to make film-operas. His 1937 Natalka Poltavka was loved by audiences as was 1938’s A Cossack Beyond the Danube. These screen adaptations of Ukrainian theater classics starring leading opera performers of the day were made mostly in-studio, and marked by the lyrical landscape-rich prologues and interludes similar to Dovzhenko’s Earth and Ivan. In 1939, during the mass executions of the Ukrainian intelligentsia, Kavaleridze worked on the propaganda short Pleiades in an attempt to establish his loyalty to the State.
In 1941, he left on a film expedition to the recently occupied western Ukrainian territory in order to make A Song about Dovbush. During the filming, the German Army invaded the Soviet Union and the film crew found itself on German-
241
occupied territory. In his official biography, Kavaleridze writes about the severe difficulties the crew faced while crossing the devastated Ukrainian landscape traveling back to Kyiv. However, in his memoirs entitled, On a White Horse – On a Black Horse, Ukrainian writer and Volyn newspaper correspondent Ulas Samchuk relates the story with somewhat less
Іван Кавалерідзе на знімальному майданчику, 1930-і рр.
drama. The film crew was indeed arrested in Rivne, where the general staff of German Eastern Front was located at the time. Shortly after some clarification of the circumstances, however, the crew was released and provided with suitable accommodations and a respite (apparently with help from local representatives of the Ukrainian Nationalist Organization led by Andrii Melnyk (“the Melnykivtsi”). In a further development, Ulas Samchuk married Kavaleridze’s assistant Tetiana Prakhova, visiting her in German-occupied Kyiv, and using the opportunity to make contact with Ukrainian intelligentsia Oleh Olzhych, Olena Teliha, who had just returned to Ukraine from emigration.
Ivan Kavaleridze at the shooting area, 1930s