FEEL IT.STREAM
Vasyl Viter

Vasyl Viter

Directing

Biography

Vasyl Petrovych Viter (born 1951, in Velykopolovetsk, Skvyra Raion, Kyiv Oblast, Ukrainian SSR) is a Ukrainian director, screenwriter, actor, and producer. He is the chairman of the VIATEL studio. Honored Artist of Ukraine. Associate professor of the Department of Film and Television Directing and Dramaturgy at the I. Karpenko-Karyi National University of Theater, Film, and Television. Member of the National Union of Cinematographers of Ukraine. In 1981–1982, he worked as a director in the video film production department at the State Television and Radio Company of the Ukrainian SSR. He was one of the first directors in the USSR to start shooting feature films on video, namely the film "In the Meadow on an Old Sofa" based on the novel by E. Hutsalo. He worked as a director and production director at the Ukrainian television film studio Ukrtelevizija from 1982 to 1993. In 1994, he founded and headed the VIATEL studio, which produced about 120 films. Since 2013, he has been deputy chairman of the Oleksandr Dovzhenko State Prize Committee of Ukraine. He is a member of the expert commission on cinematography of the State Agency of Ukraine for Film. Since 1996, he has been working as a lecturer and artistic director of the television directing course at the Department of Television Directing of the Ivan Karpenko-Karyi National University of Theatre, Cinema, and Television, and since 2025, at the Department of Film and Television Directing and Dramaturgy. From 2010 to 2025, he was head of the Department of Television Directing at the Ivan Karpenko-Karyi National University of Theatre, Cinema, and Television.

Known For

Garden of Gethsemane
N/A

A miniseries about the terrible years of repression in Ukraine in the 1930s. Based on the novel of the same name by Ivan Bahrianyi.

Garden of Gethsemane

1993
Dictatorship
N/A

Television production of the play "Dictatorship" by Ukrainian playwright Ivan Mykytenko, who was repressive in the 1930s. The theme of the film was the tragic fate of the people deceived by the government - a peasant who was robbed to the last grain and his strength was destroyed.

Dictatorship

1985
Farther Than an Arrow's Flight
N/A

The TV series is devoted to the topic of the artist's responsibility for every word he writes. In the center of the plot is the wandering of an artist-journalist of a Kyiv newspaper. He faces a number of internal problems: how to get along in a big city, the existence of true love and finding the answer to the eternal question - "Who am I?" External events echo the psychological crisis of the main character. In search of himself, he travels to the villages of the Kherson region that were flooded to create reservoirs - somewhere under the water column is his parents' native village, a metaphor for Ukrainian culture and historical memory mutilated in the 20th century. The man's concerns are closely related to the surrounding world: the atmosphere of the film reproduces the confusion of the entire nation: "What will happen next, after communism and its ideology?" In the yard, everything points to the imminent collapse of the perestroika.

Farther Than an Arrow's Flight

1990
Don't Give Up the Queen
N/A

Kostya Barbin and Ilya Shakhvorostov are sailors of a motor ship traveling along the Yenisei. They have been friends since childhood, but grew up different in their views on life and moral principles.

Don't Give Up the Queen

1975
St. Michael's Golden-domed Monastery. 900 years
N/A

Against the backdrop of historical events, from the time of Kyivan Rus' until the arrival of the Ecumenical Patriarch Bartholomew in Ukraine, the film deals with the history of the construction, flourishing, destruction and revival of the Mykhailivskyi Golden-Domed Monastery over 900 years, as well as the difficult history of the struggle for independence of Ukraine. the church that continues to this day.

St. Michael's Golden-domed Monastery. 900 years

2008
Ivan Mykolaichuk. Trizna
N/A

The first movie about the actor who became the creator and symbol of Ukrainian poetic cinema Ivan Mykolaichuk, released 2 years after his death.

Ivan Mykolaichuk. Trizna

1989
How Shevchenko Was Looking For A Job
6.0

An ironic comedy based on the novel of the same name by Osyp Makovey. For all Ukrainians, Shevchenko is a poet and a prophet. But what would happen if the living Taras Shevchenko came to you and asked for your help? Would you find a place for him at your computer?

How Shevchenko Was Looking For A Job

2014
No image
N/A

In 1982, director Vasyl Viter shot the first feature film in Soviet cinema history on videotape. It was a film based on Pavlo Zagrebelny's essay "Clarinets of Tenderness." Pavlo Tychyna was played by the young popular theater director Valentin Kozmenko-Delinde. Pavlo Tychyna's mother was played by Nina Matvienko. It was her first role in a feature film. She also performed a romance in the film based on Tychyna's words, "That Garden, and Night, and Stars..." The music for the romance and for the film was written by the brilliant Ukrainian composer Oleg Kiva, and later this music became the basis for his amazing cantata, which was performed by the Kyiv Camerata orchestra together with Nina Matvienko.

Clarinets of Tenderness

1982
Groundwater
N/A

The film revealed the bitter truth about the Ukrainian nation, which in Soviet times was deprived of the right to live near the eternal river - Dnipro, forcibly resettled from native houses in order to flood them with artificial seas and canals. It was the first film before the collapse of the Soviet Union and Ukraine's independence that openly talked about the genocide of the Ukrainian people.

Groundwater

1988
A Deep Well
N/A

A music documentary about the Ukrainian folk songs and Nina Matviienko.

A Deep Well

1990
The Flower of the Fern
N/A

The theme of the film is the essence of the Ukrainian song as the cradle of the Ukrainian people, the whole nation. Its depth, the antiquity of its history. The film also tells the tragic story of the brilliant folk opera “When the Fern Blossoms“. This opera, together with the Veriovka Choir, was created by the world-renowned composer Yevhen Stankovych, our contemporary. However, the Soviet government of the time was afraid of Ukrainian song and banned the opera, breaking the set. The film features excerpts from the opera performed by the choir, as well as testimonies from the authors and performers about the work.

The Flower of the Fern

1988
Kherson – a City on the Dnipro River
7.0

Films about Ukrainian cities and regions are also part of the cultural heritage created by Ukrainian filmmakers. Many directors have made such films. The creative work of film director Vasyl Vitra also includes such films. He shot them mainly in the last decade of the last century, or rather, the last millennium. These are films about Kherson, Dniprodzerzhynsk, and Khmelnytskyi. So, three films about cities in the 1990s, at the turn of the millennium, which already look different today, and today these shots have become historical documents.

Kherson – a City on the Dnipro River

2013