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RUSSIA

Alexander Nevsky  
Ballad of a Soldier
Battleship Potemkin
Chapayev
Chess Fever
The Cranes are Flying
Don Quixote
Earth
End of St. Petersburg
Ivan's Childhood
Ivan the Terrible (Parts 1 & 11)
King Lear
Hamlet
Lady with the Little Dog
Mother
New Babylon
October
Storm over Asia
Strike
Time in the Sun
We are from Kronstadt

ALEXANDER NEVSKY
(1938, B/W) Director: Sergei Eisenstein
Eisenstein's patriotic epic about the 13th century legendary hero was designed to instill into the Soviet people a sense of their own history so that they would be better prepared for the inevitable struggle against fascism.

  

BALLAD OF A SOLDIER
(1960, B/W) Director: Grigori Chukrai
This is a simple but extraordinary story about the waste and stupidity of war.

BATTLESHIP POTEMKIN
(1925, B/W) Director: Sergei Eisenstein
Sergei Eisenstein's most important film, both for its own sake and for the influence it had on the development of the cinema. It is a film about revolution, and it is a revolutionary film in its techniques.
   

CHAPAYEV
(1934, B/W) Director: George & Sergei Vasiliev
This 'optimistic tragedy' is set during the 1919 Civil War in Turkestan.

CHESS FEVER
(1926, B/W) Director: Vsevolod Pudovkin
This humorous featurette shows the extraordinary lengths to which a chess addict will go to further his love of the game.

THE CRANES ARE FLYING
(1957, Black-and white) Director: Mikhael Kalatozov
This prize-winning film explores relaationships against the bitter background of war.

DON QUIXOTE
(1957, B/W) Director: Grigori Kozintsev
In this famous Russian version of the novel by Cervantes, Alonzo Quixote, a noble Spaniard who has read so many books of chivalry and adventure, decides to become a knight errant himself. Nikolai Cherkassov, who played Ivan the Terrible and Alexander Nevsky for Eisenstein, turns in another memorable performance.

EARTH
(1930, B/W) Director: Alexander Dovzhenko
Alexander Dovzhenko's great poetic drama of man's relation to nature.

  

END OF ST. PETERSBURG
(1927, B/W) Director: Vsevolod Pudovkin
Vsevolod Pudovkin's film of a peasant boy who comes to St. Petersburg in search of work,is told against the background of the historical events which culminated in the attack on the Winter Palace.

IVAN THE TERRIBLE
(1944, B/W) Director: Sergei Eisenstein
Eisenstein's majestic and passionate portrayal of Russia's legendary autocrat

  

KING LEAR
(1971, B/W) Director: Grigori Kozintsev
This King Lear is a total re-interpretation of the great tragedy by Shakespeare; seen not as an individual or private tragedy, but rather in the larger and social context - a search for contemporary motives; a picture of civilisation heading towards its doom; a discourse on power in a society that is based on injustice and inequality.

HAMLET
(1963, B/W) Director: Grigori Kozintsev
Considered one of the best film versions of Shakespeare's Hamlet, and by some critics the best, this 1963 Russian masterpiece by director Grigori Kozintsev is a haunting black and white depiction of Hamlet's anguish and his revenge of his father's murder by his politically aspiring uncle.

LADY WITH THE LITTLE DOG
(1968, colour) Director: Yosif Heifitz
This adaptation of Chekhov's story is a masterpiece of atmospheric and poetic suggestion.

MOTHER
(1926, B/W) Director: Vsevolod Pudovkin
Pudovkin's first major film, based on the novel by Maxim Gorky. As an evocation of life in pre-Revolutionary Russia,
this film has never been equalled.

NEW BABYLON
(1929, B/W) Director: Grigori Kozinstev
This early film of Grigoei Kozintsev was made to commemorate the 60th anniversary of the Paris Commune. The film defies all classification - it comes almost from the pages of Victor Hugo with a touch of D W Griffith - a dance macabre of the Second Empire and the Commune of Paris.

OCTOBER
(1927, B/W) Director: Sergei Eisenstein
Eisenstein's film on the Russian Revolution - 'the 10 days that shook the world'. As historical reconstruction is it exciting; as treated by a genius of the cinema, it is a masterpiece.

STORM OVER ASIA
(1928, B/W) Director:Vsevolod Pudovkin
Vsevolod Pudovkin's famous silent film has been re-edited with synchronised dialogue, effects and music added, under the supervision of Pudovkin himself. The story tells of a humble Mongol trapper who becomes the leader of his people.

STRIKE
(1924, B/W) Director: Sergei Eisenstein
Another major work by Sergei Eisenstein. Dilys Powell wrote of this film: 'Strike is an enormous work, complex, blinding, terrible, suffocating, moving in its old world of top-hatted tyrants and suffering proletariat with a rocket's speed'.
  

TIME IN THE SUN
(1930/40, B/W) Director: Sergei Eisenstein
Marie Seaton's magnificent attempt to provide a 'director's cut' of Sergei Eisenstein's butchered film Que Viva Mexico!. It is thanks to her that we are able to see some of Eisenstein's visually most exciting and original material

WE ARE FROM KRONDSTADT
(1936, B/W) Director: Yefim Dzigan
By 1919 the young Soviet State was beseiged by enemies on all sides and the Revolution was fighting for its life. Sailors from Kronstadt left their ships to defend the town against whiteguard regiments. This film is a re-creation of that episode.

 

 

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