Black Sea Fighters

Produced by the Soviet Union to justify its 1939-40 Winter War campaign in Finland, this outstanding documentary---more than any other such cinematic record---visually depicts the much vaunted Mannerheim Line in all its actual emplacements, as seen but two weeks after their capture, and as filmed by Red Army combat photographers onsite, directed by Vasili Belayev.

About the partisan movement during the Great Patriotic War.

The film opens with an animated map. Starting off in Moscow, the center of the new empire, it leads through Samara and Orenburg to Tashkent, Osh, and further on to the Pamir Mountains of Central Asia. The crew is shown arriving in Osh, in present-day Kyrgyzstan, the expedition’s base. Camera records a picturesque bazaar, veiled women in the streets, and the expedition’s crew, horses, and camels, along with their heavy loads. After leaving Osh, the crew crosses the Taldyk Pass, and makes its first stop in the Alay Valley. Different elements of the trek are featured, including crossing mountain rivers, traversing snowy passes, and descending into valleys in bloom. In the Alay Valley the camera records the practices of the Kyrgyz nomads – constructing a tent, keeping goats, sheep, and horses, making dairy products, and working a traditional one-shuttle weaver’s loom. The community is presented as traditional and self-sufficient.

The Arctic operation linking up with the Allies through the Barents Sea and Murmansk.

The plot of the picture is based on a comparison of life in the Estonian SSR and in independent Estonia from a socialist point of view.