The 1920s was a miraculous golden age for Soviet cinema, both for features and documentary. The eight films included in this meticulously curated and handsomely presented collection convey the incredible excitement filmmakers felt at the opportunity to participate in the construction of the world’s first socialist state. Freed from the need to make money that drove the Hollywood industry, they could focus on “educating” the new Soviet population. Even Vladimir Ilych Lenin, the father of the 1917 Bolshevik Revolution and the first leader of the country that would become the U.S.S.R., understood that cinema, an art based on technology and machines, was the most suitable one for a country founded on the transformation of humanity through industry and technology. Cinema was nothing less than “the most important art,” Lenin famously declared. Experimentation was the order of the decade.
The set consists of eight movies, four fiction and four documentaries from the very best Soviet filmmakers. Each has a nifty new musical score, using both previously composed and original material.
All the films have original Russian intertitles with English subtitles (which are removable on four of the films), except Turksib and The Fall of the Romanov Dynasty, which have full-screen English intertitles.
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