Documents of the Era is the most famous VUFKU’s mashup film which combined some rare newsreels of the history of Ukraine from World War I to the end of the 1920s. Although the newsreels were filtered through ideologically charged intertitles, the film Documents of the Era remains an extremely valuable visual evidence of the most dramatic events in the history of Ukraine of the 20th century.

Eight parts of the film coincide with different stages of the revolutionary and post-revolutionary events: World War I, the February and October Revolutions, the entry of German allies of the Ukrainian People’s Republic to Ukraine, activities of the Ukrainian State under Pavlo Skoropadskyi, the return of the Directory to Kyiv, the establishment of Soviet power in Kharkiv and Odesa, Lenin’s funeral, the beginning of the restoration of Soviet Ukraine in the 1920s, the construction of Kharkiv Derzhprom and Dniprohes, celebration of the tenth anniversary of the Revolution, and the panorama of the anti-communist struggle in the world.

Intertitles (and the films has more than two hundred of them) play a significant role in manipulating newsreels in favour of the Bolshevik historiography. For the most part, they construct the Bolshevik version of the historical events of the 1910-1920s, where the October Revolution serves as a reference point in history and is driven by the class struggle led by the Red Commanders.

It is the intertitles that actively interpret the video in favour of the Bolshevik historical canon (Petliura is accused of Anti-Jewish pogroms; organisation of the Anti-German partisan struggle of 1918 is attributed to Bolsheviks, and not to the Directory).