He shot his first film in 1908, a documentary about the cholera epidemic in Dnipro, then known as Yekaterinoslav. In 1911, Sakhnenko shot his first feature-length film - Zaporozhian Sich (Ukrainian: Запорозька січ) - in Лоцманська Кам'янка, a village south-east of Dnipro. This is considered the first full-length Ukrainian film.[1] That year he also co-founded the first Ukrainian film company, Sakhnenko, Schetinin and Co.