Pocket of Russia

Joseph's Children

From the place where Joseph Brodsky died to the place where he was born, the distance is now insurmountable: there is no country or city where the poet left forty years ago in the world anymore. And that means there's no way to go back. But in the summer of 2014, by order of Brodsky's widow Maria, the last things in the poet's life are sent to the first house in his life. To St. Petersburg, to the corner of Pestel and Liteyny, to the Muruzi house. This film is an attempt at a group portrait of those whom Brodsky would have found if he had had the opportunity to return to Russia today. Formally, the characters of the film are talking about Brodsky. But in these stories, not literary critics, but people who have been strongly influenced by Brodsky, whom they have never seen, there are so many of themselves that a portrait of an entire generation has come out. Generations of Joseph Brodsky's children who had never seen their father with their own eyes in their lives.

Russian Jews. Part Two. 1918-1948.

The second film of the trilogy covers the thirtieth anniversary from 1918 to 1948. Unprecedented until that time in any country of the world, a bright and massive Jewish participation in all spheres of state policy and culture.

Voices

The film is about what children and teenagers of besieged Leningrad survived. 14 surviving heroes and dozens of those for whom only lines of diaries and signatures for children's drawings can now speak, word by word, minute by minute, story after story, revive the siege of memory. What did people actually feel in the besieged city? Which of what we know about the blockade is true, and what is a myth, a stamp from a history textbook? The authors of the film with the help of video comparisons, reconstructions return modern St. Petersburg to the terrible time of the blockade, combining history with momentary.

Gogol the Bird

This biographical picture that was made for the 200th anniversary of Nikolai Gogol,is filmed in the unique style of the author Leonid Parfyonov. Documentary shows that the author of "Dead Souls", "The Inspector General" and "Taras Bulba" is not the founder of realism in Russian literature, but a modern and actual avant-garde writer who created works hitherto unprecedented, full of magic and phantasmagoria.

Russian Jews. Part Three. After 1948.

With the assassination in 1948 of the head of the Jewish Anti-Fascist Committee, Solomon Mikhoels, by the state security, new times begin in the relationship between the Soviet government and the Jews.

Russian Jews. Part One. Before Revolution.

The history of Jewish people in Russia up until the 1917 revolution.

Eye of God

The «Eye of God» is dedicated to the 100th anniversary of the Pushkin Museum. It shows how progressive and pro-West Russians can be, when it comes to comprehending the essence of beauty. Ivan Tsvetayev, a village priest's son, the founder of the museum, wanted the new generation of "Ivans" to understand that we are Europe, while Antiquity is our mutual cradle.

Russia in Bloom

A documentary about Sergei Prokudin-Gorsky, a pioneer in color photography of early 20th-century Russia.

Russian Georgians. Part 1

The film is about the historical role of Georgians in Russian, and later - Soviet politics, culture and science. The heroes of the film are Bagration and Shevardnadze, Pirosmani and Danelia, Balanchine and Andronikov.

Zvorykin-Muromets

Parfenov's documentary is about a brilliant scientist and engineer, born in Russia, but only known on the other side of the ocean. The invention of modern television changed the history of mankind. The invention has an author, who is almost unknown in his homeland. Vladimir Zworykin, born in Murom, a Russian American, was the person who created distant wireless transmission of images.

In Qvevri Veritas

Leonid Parfyonov travels to Georgia, where he studies how amphorae are made and grapes are crushed with bare feet, and learns why orange wine is slowly conquering the world.

Russian Georgians. Part 2

The second part of Leonid Parfyonov's project "Russian Georgians" will begin with a story about Stalin's design of the Russian patriotic upsurge in the Patriotic War, after which it will capture the post-war period - the Stalinist Russian style and the short-lived tandem of Beria and Malenkov. Then it will take us to the "thaw". The period of new heroes - a poet with a guitar Bulat Okudzhava and film directors Mikhail Kalatozov (Katalozishvili), Marlena Khutsiev (Khutsishvili) and Georgy Danelia. The journey will end with the stories of post-Soviet stars - Tsereteli, Tsiskaridze, Leps (Lepsveridze), Tutberidze and Akunin (Chkhartishvili).

He Came to Give Us Freedom

Biographical documentary about Mikhail Gorbachev and the way he did not waste his inner freedom before becoming General Secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union and giving this freedom to the people.