Emil Gal

Lost film.

An account of the peasant turned mythical military hero Vasily Chapayev, charting his campaign in the Red Army during the Russian Civil War.

Professor August Miilas has succeeded in hiding in his private house from the war. He thinks this is mainly caused by his complete devotion to science. As August is not interested in anything that is going on outside his citadel, his family members avoid disturbing him. However, the political situation disrupt August's quietude. Right in the middle of his domestic citadel, the professor finds out about dangerous secrets so that he must give up this apolitical attitude and open up for the new reality.

Saint Petersburg, 1858. A group of composers known as The Five meet at Balakirev's. Young Modest Mussorgsky, both a civil servant and a musician, has become a fixture there. He tells about the first opera he plans to compose. Then he goes to the country where he discovers the lowly conditions of the peasants and the bloody conflicts with the rich land owners. He works on Gogol's 'The Marriage', trying to render into music the natural accents of the play's naturalistic dialogue. But his efforts do not pan out. On the other hand, he starts writing his opera on the story of Boris Godunov. The Marinsky Theatre refuses to stage the work. The Five, and Mussorgsky among them, are libeled and the group starts disintegrating. When 'Boris Godunov' is finally performed in 1874, it is a popular success.

During World War 1 a Russian soldier serves in Russian Expeditionary Force in France where he is chosen for his marksmanship and trained as a skilled sniper. After the Russian revolution the soldier returns home while his commander fights against the Soviet Russia. In 1930 the former soldier works on a factory and also he is the instructor in shooting club. Once the town that is near the Soviet border is attacked by foreign troops (the hostile state isn't named but the uniform of the soldiers resembles Finnish). The character meets againt with his former commander who serves in invading forces.

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.

The residents of the village of Staroje Dudino, located four kilometers west of the Soviet border, are completely dependent on the wealthy Novik, whose interests are protected by the local police and clergy. Novik is actively stirring up ethnic strife between the Jewish poor and Polish workers. During the traditional "black crown" ceremony (a wedding ceremony for an old man and an old woman), a group of factory workers led by the communist Haidul, together with the Jewish poor, attack the police and free Boris Bernstein, who had been sentenced to death.

Director Frederick Ermler’s last silent feature and the last of four collaborations with actor Fiodor Nikitin. Nikitin plays an officer who spends a decade after the Great War as a shell-shocked amnesiac, until a glimpse of a woman through a train window sparks the return of his memory. He makes his way back to St. Petersburg, now Leningrad, a man out of time who struggles to make sense of the new society brought about by the revolution.