Russian

Based on the novella “The Smugglers of the Tian Shan”, this popular Kyrgyz film takes place in the 1920s and uses the basic formula of the Red Western: a Bolshevik superman fights a violent native gang of opium traffickers.
Somewhere in Kyrgyzstan in the 1920s, the pro-Soviet guard Karabalta (‘Black Axe’) detects secret paths in the mountains used by smugglers to transport opium across the Soviet border.
Meanwhile, a strange man named ‘Golden Mouth’ offers to accompany a patrol unit led by the Russian commander Kondraty, promising to help find these smugglers and their camp. A mission to find the opium cache is complicated by kidnappers and other disasters. […]
The film is distinguished by superb camera work, praising the beauty of Kyrgyzstan’s wild nature in lavish widescreen images.Read More »

Synopsis from the Siskel Film Center:
“Circa 1920, a young Red Army officer with a keen enthusiasm to launch his native village into the modern age issues a decree that women are to abandon Islamic garb and drop their veils. A 14-year-old girl takes the first step with tragic and unforeseen consequences, and yet the officer continues to pressure his reluctant wife to lead the other women into compliance, a move that will throw the village into revolt. Co-written by Andrei Konchalovsy, WITHOUT FEAR sensitively portrays the dilemma of an ancient culture in conflict with an alien bureaucracy.”Read More »

The first sound film for children “Torn Shoes” was released in 1933 and won the world audience. It’s about kids from a poor family living in some European country (looks like pre-nazi Germany); two brothers have one pair of shoes for both. The author of the film Margarita Barskaya was proclaimed the leading director of child cinema. In 1937 she was repressed and her name was taken off the Soviet cinematography.Read More »

Triptych is the story of three women: an illiterate girl who wants to build a house, a school teacher representing authority who goes to a northern Uzbekistan village where traditions and strict Moslem practices have kept the people subjugated, and an old woman kidnapped in her youth by a poor peasant thereby making her his property.Read More »

Synopsis:A squadron of American warplanes, armed with gas developed by Corsican chemist Gannimer (dubbed “Napoleon Gas”) flies to Leningrad. American workers inform soviet comrades about the impending catastrophe. But the air attack on the city has already begun, and the assault troops of the enemy capture one suburb of the city after the other. The Red Army is organizing the defense and reflects the attack of the enemy with gas-armed drones

… All these events turn out to be a dream of a girl from Komsomol, who came to the farm to agitate for Aviahim.Read More »

The Cinema of Soviet Kazakhstan 1925–1991: An Uneasy Legacy
Quote:
Razluchnitsa is, first and foremost, a two-faceted love story: about the love between men and women, and about the love between siblings. The violent removal of the one person who disturbs the peace in the brothers’ home seems to happen with the quiet approval of both Adil and Rustem. This gives the story, which for two-thirds of the film resembles a late 1950s’ French nouvelle vague picture, an unexpected edge. Even the title appears in a paradoxical light: normally, the word “razluchnitsa” refers to a woman who is loved by a married man who then leaves his wife and family to be with her (the English translation is “homewrecker”). Read More »

A stark experiment by director A. Fedorchenko and a new form of cinema, which takes the spectator into the recollections of the protagonist, along corridors of memory and through key events of Russian history from the Silver Age to WWII.Read More »

Brothers Mitya and Andrey want nothing more than to conquer the skies flying jets. To achieve this, they undergo Russian military pilot training. The twins watch out for each other – in every situation.Read More »

Мачеха Саманишвили / სამანიშვილის დედინაცვალი

Impoverished old nobleman Bekina insists on marrying a wife, but his son Platon does not want to have sharer in father’s inheritance. Platon finds two times widowed and childless bride for Bekina, but a fate makes fun of him.Read More »