A collection of historical footage, films, and lectures about Lviv and Galicia.

Historical Footage

Lemberg 1914-1915 Part I & II

During Russian occupation of Galicia

Watch part I here.

Watch part II here.

PRZEMYŚL 1915

Galiçya – 1917

Prewar Lviv

Fanny Holtzmann’s 1932 Film of Rohatyn

Amateur film of Galicia, Poland taken by Fania Holtzmann

Read about it here.

Watch here.

Jedziemy na Huculszczyznę (1937)

Footage of the Hutsul region

Watch here.

Reportaż filmowy z ZALESZCZYK I OKOLICY (1937)

The landscape of the Dniester valley, villages and women working in them. People in traditional costumes gather in front of the church. Zaleszczyki (Zalishchyky). State Horticultural School with vineyards. Wine Harvest Festival.

Watch here.

Jewish Life in Lviv (1939)

This video as well as “Jewish life in Krakow” (below) were been re-dubbed in the 1980s. The originals, with subtitles are available at the Center for Urban History in Lviv and through the National Center for Jewish Film. The new English dubbings (there are Hebrew versions as well) are radically different from the originals.

Another version of the video

Jewish Life in Krakow (1939)

1940 Soviet Footage of Lviv

Deportation to and Life in the Krakow Ghetto

Link to video on Facebook

The Ghetto in Przemysl

New Home In The West – Ukrainian pioneers/immigrants in Canada (1943)

About the Ukrainian pioneer immigrants of central Canada, most of whom were from Galicia and Bukovina.

Ukrainian DP Camp Regensburg, Germany 1948 home movie

Documentaries

Image Before My Eyes (1981)

Using historical footage, still photographs, and live interviews, the filmmaker tells the story of Jewish life in Poland between the two World Wars. Includes scenes of urban and rural life, and covers the rise and flourishing of the many religious and secular economic, political, and social movements which characterized Jewish society at this time.

Podróż do Lwowa w lata 30-te cz. 1 (2000)

Polish documentary with historical footage of Lviv

Three Stories of Galicia (2010)

Reveals the intimate stories of three courageous individuals who took it upon themselves to preserve the dignity of the human spirit. For more information in English, see the Three Stories of Galicia website.

Full version in English:

Full version in Ukrainian:

Golden September. Chronicles of Galicia (2010)

Multicultural prewar Galicia fell victim to the twentieth century’s two largest tyrants, Hitler and Stalin. The prewar lifestyle, culture, and ethnic diversity of the region were systematically and deliberately destroyed.

The film is based on eyewitness accounts of these events – representatives of the Ukrainian, Polish, and Jewish communities who until the 1940s represented the main ethnic groups of Galicia. The film uses newsreels and commentaries from leading scholars and historians.

Read more here.

Full version with English subtitles:

Бойки | Boykos | Bojkos | Ukrainian highlanders

A short video with images and information about the Boykos.

Ukraine – Carpathian Mountains. Folk Tunes.

A little movie about life in a very beautiful region of Ukraine – Carpathian Mountains. People who live there are hutsuls – an ethno-cultural group who for centuries have inhabited the Carpathian mountains, mainly in Ukraine.

Boris Dorfman – A Mentsh (2014)

“‘A Mentsh’ is a movie shot entirely in the Yiddish language, which makes it unique. It’s set in the former multinational city of Lviv, Ukraine, and the first part of a planned Yiddish trilogy (Lviv, Tel Aviv, New York). Lviv was a centre of Jewish life for 600 years. 75 years after the beginning of World War II, Boris Dorfman takes us on a trip to all the places of horror and hope reflecting the Jewish history. The 90-year-old activist is virtually the last one in town still speaking the almost extinct language of Yiddish. While remembering the past, he lives in the present and tries to prepare the people for the future. He is ‘a mentsh’, someone full of love and empathy.” (description from IMDB)

Trailer:

Ivan Levynskyi. Highlights (2019)

A short documentary film in which historians share interesting facts about the life and work of the outstanding Lviv architect Ivan Levynskyi. In Ukrainian with English subtitles.

Ukraine – im Bindungsfeld zwischen Ost und West (2019)

А 45-minute documentary made in the summer of 2019, as part of the Austrian-Ukrainian Bilateral Year of Culture and the Year of Remembrance of Joseph Roth. Filmed in Lviv, Brody, Kyiv and Chernivtsi, the documentary gives an idea of the common Austrian-Ukrainian history and Austrian cultural activities in Ukraine. The film is in German, but you can watch with English subtitles by enabling the auto-translate option.

Feature Films & Series

Shadows of Our Forgotten Ancestors (1965)

A famous film by Sergey Parajanov, based on Mykhailo Kotsiubynsky’s novel of the same name. Deep in the Carpathian Mountains of nineteenth-century Galicia, fate tragically decrees that two lovers will remain apart.

Full version in regional Hutsul dialect with English subtitles:

Wesele (The Wedding) (1972) by Andrzej Wajda 

Ab adaptation of the play Wesele by Stanisław Wyspiański in 1901. It describes the perils of the national drive toward self-determination after the Polish uprisings of November 1830 and January 1863, the result of the Partitions of Poland. It also refers to the Galician slaughter of 1846. The plot is set at the wedding of a member of Kraków intelligentsia (the Bridegroom, played by Daniel Olbrychski), and his peasant Bride (played by Ewa Ziętek). Their class-blurring union follows a fashionable trend among friends of the playwright from the modernist Young Poland movement.

Sanatorium pod Klepsydrą / The Hour-Glass Sanatorium (1973)

Based on Bruno Schulz’s work

Watch an excerpt here

Hotel Pacific (1975)

A teenage country boy starts working in a restaurant of the famous Pacific Hotel in the 1930s. He soon discovers that to get promoted one needs to conform and sacrifice his dignity.

Watch here

The Gorgon Case (1977)

One of the most talked-about trials in 1930s Polish press. Housekeeper Rita Gorgon, who has an affair with her employer (Henryk Zaremba – an architect in Lviv), is accused of murdering his teenage daughter. Based on a true story.

Watch here

Lesson of a Dead Language (1979)

An officer stationed in a remote Galician outpost at the end of the First World War is dying of consumption. Suffering from feverish dreams and hallucinations, he begins to collect religious art and attends seances.

Watch here or here

In Darkness (2011)

Based on true events during German occupation of Poland, the film tells about Leopold Socha, a sewer worker in the Polish city of Lwów. He used his knowledge of the city’s sewer system to shelter a group of Jews who had escaped from the Lwów Ghetto during the Holocaust in Poland.

Hutsulka Ksenia (2019)

1939. A young Ukrainian-American man Yaro comes to the Carpathian Mountains, because his father left him a fortune under the condition that he would marry a Ukrainian girl. There Yaro meets a Hutsul girl Ksenya and has to rethink his plan. A musical featuring music by the Dakh Daughters.
Available on Amazon Prime: https://www.amazon.com/Hutsulka-Ksenya-Varvara-Lushchik/dp/B08DK3F5PS

Trailer:

Felix Austria (2020)

Polish-Ukrainian feature film based on a novel by Ukrainian author Sofia Andrukhovych. The film is a historical drama which takes place in 19th century Galicia, in the city of Stanislawów (Ivano-Frankivsk).

Kava z Kardomonom (2021)

A story about forbidden love, and the events unfold in Lviv in the 19th century.

Erynie (2022)

New historical war series from director Borys Lankosz and based on the book by Marek Krajewski. Set in 1930s Lviv.

Lectures

The Myth of Galicia Martin Pollack

The Dissolution of Austria-Hungary

A lecture filmed at Lviv’s Center for Urban history

East West Street: in conversation with Philippe Sands

A conversation with the author of East West Street, a compelling memoir that reveals the Jewish legal minds who sowed the seeds for human rights law at the Nuremberg trials. Many of the events take place in Lviv.

The Jews of Galicia A History

The Fate of Austrian-Galicia

The Final Days of Austria-Hungary

“In search of lost privileges. Common rights in Austrian Galicia”

Timothy Snyder: The Making of Modern Ukraine. Class 12. Habsburg Curiosity

Sarah Zarrow Lectures on the Joint and Women’s Vocational Education: Handicrafts Workshops for Jewish Girls, 1920s Lwów