To the Sea: Summer on Amateurs' Films

We invite you to a screening of home movies about trips to the sea, during which we’ll reminisce together about moments of vacation on the Black Sea coast.

For the protagonists of our home movies, a summer trip to the seaside was one of the most eagerly anticipated events of the year. For some, it began with a union-sponsored trip to a sanatorium; for others, with a long train ride to Crimea or Odesa followed by a search for a room in a private home; and for others, with a road trip and camping in a tent.

However, the seaside was not always a place for summer leisure. In 18th-century Europe, sea bathing was popularized primarily as a health practice, and by the 19th century, the development of resorts had transformed the coast into a leisure destination. On the southern coast of Crimea, private guesthouses and summer cottages from the pre-revolutionary era were converted during the Soviet period into sanatoriums, rest homes, and tourist bases. The development of rail and air travel, as well as the system of union-sponsored vacation trips, made the Crimean and Black Sea resorts one of the main destinations for summer travel.

Amateur home movies captured the experience of a seaside vacation as a special aspect of Soviet everyday life—a few weeks away from the usual routine, filmed by the vacationers themselves. Their footage captures the crowded beaches of Yalta and Gurzuf, Odesa and Zatoka; sanatorium rooms and vacation camps; wild beaches and tent cities; boat and catamaran trips; watermelons and shashlik; games in the sand; jellyfish and crabs.

The event will take place as part of the public program of the Center for Urban History [unarchiving].

Credits

Cover Image: Still from the film "In Yalta," 8 mm film, 1980s / collection of Svitlana Dolbysheva / Urban Media Archive of the Center for Urban History