyond the wars of memory. And if, at the mention of Malevich, the face of Vitalii Azhnov now comes to mind\u2014would that not be the highest recognition of both an actor\u2019s and a director\u2019s triumph?<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\u0412\u043f\u0435\u0440\u0448\u0435 \u043e\u043f\u0443\u0431\u043b\u0456\u043a\u043e\u0432\u0430\u043d\u043e \u0432 \u0436\u0443\u0440\u043d\u0430\u043b\u0456 \u00ab\u041a\u0456\u043d\u043e-\u0422\u0435\u0430\u0442\u0440\u00bb, \u21163, 2025.<\/p>","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

\u00ab\u041c\u0430\u043b\u0435\u0432\u0438\u0447\u00bb \u0421\u0446\u0435\u043d\u0430\u0440\u0438\u0441\u0442\u043a\u0438: \u0414\u0430\u0440’\u044f \u041e\u043d\u0438\u0449\u0435\u043d\u043a\u043e, \u0410\u043d\u043d\u0430 \u041f\u0430\u043b\u0435\u043d\u0447\u0443\u043a \u0420\u0435\u0436\u0438\u0441\u0435\u0440\u043a\u0430 \u0414\u0430\u0440’\u044f \u041e\u043d\u0438\u0449\u0435\u043d\u043a\u043e \u041e\u043f\u0435\u0440\u0430\u0442\u043e\u0440 \u041e\u043b\u0435\u043a\u0441\u0430\u043d\u0434\u0440 \u0420\u043e\u0449\u0438\u043d \u0423 \u0440\u043e\u043b\u044f\u0445: \u0412\u0456\u0442\u0430\u043b\u0456\u0439<\/p>","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":5571,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[189],"tags":[344,60],"post_folder":[],"class_list":["post-5570","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-blog","tag-malevych","tag-ukrayinske-kino"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/kilok.art\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5570","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/kilok.art\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/kilok.art\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kilok.art\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kilok.art\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=5570"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/kilok.art\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5570\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":5577,"href":"https:\/\/kilok.art\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5570\/revisions\/5577"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kilok.art\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/5571"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/kilok.art\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5570"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kilok.art\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5570"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kilok.art\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5570"},{"taxonomy":"post_folder","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/kilok.art\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/post_folder?post=5570"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}