The authorial film series “Appropriated Names” is devoted to renowned artists who were born and shaped as individuals in Ukraine, but were subsequently written into the history of another culture.
To date, I have already created two films in this series.

The first film is “Kazimir Malevich. Black Square.”
I created this film to return Kazimir Malevich to the Ukrainian cultural context. The world knows him as the author of “Black Square,” but very little is said about Ukraine — about Kyiv, the Ukrainian villages of his childhood, folk art, embroidery, pottery, and traditional songs that shaped his worldview.
For me, this is also a personal story. I studied at the National Academy of Fine Arts and Architecture in Kyiv — the very institution where Malevich taught in the late 1920s.
This film is not about a myth. It is about a man. About memory. And about how Ukrainian culture resonates even within the “Black Square.”
Link to the film and accompanying documents:
https://filmfreeway.com/KazimirMalevichBlackSquare?preview=true&public=1&project_file_access=1&password=

The second film is “Anna & Amedeo.”
It is an authorial short film about the enigmatic encounter between the young Anna Akhmatova and Amedeo Modigliani in Paris at the beginning of the twentieth century.
The story of Anna Akhmatova and Amedeo Modigliani has survived through fragments of memories, poetry, art, and images that outlived their creators. Among them, a special place is occupied by the portrait of the young Anna created by Modigliani in 1911. This image became one of the important starting points for me in creating the film.
It is a story about a young woman who experiences love and art without losing herself. A story about memory, inner freedom, and a woman’s right to be not merely someone else’s image in art, but the author of her own life.

Why has the name Anna Akhmatova been included in the project “Appropriated Names”?
She was born at the end of the nineteenth century in Odessa, at Velykyi Fontan, near the Black Sea. Her real surname was Ukrainian — Horenko.
Anna’s childhood passed between Odessa, Crimea, and Kyiv — on the land she would carry with her throughout her life.
The film “Anna & Amedeo” received an Honorable Mention at the Reale Film Festival 🇮🇹 in September 2026. The festival jury recognized the film’s exceptional value and creativity.Link to the film:
https://filmfreeway.com/AnnaandAmedeo?preview=true&public=1&project_file_access=1&password=

At this very moment, I am completing the third film in the series, “The Letter of Freedom.”
This film is dedicated to the painting by Ilya Repin, “Reply of the Zaporozhian Cossacks to the Sultan of Turkey.”
We witness the birth of the famous letter — not as a historical document, but as a vivid scene of a Cossack community, where humour, freedom, and brotherhood gradually transform into legend.

Ilya Repin was also born and raised in Ukraine, in Chuhuiv, Kharkiv Governorate, and his name, too, was written into Russian history. https://youtu.be/jzULvUoM0jY

The films I create are registered on the festival platform FilmFreeway for participation in international film festivals:
https://filmfreeway.com/

The goal of the “Appropriated Names” project is to show the world the true Ukrainian origins of internationally renowned figures and to return these names to the context of Ukrainian culture.