Man with a Movie Camera

Man with a Movie Camera 1929

7.80

A cameraman wanders around with a camera slung over his shoulder, documenting urban life with dazzling inventiveness.

1929

Earth

Earth 1930

6.71

Vasyl, a member of the Komsomol, with the help of a local party organization, gets a tractor and plows private boundaries "on kulak fields". However, this enthusiasm will cost him dearly.

1930

Enthusiasm

Enthusiasm 1930

6.30

A lyrical documentary on the lives of Coal miners in the Donbass who are struggling to meet their production quotas under the Five Year Plan.

1930

Arsenal

Arsenal 1929

6.78

A soldier returns to Kyiv after surviving a train crash and encounters clashes between nationalists and collectivists.

1929

P.K.P.

P.K.P. 1926

5.60

The defeated remnants of vile Ukrainian nationalists, headed by the leader of the Ukrainian liberation movement, Symon Petliura, cannot accept their historical fate and are plotting an insurrection against the Soviet regime in Ukraine. There is nothing Petliura and his cohorts would not do to win back control over Ukraine, including selling it to the highest bidder, in this case, the Polish dictator Jozef Pilsudski. A group of plotters are coordinating an insurrection in Kyiv with an attack from Poland headed by Petliura’s general Yurko Tiutiunnyk. Predictably, the invincible Red Army defeats the nationalist plotters and proves that the Soviet borders are impregnable.

1926

The Eleventh Year

The Eleventh Year 1928

6.20

The film is dedicated to the achievements of the Ukrainian SSR for the eleventh anniversary of the October Revolution.

1928

Zvenygora

Zvenygora 1928

6.46

The momentous film stars Mykola Nademskyi as the grandfather of Tymish (Semen Svashenko), whom he alerts to secret treasure buried in the mountains of Zvenygora – Treasure that rightfully belongs to his homeland. The film wonderfully blends both lyricism and politics and uses its central construct to build a montage praising Ukrainian industrialization, attacking the bourgeoisie, celebrating the beauty of the Ukrainian steppe and retelling ancient folklore. Said Sergei Eisenstein of the film, "As the lights went on, we felt that we had just witnessed a memorable event in the development of the cinema".

1928

Love's Berries

Love's Berries 1926

4.90

Jean, the hairdresser, is flabbergasted: what is that baby his girlfriend Lisa has put in his arms out of the blue? The fruit of love? Out of the question. From that moment on, the reluctant father has but one thought in his head: he must get rid of the cumbersome 'article'. And, take his word for it, all the ways are good.

1926

Arrest Warrant

Arrest Warrant 1927

1

The Whites enter the city, and they come over to Nadiia for search and seizure. They do not find the package, but they arrest Nadiia. A White counterintelligence officer interrogates her at the house-headquarters for a long time. However, Nadiia is silent and keeps the location of the package in secret, even though they blackmail her and threat her son, her husband and even her common sense.

1927

In Spring

In Spring 1929

6.50

In Spring is a masterpiece of the Ukrainian film avant-garde, a non-fiction film created by Mykhail Kaufman. In it, the now almost unknown Kyiv of 1929 appears. Shots of the awakening of the city, renewal of its life, echo with lyrical pictures of the revival of nature. Kaufman's attentive camera stops for a long time on the smiling faces of the children, painting a lyrical picture of a confession of love for Kyiv.

1929

Vasya, the Reformer

Vasya, the Reformer 1926

7.00

Lost film directed by Oleksandr Dovzhenko (his first film) and Favst Lopatynskyi. It is a satire of the NEP period. Vasia, the son of a factory’s worker, is attracted by the romance of adventures. And he goes to look for them. He saves a drowning drunkard who tries to beat him. Vasia escapes from him in a vehicle parked on the shore. However, the vehicle belongs to a superintendent who, when he does not find it, stages its theft. Meanwhile, Vasia exposes priests in the church. As a result, the church is turned into a cinema, and the priest becomes a cinema technician. And finally, Vasia’s last deed is catching a criminal at home and denouncing him to the militia.

1926

The Self-Seeker

The Self-Seeker 1929

6.00

An opportunistic Kyivan Apollon Shmyguyev, whose peaceful bourgeois life is interrupted by the civil war, decides to wait out the trouble in the South of Ukraine, which is under the rule of the Russian White Army. After gathering left off goods on Andriyivskyi descent in Kyiv, he goes on a journey with a camel, which somehow had strayed to his house. In the midway he is stopped by the Red Army: the camel gets confiscated for the needs of revolution, and Apollon appears in the disposal of the Bolshevik commissar. Zealous and cunning, Apollon quickly takes lead of the local commissariat. But the ingrained thirst for a profit once again puts his life in danger.

1929

The Diplomatic Pouch

The Diplomatic Pouch 1927

4.20

The film's plot is based on the real murder of the Soviet diplomatic courier Theodor Nette abroad. The pouch of the Soviet diplomat, which is stolen by British spies, is taken away by the sailors of a ship sailing to Leningrad who deliver it to the authorities. The intelligence agents make every effort to retrieve the bag.

1927

Alim

Alim 1926

1

Crimea. The middle of the 19th century. A proud and brave jigit Alim Aidamak who cannot put up with the workers’ abuse, works at the leather factory of the greedy Ali-bay. One day he responds in kind. He is fired, but he takes the memories of the beautiful daughter of his ex-master, Sara, with him. Young people went their separate ways. Alim takes the revolutionary path; he and his friends go to the mountains and start an underground struggle. Only his name is enough to terrify landlords, Mirzas and civil servants. Authorities send a Cossack detachment to catch the Crimean Tatar Robin Hood. The adventure film, which reminds an American western, was filmed based on a Crimean Tatar legend, which in 1925 was turned into a play by the repressed Crimean Tatar writer Ipchi Ümer. The shooting of the film under the script of the Ukrainian avant-garde poet Mykola Bazhan began in the autumn of 1925, when the indigenisation policy in the national republics caused demand on the national plots.

1926

First May in Moscow

First May in Moscow 1923

5.30

The building of Sevzapkino. Columns of demonstrators are moving along Bolshaya Dmitrovka, Dzerzhinsky square, Pushkinskaya (Strastnaya) square, Kamenny Most (The Big Stone Bridge) and Red Square. Decorated cars and trucks. This is a Military parade on Red Square. L.D. Trotsky, N.I. Muralov, S.S. Kamenev are among the commanders. The demonstrators are carrying the models of a boat, plane and globe. The theatrical march. The members of the government and guests including K. Tsetkin are watching from the tribunes. There are lots of planes on the airdrome and square. M.M. Litvinov, N.I. Rikov and others stand near the plane. The plane builds jp speed, soars in the air, leads for landing and lands. Hordes of people gathered at the aerodrome. Camera operator is shooting. The church on the corner of Ulitsa Myasnitskaya (Kirovskaya), the building of GUM (State Department Store) and Khamovnichesky (Frunzensky) Council. Illuminated building.

1923

Right to a woman

Right to a woman 1930

1

The heroine of the film leaves her husband, who does not allow her to study, takes her child with her and goes to medical school.

1930

Bennie the Howl

Bennie the Howl 1926

5.80

The seamy Jewish underworld of Odesa is the setting for Isaac Babel's story based on the life of gangster king Mishka Yaponchik "Mike the Jap" Vinnitsky. Murder is a way of life for Benya and his gang until he finds himself ensnared in a Bolshevik trap.

1926

Bread

Bread 1930

4.90

Ukrainian agitprop film from 1929 that was banned and long forgotten until its rediscovery in the 1970s, imaginatively shot by the gifted cameraman Oleksii Pankratiev, whose panoramic long shots feature dynamic compositions. The background, barren field and bare sky, raise the agricultural subject matter to the level of an epic poem. Using innovative editing, Shpykovskyi transformed an incredibly simple plot into an avant-garde work. Created the same year as Earth (Zemlya), the film forms a paradoxically conceptual, ideological, and aesthetic pair with Dovzhenko’s movie.

1930

Five Brides

Five Brides 1930

3.00

During the Russian civil war, the Whites, that anti-Communist force that fought against the Bolsheviks during that period, capture a Jewish Ukranian village; the gang commander threatens a pogrom, and will kill everyone in the village unless the inhabitants agree to give to the White Officers five virgin girls in wedding dresses. Under such terrible pressure, the Jewish council of the town decides, full of sorrow and despair, to sacrifice their daughters to the drunken officers but fortunately and just in time, a detachment of partisans that belong to the Red Army, comes and frees the village.

1930

Locksmith and Chancellor

Locksmith and Chancellor 1924

1

The Government of the fictional country Norland has unleashed a war with the neighboring Galikania and is suffering one defeat after another. A group of conspirators who were dissatisfied with this state of affairs, led by the Social Democrat Frank Frey arrange a coup to overthrew the emperor of Norland. But the working class does not like the new order either. Workers expose Frank Frey's policy of continuing the war and a revolution breaks out in the country. The leader of the socialist revolution becomes a mechanic of the name Franz Stark.

1924