Filmographies - films at UST by Country: Russia

Set in contemporary Moscow where 12 men must decide the fate of a man accused of murdering his step-father. Consigned to a makeshift jury room, one by one each man takes center stage to confront, connect, and confess while the accused awaits a verdict and revisits his heartbreaking journey through war in flashbacks.

"In a desolate, sun-scorched corner of the world, an elderly woman has come to see her beloved grandson. He is a young officer stationed at a remote military outpost. With the enemy just beyond the compound, she wanders the barracks, observing the routines of military life, before making a sudden trip into the outlying countryside."--Container.

Biographical story of Prince Alexander Nevsky and his successful resistance against an attempt by the Teutonic Knights to invade Russia in 1242.

Set in Russia during the 15th century. Commissioned to paint the interior of the Vladimir cathedral, Andrei Rublev leaves the Andronnikov monastery. In his travels he witnesses the sorrows of his fellow Russians, due to the plague and the pillaging and oppression of Mongols. Faced with the brutalities of the world outside the religious enclave, Rublev's faith is shaken, prompting him to question the uses of art in a degraded world. After Mongols sack the city of Vladimir, burning the cathedral that he has been commissioned to paint, Rublev takes a vow of silence and withdraws from his work, moving back to the monastery. The second part of the film tells the story of Boriska, a young boy who convinces a group of travelling bell-makers that he possess the gift of bell-making. The men take Boriska along with them out of pity, but are quickly enthralled by the boy's ambition to build the perfect bell. Finally, on the appointed day when the silver bell is lifted from the ground and set in place, the bell rings. Amid this activity, Rublev appears, and is drawn to Boriska's courage and desire to create. Rublev then decides to put aside his vow of silence, and serve as the boy's confessor, and eventually discovers that his faith, and art, have been renewed.

"Escalating animosity between two men with opposing philosophies of life is played out against the backdrop of a decaying seaside resort along the Black Sea coast. Laevsky is a dissipated romantic given to gambling and flirtation. He has run off to the sea with beautiful, emotionally empty Nadya, another man's wife. Laevsky has now grown tired of her, but two obstacles block his route to escape: he is broke, and he faces the absolute enmity of Von Koren, an arrogant zoologist and former friend who can no longer tolerate Laevsky's irresponsibility."--Container.

A collection of plays by Chekhov originally produced for television by the BBC.

A soldier-boy earns a ten-day leave to go home to his mother by performing a desperate act of bravery at the front. On the way home he has many small adventures.

Re-creates the 1905 mutiny on the battleship "Prince Potemkin." It focuses on a mutiny by the battleship's crew and the subsequent massacre of civilians, reflecting the spirit of the times.

Young Russian Danila returns home after serving two years in the military, when he discovers that his older brother, Viktor, has become a contract killer in post-Soviet St. Petersburg and is involved in a Mafia war. Wanting to help, Danila joins the mobsters to become Viktor's assistant. He is wounded on his first assignment, to murder The Chechen, a prominent crimelord, and is taken care of by a man known only as the German while Danila stays in hiding from the The Crechen's men.

Set in 1930 Russia. Colonel S. Kotov, a hero of the Revolution, is spending the summer in the country with his young daughter, his wife and her eccentric family. But when his wife's childhood love suddenly appears, the idyllic summer day takes a surprising turn.

Russian playwright Anton Chekhov is ill with tuberculosis and is cared for by his sister Maria with whom he lives in Yalta. He is desperately struggling to complete his play 'The Cherry Orchard.' With Maria's help, he is able to continue writing, but when Maria discovers that he has secretly married the Moscow Art Theatre actress, Olga Knipper, she feels betrayed and schemes to prevent him from returning to Moscow. When Chekhov discovers how manipulative Maria has been, the stage is set for a major confrontation.

A dawn-to-dusk view of the Soviet Union, this documentary follows the activities of a news cameraman as he peers into the lives of his countrymen. The film is a montage of urban Russian life showing the people of the city at work and at play, and the machines that keep the city going. Vertov uses all the cinematic tricks at his disposal - dissolves, split screen, slow motion, freeze-frames - to produce an exhilarating work.

Set against the Russian Civil War from 1917-1923. Klavdia Vavilova, a Red Army commander's military career is disrupted by an unplanned pregnancy. Forced to stay with a poor Ukrainian Jewish family until her child is born, she finds herself transformed by the warmth and compassion of her hosts. However, once the baby is born Klavdia must ultimately decide whether to rejoin her troops or stay with her child.

Dersu Uzala is the story of an elderly guide and Goldi hunter, who at the turn of the century, agrees to shepherd a Russian explorer and a troop of soldiers through the most treacherous passages of the Far East. The guide has been one with the land almost from birth, and is thus able to save his party from perishing.

A poet and surgeon, husband and lover finds his life disrupted by war. It alters the lives of many, including Tonya, the gentle woman he marries and Lara, the woman he cannot forget.

The story of Elena and Vladimir, an older couple. The wealthy but stingy Vladimir treats Elena more like a servant than a wife. They each have children from their first marriages, a son and a daughter. Elena's son is unemployed and can't feed his wife and two children; they live only on the money Elena provides them, while Vladimir's daughter lives a bohemian life. While in the hospital following a heart attack, Vladimir's daughter visits him. Their time together strengthens their usually distant relationship. Upon leaving the hospital, Vladimir declares that he's decided to change his will so that his daughter will receive all his money, leaving Elena with only a meager annuity. This will make it impossible for Elena to help her son financially. Humble and obedient, Elena then resorts to a desperate step.

Follows the story of an expatriate Russian and his French wife as they return to the Soviet Union in 1946 and learn to live in the post-war Soviet Union. The story eventually revolves around the struggle of Marie to decide if she should stay or leave.

Considered the first modern novel, Crime and Punishment is both a compelling psychodrama and an unrelenting examination of modern humankind. This classic program skillfully interweaves riveting dramatizations of Fyodor Dostoevvsky's masterpiece with Notes from the Underground and the autobiographical Memoirs from the House of the Dead. Penetrating observations are provided by Professor John Jones, of Oxford University, who scrutinizes the merciless introspection inherent in these works.

"On a desolate island in the Arctic Circle, two men work at a small meteorological station, taking readings from their radioactive surroundings. Sergei, a gruff professional in his fifties, takes his job very seriously. His new partner, bright eyed college grad Pavel, retreats to his MP3 player and video games to avoid Sergei's imposing presence. One day while Sergei is out, inexperienced Pavel receives terrible news for Sergei from HQ. Intimidated, Pavel can't bring himself to disclose the information..."--Container.

Set in Byelorussia, USSR, during World War II. Young Florya is separated from his Partisan comrades during a Nazi paratroop attack and struck deaf by German artillery. Florya and Glascha, a young peasant girl, must now wander the Russian countryside, looking for their comrades, all while staying out of the hands of the Nazi soldiers.

Set in Moscow during the 16th century, Ivan Alexieff, Prince of Moscow, is crowned Tsar Ivan. This action puts him in direct opposition to all other royal families and Ivan finds himself isolated and alone in his attempt to centralize power under the crown.

A father sets off from Moscow with his 11-year-old son for his sister's house in Koktebel by the Black Sea. With no money, nor means of transportation, they drift through the expansive and mesmeric landscapes at the mercy of chance. For the father, the journey is an attempt to restore self-respect and win back the trust of his son. For the boy, the mythic coastal town holds the key to a new life.

King Lear had three daughters: Goneril, Regan and Cordelia. One day he banished and repudiated his youngest and most loved daughter. But the evil elder sisters betrayed their father and blinded him. Having lost not only his kingdom the old Lear, accompanied by his loyal jester, finally saw the light of truth and was reunited with Cordelia who was not afraid to share her father's fate.

In a remote Siberian village, an anonymous man emerges from a blizzard to claim his late father's body. The boy inadvertently picks through the debris of unraveled family ties and confronts the yawning gap between alienated Soviet generations. Scorned and ignored, his labor of mourning becomes as transformative as the labor of birth. As he finds himself in his father's lifeless eyes, the reluctant pilgrim discovers that they have more in common in death than they did in life.

Andrei Filipov was a prodigy- at 20 he was the celebrated conductor of Russia's renowned Bolshoi Orchestra. Thirty years later, stil at the Bolshoi, he works as a janitor. Ousted during the communist era when he refused to fire the Jewish members of the orchestra, a broken Andrei now cleans the auditorium where he once performed in front of thousands. Andrei finds new life when he intercepts a fax inviting the Russian orchestra to play at Pleyel, in Paris, as a last minute replacement for the indisposed Los Angeles Philharmonic. He conceives a crazy notion: round up his old musician buddies, a motley bunch scraping a living in Moscow as cab drivers, garbage men, and flea market traders, and go to Paris passing as the official Buolshoi orchestra. It's a bold plan. Can this band of misfits pull it together to defy destiny and take their revenge?

The story of a sullen, sultry teenager with few goals in life who is trying to deal with a brooding boyfriend, an abusive alcoholic father, an ineffectual mother and the futility of a life trapped in her small industrial town.

A subtly ravishing passage through the halls of time and memory, Andrei Tarkovsky's sublime reflection on twentieth-century Russian history is as much a poem composed in images, or a hypnagogic hallucination, as it is a work of cinema. In a richly textured collage of varying film stocks and newsreel footage, the recollections of a dying poet flash before our eyes, his dreams mingling with scenes of childhood, wartime, and marriage, all imbued with the mystical power of a trance. Largely dismissed by Soviet critics on its release because of its elusive narrative structure, 'Mirror' has since taken its place as one of the director's most renowned and influential works, a stunning personal statement from an artist transmitting his innermost thoughts and feelings directly from psyche to screen.

A romantic comedy about three young, working-class, country girls who go to Moscow in 1958 to seek work, men, and success. The story then jumps forward twenty years to look at the outcome of their expedition.

Within a small cabin cloistered in a netherworld as idyllic as a dream, an ailing mother and her grown son get ready for her passing. As the dutiful son comforts his dying mother in her final hours, heartbreak is inevitable.

Ernesto Che Guevara was only 39 years old when he was executed in the Bolivian mountains in 1967. Through archival footage and photos this film tells the story of Che's short life: his childhood in Argentina, his early interests in the Spanish Civil War, and the motorcycle trip through Latin America in 1951 with his friend Alberto Granado.

Alexander's family has gathered at his remote cottage to celebrate, but the festivities are marred by family squabbling and then by the news that the low-flying jet planes are the start of a nuclear war between the superpowers. As the terror sinks in for the family, Alexander is troubled by strange dreams until Otto the postman informs him that he may have the power to save the world by making a terrible sacrifice.

Somewhere in Northern Russia, in a small Russian Orthodox monastery, lives a very unusual man. His fellow monks are confused by his bizarre conduct. Those who visit the island believe that the man has the power to heal, exorcise demons and foretell the future. However, he considers himself unworthy because of a sin he committed in his youth.

After his wife dies, tough guy Miron asks writer Aist to accompany him on a long journey to dispose of his wife's remains according to the rituals of the Merya people-- an ancient tribe in West-Central Russia. As the two friends traverse the bleak landscape with her body and a pair of caged birds, Miron fills the hours relating the most intimate details of his marriage--with unintended consequences.

Truck driver Georgy is out on a routine delivery but after a series of chance encounters, his journey spirals out of control. A roadside police check, a talkative war veteran, and a too-young prostitute lead him to a village from which there appears to be no way out -- where the locals struggle to survive a tough, elemental world, and the past holds a vise-like grip over their everyday lives. Caught in a merciless dead end, Georgy's unexpected fate is the crux of this film.

Set in modern-day Kazakhstan, Schizo follows the story of a local youth nicknamed Shiza. He is a recruiter for the illegal, underground circuit of bare-knuckle fighting, where he is able to eke out a living by scouting for fighters. When a man is accidentally killed in the ring, it sets in motion a chain of events that change his life as he decides that he should return the dead man's money to his widow and child. But, after he meets the woman, Shiza realizes that he has fallen in love with her. Now, he knows for whom he must earn money, no matter what the cost.

Ground control has been receiving strange transmissions from the three remaining residents of the Solaris space station. When cosmonaut and psychologist Kris Kelvin is sent to investigate, he experiences the strange phenomena that afflict the Solaris crew, sending him on a voyage into the darkest recesses of his own consciousness.

Chronicles the events leading up to Emperor Hirohito's momentous speech, the historic renunciation of his divine status, and his meetings with General Douglas MacArthur, the commander-in-chief of the occupying American forces, who advises his own president not to declare the Japanese leader a war criminal.

Based on the 1905 Russian Bolshevik revolution. Due to the suicide of a worker unjustly accused of theft, a strike is called by the laborers of a Moscow metalworks factory. The managers, owner and the Czarist government dispatch infiltrators in an attempt to break the workers' unity. Unsuccessful, they hire the police and the unarmed strikers are slaughtered in the confrontation.

Stalin's rise from obscure revolutionary to feared leader of Russia is documented in vivid detail in this epic.

Revolutionary drama centered on a young Mongol thought to be descended from Genghis Khan whom imperialists seek to use to further their expansionist interests. After a series of misadventures the young man rebels and leads his people against their oppressors.

In a world filled with hustlers and black marketers, Shlykov, a hard-working, anti-semitic taxi driver, is pushed over the edge when Lyosha, a Jewish saxophonist who personifies everything he despises, stiffs him for a fare. Shlykov tracks the irresponsible musician down and the two form a bizarre love-hate relationship. At first, class and race division make friendship for these two nearly impossible, until they both learn they aren't so different after all.

Within the emotional vacuum of a fatherless childhood, young brothers Andrei and Ivan have grown closer than most siblings. But when they least expect it, the father the boys have never known returns. Under the cool midnight sun of a coastal Russian summer, Andrei and Ivan eagerly hop into a car for a week long fishing trip with a complete stranger they desperately need to believe is their father. But as they travel deeper into the Russian wilderness, their journey devolves from vacation to boot camp to father-sons love triangle and ultimately to a test of wills that pushes to the brink of violence. As it dawns on the boys that the man who could be their father might be trying to abandon, exploit, or kill them. The Return's Jungian landscape gives way to fervid Freudian rage, shocking loss and bittersweet redemption.

It is 1942 and the western edge of the USSR is under German occupation. In the region, local partisans are waging a brutal battle against their foreign enemies. Sushenya, an innocent rail worker, is arrested with a band of saboteurs when a train is derailed not far from his village. The German officer decides to set him free rather than hang him with the others, but rumors of Sushenya's treason spread quickly and partisans Burov and Voitik seek revenge.

War and Peace centers broadly on Napoleon's invasion of Russia in 1812. The film focuses on three main characters, Pierre Bezukhov, the illegitimate son of a count who is fighting for his inheritance and yearning for spiritual fulfillment; Prince Andrei Bolkonsky, who leaves behind his family to fight in the war against Napoleon; and Natasha Rostov, the beautiful young daughter of a nobleman, who is desired by both men. As Napoleon's army invades, we follow the characters from diverse backgrounds peasants and nobility, civilians and soldiers as they struggle with the problems unique to their era, their history, and their culture.

An adaptation of Anton Chekhov's short story, Ward No. 6 chronicles one man's descent into madness. It tells the story of Dr. Ragin, and how he ended up as a patient in the insane asylum he once led. Feeling isolated in town, Ragin holds long philosophical dialogues with his brilliant patient Gromov, which lead him to question the nature of his own existence. Updating the 1892 tale to the present day, the film is shot in a real mental institution on the outskirts of Moscow, and features interviews with actual patients. Ward No. 6 illuminates the writer's immortal genius for a new generation.

After the death of his grandfather, Vasil wishes the neighboring farmers to share the use of a tractor purchased by the village council. Struggling against superstition, rich landowners and nature itself, he becomes the victim of a tragic murder.

The Mirror is a meditation on life in Russia during the bleak days of WW II. The film is a homage to the innocence of childhood, as it tells an enigmatic tale that is both gripping and horrifying. Tarkovsky uses his own coming-of-age experiences, himself "mirror"-ed, to convey the mood and action that dominated a country ravaged by war. Through a two-tiered time frame, the director blends his own harsh childhood with an adult life that is troubled and broken. Powerful images--a mother faced with political terror, a divorcing couple's quarrel--are underscored by Tarkovsky's manipulation of film stocks and recorded sound. The Mirror becomes a stream-of-consciousness, nostalgic visions of childhood mixed with slow-motion dream sequences and stark WW II newsreels.

An unmarried middle-aged Russian woman's life suddenly changes when she unexpectedly grows a tail.

Elena Turina and Vladimir Turin live with their children and grandchildren in a working class suburb of Moscow. This film describes how they have adapted in the transition from communism.

As most of the world moves forward toward gay equality, Russia is seemingly heading backward. In 2013, the Russian parliament passed a ban on so-called 'gay propaganda' that effectively makes nearly any public discussion of gay equality a crime. Violent attacks against Russian gays or suspected gays are more and more common. Videos of LGBT people being taunted and tortured have been widely distributed on the internet. Michael Lucas returned to his native country to shine a light on the truth of LGBT men and women in Russia and their ever-increasing persecution.

The story of Catherine the Great, a young girl who would transform herself from an obscure German Princess into Russia's most powerful regent.

In post-Soviet Russia between 1 and 4 million children are homeless. At the time of filming, authorities estimated that some 30,000 of them were living on the streets of Moscow. Escaping homes fraught with violence and neglect, the children sleep in stairways, garbage containers and underground tunnels. They make homes on hot water pipes to protect themselves from the harsh winter. They panhandle and prostitute themselves for money. They sniff glue to curb hunger and to escape from the world around them. Yet the spirit of a child is ever present, as they play with balloons, sing, dance and dream of their mothers. When Tanya, a beautiful 14-year-old homeless girl dies from a glue overdose, the magnitude and urgency of this issue become overwhelmingly apparent. Tanya's friend condemns her crying mother and blames her alcohol addiction for causing Tanya's death. This film explores the social ills and shortcomings of a country still struggling to live up to its democratic expectations.

Looks at various police forces in cities throughout the world. Addresses issues that affect different countries (such as Brazil, China, Germany, Russia, South Africa, Turkey, and the United States) and how the police force in that country handles the local situation.

A series of brief scenes that a tourist might see during a visit to Russia. Locations shown are in Leningrad, Moscow, Rostov-Veliki, and Zagorsk.

A documentary about the life of indigenous people living in the heart of the Siberian Taiga. Deep in the wilderness, far away from civilization, 300 people inhabit the small village of Bakhtia at the river Yenisei. There are only two ways to reach this outpost: by helicopter or boat. There's no telephone, running water or medical aid. The locals, whose daily routines have barely changed over the last centuries, live according to their own values and cultural traditions.

After a brief history of the founding of St. Petersburg and a biographical sketch of Peter the Great, the viewer is taken on a tour of the galleries of the Hermitage Museum housing masterpieces from ancient China, Egypt, Greece, and Rome through the Middle Ages and the Renaissance to the 20th Century.

Examines the history of Russia from the early 19th century until the mid-1970s using the works of Russian writers and novelists.

What's motivating the thousands of Russian women who sign up with agencies to meet and marry American men? From the gray skies of St. Petersburg to sunny California ranches, we see the financial and emotional pros and cons of exporting one's heart. The film grapples with the tremendous economic challenges and difficult decisions facing Russian women today.

The Anna Akhmatova File is a portrait of the Soviet poet, Anna Akhmatova. Although her work was banned and went unpublished for 17 years, her poem "Requiem" became the underground anthem for the millions who suffered under Stalin. This film, which uses Akhmatova's diaries for text, also includes portraits of Akhmatova's friends and contemporaries--Boris Pasternak, Vladimir Mayakovsky, and Mikhail Sostchenko.

Follows three female prisoners in Siberian prison UF91-9, preparing to compete in a beauty pageant. Through the pageant emerges a complex narrative of the lives of the first generation of women to come of age in post-Soviet Russia. Miss Gulag explores the individual destinies of three women: Yulia, Tatiana, and Natasha, all bound together by long prison sentences and circumstances that have made them the vigilantes of their own destinies.

One of a five-part series that focuses on different Russian regions and explores how life has changed, both socially and economically, due to recent economic and political changes. This segment explores Moscow and its surrounding region, an area representing the largest population center in Russia. Looks at what makes this city of ten million distinctive as a great capital city, and examines Moscow's role as the center of urban and economic development in the new Russia. Uses three-dimensional graphic simulations of the city to allow viewers to "fly" across the landscape and into Moscow to understand its network of roads, railroads, and suburbs. In addition to looking at Moscow's role as the seat of the government, visits several local businesses, including a factory, a bank, and the biggest McDonald's in the world.

This program examines how the Russian city of Gorky has adapted to a free enterprise system. We see public reaction to the auction of government property, and the opening of private markets. Class divisions become apparent in interviews with the Russian nouveau riche, the Mafia, and average citizens. Ordinary people, tired of waiting for economic benefits promised through privatization, support communist political candidates who promise renewed state control and a return to traditional Russian values. Depicts the city as being torn apart by violent tensions and antagonisms that exist between advocates of reform and Neo-Communists.

Corruption, assassination and street rioting surround the story of this film, Power Trip, which follows an American multi-national trying to solve the electricity crisis in Tbilisi, capital of the former Soviet Republic of Georgia. The film provides insight into today's headlines, with a graphic, on-the-ground depiction of the challenges facing globalization in an environment of culture clash, electricity disconnections and blackouts.

In the midst of the trauma of the Vietnam War, a U.S. diplomatic strategy evolves that begins the unraveling of the Soviet Empire. Focuses on such key events and tactics as détente, the manipulations that sparked Middle East tensions between Soviet-supported Egypt and American-backed Israel, the historic trip to China by Richard Nixon, the SALT talks, the "dirty little wars" in Central America, the Reagan Revolution and his Strategic Defense Initiative, the fall of the Berlin Wall, "perestroika" and "glasnost," and the ultimate collapse of the Soviet Union. Features historian Michael Beschloss and interviews with Margaret Thatcher, Norman Schwarzkopf, Mikhail Gorbachev, Presidents Carter, Reagan and Bush and others, along with the use of previously classified U.S. and Russian documents.

Frontline investigates the accusations of criminality and corruption that have surrounded Vladimir Putin's reign in Russia. Tracing his career back over two decades from St. Petersburg to Moscow, "Putin's Way" reveals how the accumulation of wealth and power has led to autocratic rule, nationalism, conflict, and the specter of a new Cold War.

A film documenting the history of Mexico, presented in four novellas: Sandunga, an exposition of Tehuantepec jungles and the peaceful lifestyles of their inhabitants; Manguei, a love story about a poor peon and his bride; Fiesta, devoted to bullfighting and romantic love; and Soldadera, a portrayal of the 1910 revolution in Mexico as depicted in the frescoes of Siqueiros, Rivera, and Orozco. Romance sentimentale: Eisenstein's first sound film, this experimental 1930 short was made in collaboration with Alexandrov and Tisse. Misery and fortune of woman: This 20 minute excerpt from a 1929 film by Eisenstein, shows Alexandrov and Tisse's interests in encouraging legal and sanitary birth/abortion clinics in Europe, as well as the plight of the working class woman.

Red files exposes a view of history from the Soviet perspective. Featuring interviews with key Soviet participants, never-before-seen film archives and declassified dossiers, the series tells stories of personal and political intrigue that were hidden behind the Iron Curtain for generations. In the early 1950's, Stalin launched a massive Soviet sports program to demonstrate to the world that communism was superior to capitalism. This program presents the bittersweet stories of four premiere Soviet athletes. This film also looks at Sergei Pavlovich Korolev, who was the responsible for the Soviet space program, under whose leadership the Soviet Union greatly advanced the field of rocket science. Finally, the film takes a look at a new kind of war that began after World War II, a propaganda war to control the hearts and minds of the people.

This epic program encompasses nearly a thousand years of despair and rebellion, innovation and conflict, from the first settlement of Russe Vikings to the brutal murder of Tsar Nicholas II and his family. The lives and complicated legacies of figures like Ivan the Terrible, Peter the Great, Catherine the Great and Rasputin are explored in two episodes. Russian: Land of the Tsars blends rare source materials, historical re-enactments, expert commentary, and exceptional footage. Events include the December Revolution and Napoleon's ill-fated invasion and how they changed history.

This program asks the question: Who is the new Tolstoy, Dostoyevsky, or Gogol waiting to be discovered by the English-speaking world? Presents profiles of six modern Russian authors including extensive interviews with each subject; commentary from their literary critics, publishers, and peers; and dramatic readings of English translations of their works, accompanied by specially-created animation sequences.

Provides an in-depth account of the country's history from 1924-53, the period of Stalin's rule. Told in ten parts, this astonishing documentary provides the real-life pictures, the witnesses, the documents, and the footage, and gives a remarkable insight into what led to the death of sixty-five million Soviets during Stalin's reign of terror.

A modern filmmaker magically finds himself transported to the 18th century where he embarks on a time-traveling journey through 300 years of Russian history. The first feature film ever created in a single take.

Examines the rituals of the Russian Orthodox Church. Persecuted under communism, it is now flourishing and exerting an impact on Russian life.

Over several months, Alexander Sokurov filmed the daily lives of a brigade of Russian army border guards located in an isolated outpost between Tajikistan and Afghanistan. Abandoned on the frontiers of a ruined empire, they are left to face an omnipresent yet invisible enemy. This five-part documentary is a meditation on the human condition in an overwhelming environment.

Explore elegant St. Petersburg, built in the early 18th century as Russia's proud new capital. Conceived by Tsar Peter the Great as a grandiose version of his favorite European city, Amsterdam, the architecture of St. Petersburg reflects a range of European influences. Its beautiful palaces and quiet elegance belie its troubled history, yet as you explore the city you'll find clues to the political turmoil that give St. Petersburg its haunting character.

Through the use of footage shot by Russian and German soldiers during the siege, as well as 3-D animation to recreate the city of Stalingrad, this film presents the Battle of Stalingrad which took place between August 1942 and February 1943; a battle that would seal the fates of hundreds of thousands of soldiers and civilians and mark the turning point of World War II.

Explores the art and culture of Russia in a journey across history, encompassing Russia's architecture, paintings, music, literature and cinema. Part 1 examines icon painting, the first Russian art form, and reveals the spiritual ideas that have animated Russia for 1000 years, and witnesses recent restorations of churches and monasteries from Kiev to the Kremlin. Part 2 examines Russian architecture from Eastern-inspired onion domes to Western-type palaces. Also looks at the work of Gogol who revealed the human suffering behind Russia's facade. His Dead Souls inspired 19th-century radicals and Soviet dissidents, and continues to influence Russian artists today. Part 3 explores Russian music and cinema and looks at how new media forms are shaping Russia today. Musorgsky's opera Boris Godunov dramatized the conflict between power and the people. Sergei Eisentsein retold history with silent films of such power that they became more real than actual events.

This series tours the history of the art collection at the Hermitage Museum of St. Petersburg. From Catherine the Great to Stalin, the series reviews the intertwinings of history and art which resulted in beneficial and tragic changes to the collection.

Once the heart of Soviet Russia, the Kremlin embodies the rich and fascinating cultural heritage of Moscow. For the first time, an American film crew is allowed to enter and discover the rich treasures and history of the government.

This is the documentary story of the man who subverted the Russian Revolution: born in 1879 in Georgia, a region colonized by Russia at the beginning of the 19th century; studied for the priesthood but soon abandoned piety for insurrection and agitation. By the time of the Revolution, his unique skills had emerged: to be in the right place at the right time and leave the speechifying to others while accumulating political power behind the scenes.

The program traces anti-Semitism from its earliest manifestations in antiquity to the recent ominous outbreaks in Germany, Russia, and elsewhere.

An overview of more than 700 years of Russian history beginning with the conquests of military hero Alexander Nevski in 1240 and ending with the dissolution of the U.S.S.R. in 1991.

Through rare archival film footage this video details the horrors of the war between the Germans and the Russians on the Eastern Front during World War II.

Svetlana Geier re-translated five novels by Dostoevsky that are referred to as "The Five Elephants." Born in Ukraine in 1923, she witnessed first-hand the impact of Stalin's purges and watched Nazi forces occupy her country. It was her gift for languages that ultimately saved her, but it forced her to make a choice that forever altered her life.

In these films, Frank Capra directed a series to explain the necessity of the Second World War to the American people. Often using film footage from enemy sources, the series is a copmpelling contemporary document of how motion pictures can be used as propaganda for the purpose of arousing a nation to fight.