Treasures of the Diamond Fund

These songs are born on long hikes, around campfires in moments of joy and sadness. Here, in the Leningrad club "Vostok", they take the stage for the first time. And is it possible to remain indifferent when the argument turns to the song?

The art of theater is a complex craft. In 19 minutes, you can’t convey everything that is taught over five years. Our film is only a short walk through the Lunacharsky State Institute of Theatre Arts, a cinematic panorama of three directing classes. The classes of M. O. Knebel, A. A. Goncharov, and A. V. Efros.

In the postwar years, many photographs and newsreels taken during the Siege were confiscated and destroyed for presenting too “subjective” a view of the events of that time. This film is the result of a long search through the Leningrad archives. Out of thousands of surviving wartime photographs, the director selected four hundred that had never before been used in cinema. The film is a montage of these historical documents, accompanied by the voices of poets Olga Berggolts and Alexander Prokofyev, radio announcer Yuri Levitan, and the sounds of air raid sirens…

Portrait of test pilot Alexander Shcherbakov.