Executed Renaissance: Hryhoriy Kosynka

State Enterprise "Ukrainian Studio of Television Films "Ukrtelefilm", 1989.

The documentary film "Tell Me..." is dedicated to the memory of the Ukrainian prose writer — one of the finest masters of the 20th-century short story — Hryhoriy Kosynka (real name — Strilets). The film presents the tragic life of the writer as a representative of the Executed Renaissance, destroyed by the Stalinist regime.

On the video: archival film footage featuring Hryhoriy Kosynka; photographs from the Strelets family archive; newspapers with execution lists; fragments of the film "Politics" based on a script adapted from works by Hryhoriy Kosynka; accounts of the repression of the writer; the apartment of the Strelets family.

The film uses fragments from the motion picture "Politics" directed by Borys Savchenko.

Comments: Hryhoriy Kosynka’s wife Tamara Moroz-Strilets; writer Hryhoriy Shton; historian and local studies researcher Lyudmila Protsenko; artist and writer Yuriy Logvin; student Mykhailo Gorlovy; Ukrainian Radio announcer Petro Boyko.

Reference: Hryhoriy Kosynka (Strelets) was a Ukrainian novelist and short story writer of the Executed Renaissance era, and a member of the literary associations "Grono" and "Lanka" (MARS). He was arrested on November 5, 1934, and shot on December 15, 1934, in Kyiv — rehabilitated posthumously in 1957. His major short story collections include "On the Golden Gods", "In Rye", and "Politics", as well as the censored collection "Heart" (prepared for publication in 1933). Kosynka’s literary phenomenon is defined by a modernized impressionistic and expressionistic short story form, characterized by a fragmentary "cinematic" narrative, concise phrasing, and a focus on the traumatic experience of revolution and civil war in the Ukrainian village.