The Heroic Deed of Leningrad 1959

The whole world knows the immortal feat of the residents of besieged Leningrad, accomplished during the Great Patriotic War. The tragic story of the blockade, which lasted for nine hundred days and ended with the defeat of the fascists at the gates of the unconquered city, will forever remain in the history of humanity as the most vivid example of courage and patriotism.

Leningrad in Struggle 1942

Frustration of the German attempt to capture Leningrad, 1941, the besieging of the city.

The Mannerheim Line 1940

Produced by the Soviet Union to justify its 1939-40 Winter War campaign in Finland, this outstanding documentary---more than any other such cinematic record---visually depicts the much vaunted Mannerheim Line in all its actual emplacements, as seen but two weeks after their capture, and as filmed by Red Army combat photographers onsite, directed by Vasili Belayev.

The Defense of Volotchayevsk 1938

Japanese forces land in the port of Vladivostok during Russian civil war, supporting anti-communist forces, while local population joins Far Eastern Republic and partisans in the struggle against the intervention and White army.

The Goalkeeper 1936

The film tells the story of an ordinary guy Anton Kandidov. First he works on agricultural work — transports on boat on Volga watermelons. Noticing how deftly Anton catches and loads watermelons, he is told that he could become a goalkeeper and play football. And he decides to follow the advice. On the way to the glory of the goalkeeper and waiting for his victory and disappointment.

Peasants 1935

The peaceful life of an exemplary collective farm is being rent asunder by shortages and dissent, and a commissar is sent to uncover the source of the problems, unaware that their is actual sabotage involved.

Fragment of an Empire 1929

Director Frederick Ermler’s last silent feature and the last of four collaborations with actor Fiodor Nikitin. Nikitin plays an officer who spends a decade after the Great War as a shell-shocked amnesiac, until a glimpse of a woman through a train window sparks the return of his memory. He makes his way back to St. Petersburg, now Leningrad, a man out of time who struggles to make sense of the new society brought about by the revolution.

Mutiny 1929

Central Asia during the Civil War. The Jarkent battalion of the Red Army, located in the Verny (now Alma-Ata), receives an order from Frunze to go to the Fergana region to fight the Basmachi. A group of kulaks, with the support of local merchants and beys, incites the unconscious, wavering mass of the Red Army to revolt. The anti-Soviet agitation of counter-revolutionaries, demagogically exploiting the mood of war weariness, provokes an open mutiny in the battalion.

The Parisian Cobbler 1927

This little known Russian movie, from the director of the following year's Oblomok imperii/ A Fragment of Empire is both surprising and accomplished. The mute cobbler is interested in the local girl but she is already pregnant by one of the gang of sailor suit toughs. The Soviet Youth League secretary's only assistance to her is a book about sex in Russian literature and things turn nasty.

Katka's Reinette Apples 1926

A young country girl who becomes an apple seller is seduced and abandoned. She finds a protector but when he is arrested for theft she finds honest work in a factory.

Red Partisans 1924