Биография автора
Leonid Skrypnyk (1893-1929) was a major futurist prose writer, literary and cultural theoretician, photographer. He graduated with an engineering degree from the Kyїv Polytechnical Institute and was involved in flying experiments at an Aerodynamics Institute near Moscow before the First World War. In the Soviet period he worked in Kyїv in the administration of the Southwestern Railroad and then ran a film laboratory at the Odesa Studio of the All-Ukrainian Photo-Cinema Administration. He published on photography, film, and cultural theory and he was a close collaborator of the Futurist journal “Nova generacija” (New Generation, 1927-1930). His technical education combined with his literary erudition made him a respected figure within the Futurist circles. He authored the first photographer’s handbook in Ukraine Poradnyk fotohrafa [Photographer’s guide, 1927] and he was the first to write film theory in Ukrainian Narysy z teoriji mystectva kino [Sketches on the Theory of Cinema Art, 1928]. As its title suggests, Skrypnyk’s work was mainly concerned with film as an art form. Some of his works appeared under the pseudonyms ‘M. Lans’kyi’ and ‘Levon Lain’. Skrypnyk died prematurely from tuberculosis and left unfinished his book on art and social culture, as well as his novel Epizod z žyttja čudnoji ljudyny [Episode from the Life of a Strange Person].