A 1988 documentary film directed by Alexander Sokurov, about the later life and death of Soviet Russian filmmaker Andrei Tarkovsky. The film was originally intended to mark the 50th birthday of Tarkovsky in 1982, which would have been before his death. Controversy with Soviet authorities about the film's style and content led to significant delays in the production.
The life and work of the great Russian composer Dmitriy Shostakovich is presented in this documentary through rare images and audios from many archives, at one time censored by the Soviet government. A brief take on his life, from his transition as an early prodigy to a first rate artist, his celebrated compositions and the final years with a declining health.
The film Our Friend Maxim is devoted to the life and work of actor and National Artist of the USSR Boris Petrovich Chirkov. This film includes excerpts from his Maxim trilogy, and significant focus is placed on Chirkov’s role as a pedagogue and mentor to young actors.
Documentary — featuring both interviews and live footage — about underground rock music in Russia, during the last years of the Perestroika.
The film is based on the concert of "Pop Mechanics" under the direction of Sergey Kuryokhin.
The following guests take part in the music concert-documentary: Rosa Rymbaeva, Dmitry Pokrovsky folklore Ensemble, Elena Kamburova, Alla Pugacheva, Bulat Okudzhava and the Nergebi children's vocal ensemble from Georgia.
A requiem for a Russian peasant woman, Maria Semionovna Voinova. The film is in two chapters. The first chapter consists of an impression of Maria Semionovna, scenes of the colours of summer time: hay–making, bathing in a river, work in the flax fields and a holiday in the Crimea. The second chapter, set nine years later, is in black and white and deals with how Maria Semionovna's life ended. The mood is one of a sad and elegiac narration.
Follows the life feat of doctor L.S.Soboleva, who saved people during three outbreaks of the plague.
About how the operation to rescue the members of the expedition 'North Pole-1' under the leadership of Ivan Papanin took place.
The film is dedicated to the development of culture in Russia. The musical basis of the film is Alexander Gradsky's suite "Nostalgia", written on poems by Vladimir Nabokov.
A documentary about the Soviet Union history, "Aquarium" music sounds behind the scenes.
The manifestation and fireworks on the 1st of May, one of the ritual celebrations of Soviet times, as a gathering of tired participants of a mass scene falling into pieces without the director's orders and without any aims.
A film about the composer Sergei Prokofiev. Outwardly, the happy fate of the actor in the film seems deeply tragic in essence. By means of fiction and documentary films, the author of the film tries to penetrate into the inner world of the artist, to show the contradiction and tragedy of the creative and human personality. The style of the picture is original, the pictorial range is exquisite.
A rare documentary that shows how Soviet war propaganda presented the events of the Finnish front in 1941–1944. The main emphasis is on the resolution of the war. The film contains plenty of unique footage of the final stages of the Continuation War.
This poetic core in youngsters is also touched in Stanukina's less known Your very personal poetry (Свои, совсем особые стихи, 1982), a wonderful film about a poetry class. It is here that one recalls Kogan's admiration of Lyalya's emotional documentary skills. And it is here that one recalls Kosakovsky's depiction of Lyalya as a person of extraordinarily prosperous feelings, sensitive and energetic, childish and female, shrill and quiet. The young poets are marvellously sneaky, respectfully adoring and creatively playing with - maybe even deconstructing - "Aleksandr Sergeevich", Mr. Pushkin, Russia's exclusive trade mark of high culture and literature.
The everyday life of the candy factory. A gray, exhausting life, and a guest lecturer talks about beautiful feelings, about love and courtship. He does not know what it costs to make a box of chocolates that someone will bring to his beloved woman on March 8. It's snowing, covering the streets. Then spring will come, then summer, but still in the smoking room, the workers of the candy factory, in rare moments of rest, will talk about their lives, which are passing.
The equipment is in a dark room, the lights are flashing. The hand turns the adjustment knob. The sun shines through the arched openings of the palace windows, "Aquarium" music sounds behind the scenes.
The picture is about the anti-Hitler coalition of the USSR, England and America, which developed as a counterweight to the aggressive policy of Nazi Germany during the Second World War. The unique newsreel footage of these years, shot by operators of different warring countries, is connected with today's thoughts of the author about the fate of the post-war world, about the humanitarian losses of both sides and about gaining unstable hopes for the unity of the world in countering evil.
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.
