A Lesson in Astronomy

A propaganda film aimed at American audiences during the early years of the Cold War.

A mathematician offers to sell his soul to the devil for a proof or disproof of Fermat's Last Theorem. Based on "The Devil and Simon Flagg" by Arthur Porges.

An excellent 1969 documentary, S. Raitburt’s The Kuleshov Effect, made about a year before Lev Kuleshov died, and interviewing him at length, both about his filmmaking and his far lengthier career as a teacher (including some fascinating remarks about Bertolt Brecht’s Galileo). Also interviewed is the father of Russian Formalism, Viktor Shklovsky, who worked with Kuleshov as a screenwriter on a Jack London adaptation, By the Law, in 1926.

In a compartment of the Moscow-Novosibirsk train, a young physicist meets famous film actors. The conversation accidentally comes to Einstein, and the woman begins to explain to her fellow travelers what the theory of relativity is. The actors are incidentally on their way to the shooting of a film about physicists, but they do not understand the subject at all.

On the example of the history of the discovery of the "solar substance" Helium, the history of the most important discoveries in the field of physics and chemistry of the early XX century is given.

The near future. A fantastic experiment using the test of the mathematician Alan Turing, in which an examiner, a human, and a robot take part. During the test, the examiner must determine who is behind the wall: a person or a thinking machine. The experiment is conducted with one goal: to find out whether a machine can think.

The film is based on the letters and memoirs of Anton Chekhov and members of his family and reconstructs the details of everyday life and of the writer's relationships with his brothers and sister.

A Pushkin scholar Valentin Berestov analyzes the works of Aleksandr Pushkin. In particular, he proves that the “folk” songs in them were written by the poet himself.

Based on the letters of Anatoly Cherepashchuk. A schoolboy from the city of Syzran writes letters to a scientist about his attempts to assemble a reflector telescope. He asks for the lenses for his observation device and in the following letters tells how the work is going. One day, with the help of his telescope, a young scientist discovers a new comet.

A physicist, a director of popular-science films, and a sports fan talk about the structure of the atom between periods of a hockey game they watch on TV.

Based on the book “The Ambidextrous Universe” by Martin Gardner. An eccentric professor explains whether our idea of ​​the symmetrical structure of the universe is still valid and invites the viewers into the world of elementary particles

A detailed analysis of the triumph of the Art Nouveau style in architecture and other art forms in the Russian Empire at the turn of the 20th century.

About modeling some principles of the brain.

On the example of the history of the discovery of the "solar substance" Helium, the history of the most important discoveries in the field of physics and chemistry of the early XX century is given.