Architect Oleksandr Dovzhenko: as an outstanding director, he filmed the HPP and built Nova Kakhovka

Dovzhenko arrives for the construction of the hydroelectric power station

Oleksandr Dovzhenko took his first steps on the land that will be called Nova Kakhovka some 71 years ago. He came here in 1952 for the construction of the Kakhovskaya HPP in order to immortalize in his next film the drama that the construction turned into for the residents of the surrounding villages. The hydroelectric power station was built on a historical area called Velikiy Lug, which once belonged to the Zaporizhzhya Sich. Along with it, not only villages went to the bottom of the reservoir, but also sand dunes and rich vegetation of incredible beauty.

For almost five years, Oleksandr Dovzhenko lived at the construction site for several months, wrote the script, communicated with engineers and architects. He perceived the upcoming film “Poem about the Sea” as revenge for his monumental film “Earth”, banned by Stalin a few years earlier.

During the construction, the film director seemed to be resurrected and gave all his artistic experience, time and heart not only to the work on the film, but also to the work on the image of the city that grew up next to the Kakhovskaya HPP.

Architectural passion of a film director

He was passionately and deeply interested in architecture. This is evidenced in particular by numerous entries in Dovzhenko’s diaries, where he does not overlook any architectural event of his time. The director sees the tasks of architecture in his own way.

“In Dovzhenko’s opinion, such large objects as the hydraulic junction and the city could not be created by architects and engineers alone”, – says architect Elizaveta Yevseeva, co-founder of the Novokakhov Society for the Protection of Cultural Heritage. – He advocated the involvement of citizens in planning in order to understand their requests and needs, which will help to develop the hidden potential of the territory and unite people around the joint creation of values.

Ardently and without hiding his emotions, Dovzhenko constantly discusses with everyone involved in the construction: with the founder of the Academy of Architecture V.G. Zabolotnym, construction manager S.M. Andrianov He tries not to miss any production meetings, which he then describes in detail in his diary, illustrating them with schematic sketches of buildings, portraits of meeting participants and landscapes of the area. In particular, he draws up a memorandum to the Council of Ministers of the Ukrainian SSR “On the artistic design of the future of the Kakhovsky Sea”. “The opinions expressed in the note are expressed in balanced professional terms, with the justification and analysis of the proposed solutions. For example, the analysis of the role of the movement of trains and cars in the artistic solution of the facades of the main building of the Kakhovskaya HPP. Dovzhenko calls for the use of the latest achievements in the constructive solution of the HPP building, strives” to “modernize” its tectonics. At the same time, not backing down from the idea to create a gigantic historical panorama of the national heroic spirit at the expense of sculpture,” says Yelyzaveta Yevseeva.

Imitating architecture for O. Dovzhenko is not only a manifestation of his curiosity, but also his desire to do good and leave behind something truly significant. “I am very glad that I came here. I will enrich myself with new things here… and rise to the new beauty that you and I have served all our lives,” – from the director’s letter to his wife Yulia Solntseva.

Ideas brought to life

At the final stage of the construction of the Palace of Culture, Dovzhenko proposed not to cover the rotunda with tiles, and to open a summer cafe on it with a magical view of the Dnipro, the river, hydroelectric power station and Cossack Island. The idea was unexpectedly quickly approved by the construction manager Andrianov.

“Dovzhenko knew how to speak amazingly, spoke passionately, improvised and always full of unexpected ideas. The same with the roof, he began to convince us to make a flat roof, with observation decks and a cafe. The idea was powerful, we caught fire, but… the building was already there were rafters. A way out was found – a cafe was arranged on the roof of the semicircular rotunda crowning the park facade,” – from the memories of architect Mykola Kolomiyets.

The roof of the palace also arose, in particular, under the influence of Dovzhenko’s inspired dreams. He offered to make it in watered dark green tiles, so that the roof shimmered like our sea. The director always wanted to improve everything, make it more expressive and bright. So, after talking about the silhouette of the palace building, there appeared sculptures against the background of the side niches and on the pediment. Discussions about the appearance of the roof of the Palace of Culture continue in the film Dovzhenka.

The mosaic garden on the roof dreamed of by the film director was created by Hryhoriy Dovzhenko, a student of the monumental artist Mykhailo Boychuk. The panel on the pediment of the rotunda, in the technique of carving on raw plaster with a mosaic filling, depicted a fairy bird in the center of a pattern of flowers. Unfortunately, after the fire, the site of the cafe-terrace with the firebird on the roof of the Palace of Culture was destroyed by a fire in 2007.

Collaboration with Boychukist Hryhoriy Dovzhenko

Construction was accompanied by constant heated disputes. “The city turned out to be gray and ugly. Ukrainian architects and academics slept through the new city, the devil would take them away; but I already love it,” O. Dovzhenko describes the image of the city in October 1952. Quarters of residential buildings, which grew on loose sands, without greenery and really looked rather monotonous. So the film director sent a written request to the Academy of Architecture to send a group of artists and architects to decorate the facades of the buildings. Among them was the monumental artist Hryhoriy Dovzhenko.

Together with the masters, he decorated the buildings with unique bright ornaments and carved panels, which completely changed the appearance of the city. The artist drew a life-size sketch-template, at night the craftsmen applied the first layer of plaster to the building. And in the morning, the drawing was transferred from the template and cut out with special tools. Hryhoriy Dovzhenko himself invented this raw clay carving technique, which he patented. Masters decorated more than 200 houses with “stone embroideries” with unique kumans, birds, “trees of life” from which sunflowers, corn, or ears of wheat grow.

In Nova Kakhovka, Oleksandr Dovzhenko and Hryhoriy Dovzhenko become neighbors in a cottage. H. Dovzhenko’s grandson says that when Oleksandr Dovzhenko was weak, he knocked on Grigory’s battery on the first floor so that he would come up to him. In his diaries, the film director writes how shared ideas about the architecture of the Ukrainian village with his new neighbor, citing the works of Picasso and Leger as examples.

“Experienced by O. Dovzhenko as a personal drama of the flooding of villages with a reservoir and the resettlement of their inhabitants to new settlements resulted in a very appropriate and profound, both from the point of view of the profession and from the side of writing skill, the report “On the question of the construction of new villages along the banks of the Dnieper reservoirs and of the future of the Southern Channel”, – says Elizaveta Yevseeva. – Now his mind is possessed by the idea of ​​creating, first of all, a cozy space commensurate with a person, picturesque, thought out to the “sophisticated fence” of the manor. So that the village does not lose its “old advantages” and is a “small well-developed town”, which drowns in the gardens and resembles an “oasis of luxurious Askania-Nova”. These thoughts of the director echo later and from the mouths of his characters in “Poems about the Sea”.

Well, according to Elizaveta Yevseeva, if Order No. 1871 “On the elimination of excesses in design and construction” had not been issued in 1955, which at one point ended the era of Soviet monumental classicism, this joint concept of artists would have had a bright continuation in the architectural form of many villages and cities of Ukraine . “New Kakhovka was supposed to be the first powerful experience, a scientific and practical basis for such an ensemble approach in the design of settlements, but it actually took place as a unique experiment, which was impossible to repeat,” says Yevseeva.

The decree on the fight against excesses in architecture also influenced the scenario of the picture. If in O. Dovzhenko’s text the emphasis is on the insufficient imagination of the architect regarding the scale of the House of Culture both in terms of size and decoration, then in the screen version the theme of monumentality is replaced by O. Dovzhenko’s thoughts on the loss of national traditions and the picturesqueness of the new space, and monumentalism is ridiculed.

The director’s friends mentioned that Oleksandr Dovzhenko grew close to Nova Kakhovka, constantly talked about the city and said that he fell in love with the people and was even going to move there forever. However, Dovzhenko was already very ill at that time, and the day before the filming of the film was canceled. The film based on his script has already been shot by his wife Yulia Solntseva.