The Soviet Influence: From Turksib to Night Mail (1929-1936) DVD9 and Blu-Ray BFI
on February 28th, 2020 at 15:46
Victor Turin was educated in the States, learnt the movie business at the Vitagraph, became a western fan and returned to the Soviet Union to direct the great 78-minute documentary Turksib – about the heroic transformative building of the railway linking Turkestan to Siberia. It's propaganda, but it's also a lyrical, humane, superbly edited masterpiece that greatly influenced the British documentary movement, of which six 1930s examples are included in this excellent compilation, culminating in another railway classic, Night Mail.
Both films are early instances of cinema being used to inform and shape popular opinion about everyday life, while exploring the formal, artistic and poetic potential of the medium.
BD50, DVD9 | 1080p AVC, PAL | 170 min | 39.4 Gb + 6.47 Gb
Language: English
Subtitles: English intertitles for silent films
Genre: Documentary
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