UKRAINE FUNDRAISER Alim plus discussion

#STAND WITH UKRAINE Fundraising Screening

Introduced by Dr Rory Finnin, Associate Professor of Ukrainian Studies Followed by Q&A with Dr Finnin and Crimean Tatar activists.

Alim is outstanding popcorn fare. Banned and lost for decades, it is a dynamic action film based on the legend of Alim Aidamak, a nineteenth-century Robin Hood of the Crimean Tatars, the indigenous Muslim people of Crimea. The film is also a time capsule, availing viewers of visually resplendent vistas of a multicultural Crimea before the advent of Stalin’s atrocities on the Black Sea peninsula. Released in 1926 by VUFKU (All-Ukrainian Photo-Film Administration), the film was a blockbuster success, playing to enthusiastic audiences in Europe and across the Soviet Union. Crimean Tatars considered director Heorhii Tasin’s feature debut as their “first national film.”

In the view of Soviet censors, this stature made it dangerous. Stalin’s regime pulled the film from circulation in 1937. Most of its copies were destroyed. It was expunged so thoroughly from Soviet cinematic history that even today Western film scholars neglect to include Alim in Tasin’s filmography. Rediscovered and remastered by the Oleksandr Dovzhenko National Film Centre in Kyiv, Alim soars with a new soundtrack by legendary Crimean Tatar guitar virtuoso Enver Izmailov.

Come and see this forgotten masterpiece on Wednesday, 16 November at the Cambridge Arts Picturehouse. All proceeds from ticket sales will be directed to WithUkraine.org, an online global platform vetted by Cambridge Ukrainian Studies and built by the Embassy of Ukraine in the United Kingdom to provide urgent humanitarian relief to families on the ground in Ukraine.