Russia

ALEXANDER NEVSKY
(1938, Black-and-white) 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, Black-and-white) Director: Grigori Chukrai
This is a simple but extraordinary story about the waste and stupidity of war.

BATTLESHIP POTEMKIN
(1925, Black-and-white) 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, Black-and-white) Director: George & Sergei Vasiliev
This 'optimistic tragedy' is set during the 1919 Civil War in Turkestan.

CHESS FEVER
(1926, Black-and-white) 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, Black-and-white) 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, Black-and-white) Director: Alexander Dovzhenko
Alexander Dovzhenko's great poetic drama of man's relation to nature.

END OF ST. PETERSBURG
(1927, Black-and-white) 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'S CHILDHOOD
(1962, Black-and-White) Director: Andrei Tarkovsky
On an idyllic summer day, a 12 year old boy named Ivan (Nikolai Burlyayev) ventures into the woods and spots a cuckoo. He begins to levitate above the forest, rejoins his mother, and begins to share his discovery. Then the peaceful reunion between mother and son is truncated by Ivan's rude awakening to the sound of mortar firing. This is the astonishing opening of Andrei Tarkovsky's austere, bleak and haunting portrait of lost innocence and the utter futility of war.

IVAN THE TERRIBLE
(1944, Black-and-white) Director: Sergei Eisenstein
Eisenstein's majestic and passionate portrayal of Russia's legendary autocrat.

KING LEAR
(1971, Black-and-white) 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, black-and-white) 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.

MIRROR
(1975, Colour) Director: Andrei Tarkovsky
Mirror is Andrei Tarkovsky's visually transcendent, artistically revelatory autobiographical film on lost innocence and emotional abandonment. Presented as a languidly paced, achronological cinematic montage of modern day life, personal memories, historical news footage, and dreams, Mirror is an introspective journey through the course of human existence, hope and despair, success and frailty.

MOTHER
(1926, Black-and-white) 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, Black-and-white) 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, Black-and-white) 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.

SOLARIS
( 1972, colour) Director: Andrei Tarkovsky
Andrei Tarkovsky's answer to 2001: A Space Odyssey. A magnificent Science-Fiction epic which questions our attitudes to time, and to the fragile barriers man has set up between life and death.

STALKER
(Colour & black-and-white, 1979) Director: Andrei Tarkovsky
"What was it? A meteorite, or a visitation from outer space? Whatever it was, there appeared in our small land a miracle of miracles: the Zone. We sent in troops. None returned."
This is Andrei Tarkovsky's cerebral masterpiece on faith, finality, time and space. The stalker guides two intellectuals through a post-apocalyptic landscape...

STORM OVER ASIA
(1928, Black-and-white) 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, Black-and-white) 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, Black-and-white) 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

WAR AND PEACE
(1968, colour) Director: Sergei Bondarchuk
The definitive film of Tolstoy's epic novel. Spectacular, breathtaking, unforgettable. Oscar-winner for Best Foreign Film.

WE ARE FROM KRONDSTADT
(1936, Black-and-white) 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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