A Tale of Lost Times

Fitil is a popular Soviet/Russian television satirical/comedy short film series which ran for about 500 episodes. Some of the episodes were aimed at children, and were called Фитилёк, Fitilyok, Little Fuse. Each issue contained from the few short segments: documentary, fictional and animated ones. Directed by various artists, including Leonid Gaidai who presented his famous trio of Nikulin, Vitsin and Morgunov into the cast. It was called in USSR as "the anecdotes from the Soviet government".

A seminary student on monastery holiday kills an old witch in a remote village. The hag then transforms into a beautiful young woman whose dying wish is for him to watch over her wake for three nights. With terrors occurring and his faith waning, he reads prayers on the overnight watch and tries to survive the supernatural encounters.

Driven from the court by her sisters' scheming, the young Tsarina is thrown into the sea in a cask with her infant son. Surviving the storm-tossed voyage, the mother and her now magically-adult son land on a remote island where he falls in love with a Swan Princess in human form, and longs for reunion with his estranged father, Tsar Saltan. Merchants come to the island with news of the tsar, and the prince sends word back to him, but the sisters continue their campaign of lies and trickery to keep them apart.

In the midst of the wedding party of Prince Ruslan and Ludmila, daughter of Prince Vladimir, the girl is kidnapped by the evil sorcerer Chernomor and the witch Naina. Three of her past suitors set out, as does Ruslan, to rescue Ludmila.

When Assol was a little girl, she met a wizard who foretold that it will be a fine sunny day when a beautiful ship under scarlet sail would arrive and the noble prince would take her away to the world of her dreams where she will be loved and happy. The neighbours joked about her, children teased her, but Assol chose to believe in miracles and wait for her prince.

The son and daughter of a lost-at-sea captain recruit help to find him on the basis of an incomplete note found in a bottle, and encounter adventures in Patagonia, Australia, and New Zealand.

Little Danila was the most inquisitive apprentice of old Prokopich, a famous stone-carving master. Like his teacher, the grown-up Danila has learned to feel the soul of his material and became an expert in handling rare precious stones found in the Ural Mountains. One day he met the Mistress of the Copper Mountain, a fairy who ordered for herself an unusual stone flower.

The first Soviet cel-animated feature film, based on the story with the same name by Nikolai Gogol. A messenger is tasked with delivering a letter to the Tsarina, which he tucks into his hat for safekeeping on the road. While resting at night, a band of demons steals the hat, and he must travel to Hell to retrieve it.

Pupils of the ordinary high school organize a “secret society” under the motto “Help the offended and weak, avenge widers and upstarts!” The new pioneer leader supports the children, and soon he manages to make the school life of the children truly fascinating.

In the old Russian city of Novgorod, the merchants are feasting in a gorgeous palace and Sadko is bragging that he can bring to their land a sweet-voiced bird of happiness. They laugh at him, but he is offered help by the Ocean King's daughter, who is mesmerized by Sadko's singing and is in love with him. The hero is destined to visit many lands in his search of the bird.

Young boy dreams of himself as a version of Gulliver who has landed in Lilliput suffering under capitalist inequality and exploitation.

A stop-motion film based on the Grimm Brothers' folktale, "Town Musicians of Bremen".

A film combining live action and stop-motion animation about the adventures of the wooden boy Pinocchio and his friends - Pierrot, Malvina and Artemon the Poodle, about the mysterious golden key that opens the cherished door, about the good Papa Carlo and the evil Karabas-Barabas, Duremar, Basilio the Cat and Alice the Fox.

Paralyzed since birth, Ilya can only watch helplessly as his village is plundered by barbarians. But when a mysterious traveler arrives with a magic elixir that restores him to full health, Ilya begins an adventure to protect the village and the royal family from harm.

The film deals with a Russian battalion under siege by the Germans during the Second World War.

In the summer of 1932, Sergei Lukonin, a young man from Saratov, leaves his hometown for the distant city of Omsk to attend tank school. His fiancée, Varenka, who soon became an actress, remained in Saratov. In 1936, Sergei went to fight in the Spanish Civil War. He was wounded, taken prisoner, escaped, and returned to training battles, with June 1941 looming ahead.