Deschutes Public Library

Landmarks of Early Soviet Film: 8 Groundbreaking Films 1924 - 1930

eng

videorecording

Landmarks of Early Soviet Film: 8 Groundbreaking Films 1924 - 1930

985042535

Originally produced by Flicker Alley in 1930

624

This groundbreaking collection features eight seminal films from the Soviet silent era. Sergei M. Eisenstein's last silent and seldom seen Old and New (1929); Dziga Vertov's Stride, Soviet (1926); Victor Turin's Turksib (1930); Esther Shub's The Fall of the Romanov Dynasty (1927); Boris Barnet's The House on Trubnaya (1928); Lev Kuleshov's The Extraordinary Adventures of Mr. West in the Land of the Bolsheviks (1924) and By the Law (1926); and Mikhail Kalatozov's Salt for Svanetia (1930)...During the 1920s, Soviet documentary and fiction films were financed by the State, and their fledgling directors, some barely out of their teens, converted their lives from theater, engineering, painting and journalism to the practice and theory of a revolutionary cinema devoted to showing the achievements and aspirations of the new Socialist society. Their problem was to captivate an enormous, culturally diverse, multi-lingual, semi-literate population in ways that would be emotionally compelling, yet ideologically clear. The proven ability of movies to achieve this difficult goal inspired Lenin's famous dictum, "For us, cinema is the most important art.," and their stunning innovations recharged world cinema...Editing, or "montage," is the common organizational basis of these films and each of the filmmakers believed the arrangement of shots to be the foundation of film art. Yet these films are extremely diverse in approach, from Esfir Shub's poster-like arrangement of pre-1917 newsreels, to Dziga Vertov's intellectual complexity, to the striking imagery of Sergei M. Eisenstein and Mikhail Kalatozov. Additionally, the influence of D. W. Griffith is apparent in Lev Kuleshov's satiric comedy and tension-filled drama. Each of the eight seminal feature-length films in this remarkable set repays several viewings as a work of art; each is also a fascinating window on issues and attitudes in the world's first Socialist state

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