Vladimir Egorov

Working with children led Barskaya to create superb direct sound and an inspired style of shooting. Don’t look for conventional cinematic syntax here. The film is chaotic in the way that Soviet films still knew how to be, and Langlois couldn’t help but be seduced by its rebellious spirit, its anarchy and love of children, comparable to Vigo’s Zero de conduite. As well as being a film made with and for children, it offers a complex take on Western society. Pre-Nazi Germany is not named as such but is carefully reconstructed, possibly under advice from Karl Radek, and children offer a playful reflection of class struggle – doubly excluded, as proletarians and as minors. “They play in the same way that they live”, one intertitle says. The interaction between their comical games and the yet more ludicrous ones played by adults is developed on several levels.

Chronicle of the life of Russian poet Michail Lermontov, from the final days of Alexandr Pushkin to the fatal destiny of the poet himself.

A corrupt young man somehow keeps his youthful beauty, but a special painting gradually reveals his inner ugliness to all.

The main protagonists of the film are Katya (Varvara Popova), the daughter of a factory worker and Andrey (Ivan Koval-Samborsky), the son of the former owner of the factory who illegally returns to the USSR to find treasures hidden by his father. The film title refers to the Communist party's appeal, after Lenin's death, to enlarge its membership.

Don Cossack Stepan Razin vowed to take revenge on the boyars for his tortured friends. Having led the rebellious peasants, he becomes the leader of an entire army. Humiliated and insulted people flock to him from all over the Russian land.

The film tells about a band of demobilized Red Army men and two civilians who cross a Middle Asian desert. They are forced to do battle with superior forces of Basmachi rebels for the dry draw-well.

A 1925 Soviet comedy sponsored by the Soviet Finance Ministry, with a plot promoting the new economy. A small-town tailor, Petya Petelkin (Ilyinsky), bought a lottery ticket and handed it to his landlord, widow Shirinkina (Deykun) who wants to marry him. Petya is a hard-working tailor trying to start his own business. He is also in love with Katya (Maretskaya), whom he wants to marry. He has to survive a cascade of funny situations in the unstable Soviet reality, before his romance with Katya comes to a happy ending.

This SovKino production was a major early experiment in Soviet historical film about the oprichnina period of Muscovite history, combining the costumed drama and Gothic thrills of the genre with historical materialist commentary on the dialectical collision of scientific progress and patriarchal religious tyranny under Tsar Ivan the Terrible. It follows a self-taught inventor from the serf class Nikishka, whose efforts to build a flying machine incite accusations of witchcraft. Nikishka and his beloved Fima are persecuted by the feudal lord Kurlyatev, who took their village in a petty land squabble. They’re rescued when Kurlyatev’s lands are taken by the Tsar in his autocratic campaign against the feudal system. Ivan puts Nikishka to work in his linen mill, where the young serf is coveted by Tsarina Maria Temryukovna, who the Tsar’s been ignoring in favor of his cupbearer Feodor. A series of harrowing intrigues wind a bloody dance through bedchamber, feast hall, cathedral and dungeon.

A funny comedy about doctor Aybolit and his assistants and patients - all animals.

An early film by Vsevolod Meyerhold.

The film depicts the life of Stepan Khalturin, a 19th-century Russian worker and revolutionary terrorist belonging to the Narodnaya Volya (People's Will) organization.

The film tells about the life and work of the famous singer of the Kazakh people akyn Dzhambul Dzhabayev.

The film mocks the moribund world of pan-Poland. The border established by the Treaty of Riga between pan-Poland and Soviet Belorussia passed through the estate of Polish Count Wadecki. The best part of the estate with the palace ended up on Soviet territory. From that moment on, the count lost peace and sleep. New owners - a noisy, cheerful pioneer squad - took up residence in the former manor house. The count's servants, shepherd boy Vasya and servant girl Yadya, watch the life of their neighbours with keen interest. Having accidentally crossed the border in search of a stray cow, Vasya happily stays in Soviet Belarus. He is followed by Yadia. Eventually the Count and his "lordly" guests cannot bear the sight of the noisy youth festivities on the Soviet side and flee. Yadia and Vasil participate in the Soviet youth party.

A Jewish family grapples with issues of identity as local prejudice turns to violence. Adaptation of Yevgeny Chirikov's 1904 play The Jews.

Russian folk tale about a father whose three sons go out to finds themselves brides. Two of the boys come home with perfectly normal girls, but the youngest brother, Ivanushka, brings home a frog from the marshes. His father finds this most curious, but what he does not know was that the frog was actually a beautiful girl named Vasilisa who was cursed by a magical serpent whom she refused to marry. Now Ivanushka must overcome tremendous obstacles to restore Vasilisa to her true form and free her from the serpent's spell.

The film is based on real events and reveals the tragic episodes from the life of the Austrian biologist scientist-materialist Paul Kammerer (1880-1926), hunted by regressive scientists and Catholic reactionaries who committed suicide.

A young woman arrives in her school where she must teach for the first time. Her task consists in teaching a class of adults to read and write. All her students are male, ranging from boys to old men, and they are rather rowdy and difficult. All the more as a young hooligan dares write her on a test paper that he loves her. Feeling harassed by the young man, she is defended by other students. But she more or less feels the young bad boy's love is true and when this one is lying on his dying bed, after being stabbed by the other students, she solaces him by kissing him tenderly.

Soviet film based on Dostoevsky's autobiographical novel of his prison experiences in Tsarist days.