The National University of Theatre, Film and TV of Karpenko-Kary is a theatrical national university in Kiev, the capital of Ukraine. It is a multidisciplinary institution of artistic education.
The institution was for the first registered in the Russian Ministry of the Internal Affairs on March 5, 1899 as a music-drama school, but only opened in September 1904. On November 7, 1912 the school was honorary named in the memory of Mykola Lysenko who was its first director. The sponsorship came from Mykola Levytsky and Mykhailo Starytsky, a father-in-law of Ivan Steshenko. The school was opened in the building belonging to the professor-psychiatrist I. Sikorsky on the 15 Velyka Pidvalna street (today Yarslaviv Val). Upon the death of Mykola Lysenko the school chairman became O. Vonsovska, the school violin instructor, and then pianist Maryana Lysenko, the daughter of M.Lysenko.
In 1916-1917 there opened the theatrical studio of Les Kurbas. At the end of 1918 the chairman of artistic affairs and national culture Petro Doroshenko signed the document to transform the school into the Higher music-drama school of Mykola Lysenko. During 1919-1920 the first rector of the school was Felix Blumenfeld. Sometime in the span of the Russian Civil War the Bolshevik government approved the request to move the school to 45 Velyka Volodymyrivska street (today it is the Palace of scientists of the National Academy of Sciences of Ukraine). In 1922 the school was moved again to 52 Khreschatyk, a place it rents to this day from the local municipal administration. In 1924-1928 the rector of the school became Mykola Hrinchenko.