A chronicle of the Russian Revolution of 1917, from the bourgeois democratic February Revolution to the great socialist October Revolution and the final triumph.
The epic story of the Russian Civil War (1918-21): the White Terror, the counterrevolutionary uprisings, the guerrilla war, the Kolchak front, the Wrangel front and the Kronstadt rebellion. Chaos and violence, devastation and death.
Dziga Vertov-directed Soviet newsreel covering: The opening of an electric generating station / Trial of the Socialist Revolutionaries.
This documentary promoting the joys of life in a Soviet village centers on the activities of the Young Pioneers. These children are constantly busy, pasting propaganda posters on walls, distributing hand bills, exhorting all to "buy from the cooperative" as opposed to the Public Sector, promoting temperance, and helping poor widows. Experimental portions of the film, projected in reverse, feature the un-slaughtering of a bull and the un-baking of bread.
A Moscow hat shop girl chances upon a penniless young man who has arrived from the countryside for university and takes pity on him.
An adaptation of Eugene O'Neill's play Desire Under the Elms.
Early Soviet prison camp depiction set to the years of Revolution.
In the short-lived Commune of Paris, a conscripted soldier falls in love with a Communard saleswoman. As the army cracks down on the revolutionaries, the soldier is forced to fight against the Commune, and the pair's love is put to the test.
A cameraman wanders around with a camera slung over his shoulder, documenting urban life with dazzling inventiveness.
Soviet "proletarian" film about anti-war strike at St Petersburg factory, 1914. Resembles Pudovkin's classic "End of St. Petersburg," made 4 years earlier: backward lad (Poslavsky) from poor village comes to town desperate for work. He's hired as replacement ("scab") worker at big metallurgical factory, which is in the throes of a strike organized by the Bolsheviks (communists). The Bolshevik strikers are led by Ivan Shtraukh (brother of the more famous Russian actor Maxim Shtraukh). At first, the deceitful industrialist's son (Fedosev) involves the naive Poslavsky in an attempt to murder Shtraukh, but the attempt only wounds the heroic organizer. Will Poslavsky follow through with the planned killing, or will he redeem himself by going over to the side of the strikers?
A young peasant woman decides to become a tractor driver.
It depicts the establishment of kolkhoz (collective farming) in Bukhara. Poor dehkans are oppressed by bays and emir. One of them, unable to bear the slave labor, flees from his native land. A few years later, the fugitive returns and becomes an activist of the collective farm movement. Kulaks kill him and try to flood the collective farm fields with water. However, collective farmers stop the sabotage and reveal the secret of the murdered activist. The perpetrators are justifiably punished.
The building of blast furnaces Magnitogorsk and the Kubas Basin by Komsomol, the Communist Union of youth, as part of Stalin’s first five-year plan.
A copying error by a military scribe turns the Russian words "the lieutenants, however" into what looks like "lieutenant Kizhe". The Tsar reads the error, and wants to meet this (non-existent) lieutenant. The courtiers, eager to avoid the wrath of the temperamental Tsar, create a Kizhe to serve as their royal scapegoat.
Early documentary about the Moscow metro: the early project, the development and the people working on it.
During the 1920s, many impoverished Jews searching for a better life made their way to Birobidzhan, the Soviet Jewish Autonomous Region on the Chinese border. This melodrama tells the story of a Jewish family's immigration to Birobidzhan and their experiences as settlers on a collective farm in the area.
A documentary film account of the Russian Revolution, based on archival footage.
The film is about the life and work of Grigory Ordzhonikidze Konstantinoviche, an important personality in both the Communist Party and the Soviet state. The film includes speeches by his bereaved friends who attended his funeral. In 1937, after the unexpected death of Sergo Ordzhonikidze, Vertov received an urgent order from the government to produce a film about the life of Ordzhonikidze. He was ordered to work together with Yakov Bliohom and the director of the film "Battleship Potemkin" distributed by Goskino (Soviet State Committee for Cinematography).
The film is about the civil war in the Zangezur (Syunik) province of Armenia in the early 1920s. The last Dashnak battalions headed by Sparapet Nzhdeh still opposed both the incursion of Red Army and the local Bolshevik partisans.
Animated adventure of Tom Thumb.