The State Film Fund of Ukraine and the audiovisual archive of Ukrainian cinema «Dovzhenko-Center» announced the appearance of its own online cinema. Within an hour, the website «Dovzhenko-Center. Online» became temporarily unavailable due to a large number of users.
The State Film Fund of Ukraine and the audiovisual archive of Ukrainian cinema «Dovzhenko-Center» announced the appearance of its own online cinema. Within an hour, the website «Dovzhenko-Center. Online» became temporarily unavailable due to a large number of users.
«Today we are presenting our own long-awaited online cinema. Now viewers have the opportunity to watch Ukrainian films from different eras legally and in the best quality! The „Dovzhenko-Center. Online“ platform presents films digitized by our Film Laboratory, which could recently only be viewed at festivals, special screenings and programs,» the «Dovzhenko-Center» reported.
Films in the online cinema can be watched individually or within curatorial collections that introduce you to significant periods, genres, themes, figures, or ratings of Ukrainian cinema. The film archive notes that the films and collections will be constantly changing and supplemented.
Films at «Dovzhenko-Center. Online» are available anywhere in the world. The cost of watching each full-length film is 85 hryvnias.
The online cinema platform also features a «Lecture Room», where lectures, interviews, courses, and archival materials on the history of Ukrainian cinema will be published. Currently, six lectures recorded as part of the educational program «How to Stop Worrying and Love Ukrainian Cinema» are available for free, awarded the Kinokolo Award in 2023.
The film archive reported that «Dovzhenko Center. Online» was created thanks to voluntary donations from organizations and individuals, which were collected as part of a crowdfunding campaign organized by British film researcher Richard Bossons in 2022 to support the activities of the «Dovzhenko Center».
Currently, the website of the online cinema «Dovzhenko-Center. Online» is unavailable — it gives a 503 error, which indicates that the servers could not cope with the influx of users. The hoster notes that as soon as the website reaches the resource limit that was set, its work begins to slow down.
«Friends! Your great interest in Ukrainian cinema has temporarily brought our website down. We are aware of the problem. We are working to fix everything as soon as possible,» they commented on the issues with access to the «Dovzhenko Center».
