Representation of Taras Shevchenko’s Image in Ukrainian Soviet Film Documentary of 1930–1990

The purpose of the study is to consider the peculiarities of the representation of the image of Taras Shevchenko in film documents of the Soviet era; to outline their place among other receptive practices of the totalitarian state, to reveal their influence on the formation of cultural memory and identity of Ukrainians. Research methods. The research is based on theoretical developments and concepts of foreign and domestic scientists in the field of source studies, film studies and memory studies. The work was carried out using general scientific methods of analysis and synthesis based on the principles of historicism and objectivity. The methods of source criticism, chronological, systematic, and typological analysis were also used when covering the topic, content analysis. Scientific novelty. The study of the representation of the image of Taras Shevchenko in the chronicle-documentary film periodicals and documentary-chronicle, documentary-journalistic, documentary-biographical, popular science films of the Soviet era has not yet been the subject of scientific studies. Film documents are important testimonies about the time of their creation and provide invaluable material for its understanding, as well as a grateful source for the study of images and representations that appear in the mass consciousness and are preserved in historical and cultural memory. Conclusions. Cinema was an important element of Soviet propaganda and an effective means of forming public opinion. The Soviet film discourse significantly deformed the image of T. Shevchenko in order to legitimize the Soviet government. According to the ideological parameters of socialist realism, the representative film canon of the poet was formed, which acquired new features at different times, completely changing its paradigm after 1985. The analysis of the representation of the image of T. Shevchenko in the Ukrainian Soviet documentary cinema of 1930–1990 contributes to the understanding of the coexistence of the totalitarian and the national, as well as the mechanisms of the formation of the cultural memory of Ukrainian society and the various identities of the Soviet person.