My Friend Ivan Lapshin (1984)

Recommended

Soviet Union

Feature Film

Original Title: Мой друг Иван Лапшин

Director: Aleksei German

Writers: Eduard Volodarsky, Yuri German

Cinematographer: Valeri Fedosov

Composer: Arkadi Gagulashvili

Cast: Andrei Boltnev, Nina Ruslanova, Andrei Mironov, Aleksei Zharkov, Zinaida Adamovich, Aleksandr Filippenko, Yuri Kuznetsov

A man remembers incidents and figures from his childhood in a provincial town in the Soviet Union of the mid-1930s, detailing the death of Marxism, as Stalin’s regime began to take its toll, in German’s beautifully photographed and disorientatingly gripping yet rather cold and decidedly depressing work, which has often been hailed as Russia’s greatest film. Iain.Stott

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Strike (1925)

Cautiously Recommended

Soviet Union

Feature Film

Original Title: Стачка

Director: Sergei Eisenstein

Writers: Grigori Aleksandrov, Sergei Eisenstein, Ilya Kravchunovsky, Valeryan Pletnyov

Cinematographers: Vasili Khvatov, Vladimir Popov, Eduard Tisse

Composers: The Alloy Orchestra (1998)

Cast: Maksim Shtraukh, Grigori Aleksandrov, Mikhail Gomorov, I. Ivanov, Ivan Klyukvin, Aleksandr Antonov, Yudif Glizer

When a worker kills himself after being falsely accused of theft, his comrades go out on strike, demanding an eight-hour workday and a 30% wage increase; but the factory owners, with the aid of the police, violently quell the unrest, in Eisenstein’s formally playful and campily entertaining film, which is let down somewhat by its laughable depiction of the chin-stroking, baby-killing, and distinctly inhuman capitalists. Iain.Stott

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Chess Fever (1925)

Recommended

Soviet Union

Feature Film

Original Title: Шахматная горячка

Directors: Vsevolod Pudovkin, Nikolai Shpikovsky

Writer: Nikolai Shpikovsky

Cinematographer: Anatoli Golovnya

Cast: Vladimir Fogel, Anna Zemtsova, José Raúl Capablanca, Sergei Komarov

During the world championships, a young man – like the rest of Moscow – is gripped with chess fever, much to annoyance of his non-believing fiancée, who is desparate to escape from the game, in this entertaining silent comedy, filled with delicious little visual flourishes and featuring a brief cameo from the then world champion, José Raúl Capablanca. Iain.Stott

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April (1961)

Recommended

Soviet Union

Short Feature Film

Original Title: აპრილი

Director: Otar Iosseliani

Writers: Erlom Akhvlediani, Otar Iosseliani

Cinematographer: Yuri Fednev

Composer: Sulkhan Nasidze

Cast: T. Chanturia, Gia Chiraqadze, A. Chikvaidze, V. Maisuradze, A. Jorbenadze

A young couple, deeply in love, move into an empty flat and gradually fill it with furniture and ornaments, transferring their love from one another onto their new possessions, in this light and slight though compelling early short from Georgian film-maker Iosseliani, which takes a well-aimed pop-shot at materialism. Iain.Stott

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Arsenal (1928)

Recommended

Soviet Union
Feature Film
Original Title: Арсенал
Writer/Director: Aleksandr Dovzhenko
Cinematographer: Daniil Demutsky
Composers: The Alloy Orchestra
Cast: Semyon Svashenko, Amvrosi Buchma, Georgi Khorkov, Dmitri Erdman, Sergei Petrov, M. Mikhajlovsky, A. Yevdakov, Nikolai Kuchinsky, O. Merlatti, Nikolai Nademsky

Despite the Ukrainian ruling class being depicted as sub-human imbeciles, and the film’s promotion of the idea that glory is synonymous with the ability to kill or be killed for “righteous” reasons, this account of the 1917 revolution from a Ukrainian perspective is, never the less, a wonderful piece of film-making, filled with strikingly memorable images, not the least of which being the symbolically rich final shot of an undefeatable Ukrainian worker. Iain.Stott

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