Soviet Toys

A middle-aged man, named Ziv, finds it difficult to understand the today's society. The film illustrates his wild views and concerns, as his imagination flashes through various times in history.

Follows the legendary female pilots Raskova, Osipenko, and Grisodubova in their failed but magnificent attempt to make the first nonstop trans-Siberian flight. Using documentary reenactments, Vertov depicts the flight, the crash, the rescue, and the women’s heroic return to Moscow, where crowds shower them with flowers, and leaders with speeches.

From the start, Vertov made himself known as an irreconcilable enemy of “acted films,” which he regarded as a violation of truth. At the peak of World War II, however, such lofty artistic principles proved impractical. Vertov’s poetic and patriotic For You, Front! is a fiction film with a script and two actors. In a letter to her fiancé, a soldier on the front, Saule asks if there is anything he needs from “our beloved Kazakhstan.” Yes there is, he replies: lead, which can be used to make bullets to kill the enemies of “our beloved country.”

A cameraman wanders around with a camera slung over his shoulder, documenting urban life with dazzling inventiveness.

Newsreel of the trial of the Cossack commander of the 2nd Cavalry Red Army Filipp Kuzmich Mironov. The part of The History of the Civil War—compilation film created by Vertov in 1921.

A chronicle of the Russian Revolution of 1917, from the bourgeois democratic February Revolution to the great socialist October Revolution and the final triumph.

This documentary promoting the joys of life in a Soviet village centers on the activities of the Young Pioneers. These children are constantly busy, pasting propaganda posters on walls, distributing hand bills, exhorting all to "buy from the cooperative" as opposed to the Public Sector, promoting temperance, and helping poor widows. Experimental portions of the film, projected in reverse, feature the un-slaughtering of a bull and the un-baking of bread.

A 1937 Soviet documentary film directed by Dziga Vertov. The film was shot to commemorate the 20th anniversary of the October Revolution. It focuses on the women and the role of motherhood, featuring images from across the Soviet Union, in particular the Far East.

Popular neighborhoods that are open-air prisons. Where beauty flirts with violence. The kingdom of the insubordinate children, veterans of the lead. A garden of amputated flowers, which with crutches on their backs, still grow and dance.

This film shows the leaders of organizations that emerged after the Russian Revolution. It is the fragment of ‘Anniversary of the Revolution’ made by Vertov in 1918.

Dziga Vertov-directed Soviet newsreel covering: Up the Eiffel Tower in Paris / Moscow / Auto race Petrograd – Moscow / Aspects of everyday Soviet life / Peasant from Jaroslavl' visiting Moscow / Ceremonial introduction of a newborn into a workers' collective

Dziga Vertov-directed Soviet newsreel covering: A bet is placed on the outcome of the Trial of the Socialist Revolutionaries / The verdict / People in streetcars and on the street / A crashed aircraft / Reconstruction of streetcar line 13 / Peacetime use of tanks – airport construction work.

Dziga Vertov-directed Soviet newsreel covering: IV. Congress of the Comintern / Congress of the Profintern.

Dziga Vertov-directed Soviet newsreel covering: Starving children / Requisitioning of valuables possessed by the Russian Orthodox Church / Fundraising flights in support of the hungry / Trial of the Socialist Revolutionaries.

Dziga Vertov-directed Soviet newsreel covering: Connecting city and country, south and north, summer and winter, peasant women and worker women / Emancipation of women in the USSR