Belarusian Film Forever

100 years

since the birth of Belgoskino

98 years

since the first Belgoskino film

We support Belarusian culture as it expresses itself in film. We believe life in Belarus is a source of inspiration, not a limitation. Culture may come from the land but is not bound by it.  We know that Belarusians carry their country in their hearts, wherever they are.

The connections between Belarusians and cinema stretch back almost to the beginning of moving pictures themselves.  The long and deep connections to the movies began well before the borders of modern state of Belarus  were drawn. 

At first, in 1898, it was just the chance to watch “the flickers” in a makeshift auditorium. 10 years later, the first Belarusian made films arrived.  At first, not suprisingly, they were only “actualities” or documentaries, such as the film about an excavator, the Infernal Machine Behind the Brest Railroad Station. 

A man sitting on a vintage tractor holds a pair of binoculars, while a woman driving the tractor looks ahead, in a black-and-white photograph.

Cameraman M. Berov during the filming stories for the newsreel “Soviet Belarus”
Source: https://www.sb.by/articles/kult-kino.html

A black and white photograph of a man with a beard wearing a hat and a woman with short dark hair smiling at each other.

The Return of Nathan Becker. 1932
Source: https://www.kino-teatr.ru/kino/movie/sov/8314/foto/a17037/451845/

Belgoskino, founded in 1924, had a mission to tell the story of Belarusians on film.  It did, starting with Forest Story, released in December 1926.  But it had other goals, too.  It had to make money, which it did with “All-Union” films.  And of course, it always had to deliver the messages of the Communist Party, even as they may have changed from one year to the next.

Because Belarus had been the heart of the pale of settlement, many Belarusian stories involved the area’s Jewish population.  The Belgoskino film, The Return of Nathan Becker, stands out as the only sound film ever produced in the Soviet Union in which there is a Yiddish version as well as a Russian one.

Politics caused great upheaval in the Soviet film industry in the 1920s and 1930s, we will give you some insight into that story.

After “The Great Patriotic War” ended in 1945, Belgoskino became Belarusfilm, and soon became known for its movies about the war.  Perhaps the best known is the bloody, violent, and gut wrenching, Come and See.   But it also made the fantastical King Stach’s Wild Hunt.

After the fall of the Soviet Union, when the Republic of Belarus arrived, so did scary Belarusian movies, a.k.a., “Potato Horror.”

While we may occasionally bring you a film synopsis, we will not review them unless looking at the final product can bring us new insights. 

We hope to show you how history and filmmaking in Belarus interacted, and how as Belarus changed, so did the films.

Historical black and white photograph of a group of men, women, and children gathered outside a building, with some on a raised balcony and others standing or sitting below, including a woman operating a camera on a tripod.
Black and white still from a film showing a man with a bushy beard and curly hair gesturing animatedly, seated next to a woman in an elaborate dress with off-the-shoulder sleeves and an ornate hairstyle, in a richly decorated room with ornate furniture and sculptures in the background.

Who we are?

A portrait of a man with short dark hair, a beard, wearing a white shirt and a dark suit, standing against a plain background.

Eugene Bulka
Eugene has more than 20 years as a TV host, editor, and creative producer. As an actor, he has more than 20 movies in his portfolio. Eugene brings to us his deep experience in the performing arts.

A man with a receding hairline, wearing a white collared shirt, standing outdoors with green trees and foliage in the background.

Egor Konev
The son of screenwriter and writer Fiodor Konev. Author of scripts for 9 produced documentary films. Co-author of the screenplay for the feature film 'Polesian Robinsons, or the Wonder Island' (2012). Has 30 years of experience in journalism and research.

Close-up portrait of an elderly man with white hair and a beard, wearing a light-colored button-up shirt, outdoors with a blurred green forest background.

Fred Stern
A former United States Foreign Service Officer who spent three years in Minsk, Fred brings love for film and research skills to the project.

Special thanks to:

  • Ivan Kukushkin for helping us get off the ground.

  • The Fairfax County Public Library, Fairfax Virginia, especially to the Kingstowne Branch and the Inter-Library Loan Department.

      We could not have done it without you.

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