Tamara Eidelman

A two part documentary about the first five decades of Russian cinema: from its birth to 1953 - the death of Stalin and the first seedlings of the thaw. The film covers the most important milestones of cinema. Its introduction as a lowbrow entertainment, the impact of WWI and revolutions on the film process. The principal masters - Kuleshov, Vertov, Eisenstein - and their discoveries in film language at the turn of the 1920-30s. The arrival of sound. The evacuation of the Soviet film industry during WWII and the heroic work of the wartime documentary crews. Restricted film production and early signs of the thaw in the late 1940s - early 1950s. Film historians and art critics, directors and screenwriters put the history of cinema in a broader context, considering the path that the country took from Tsarist Russia to the totalitarian state under the rule of Stalin.

"Vladimir versus Volodymyr" or: the ancient battle between Russian and Ukrainian historical narratives, in which a medieval prince serves as justification for Putin's war of aggression. The documentary goes in search of key moments in Ukrainian historiography and reveals how one of the bloodiest wars in Europe since 1945 came about. It traces the long struggle of Ukrainians against a Russian oppressive culture and deciphers how their struggle for freedom and independence is above all a battle for their own history that has been waged for generations. A story of daring Vikings, of the flourishing Middle Ages as a bridge between Europe and Asia, of Polish foreign rule, of knightly Cossacks, and of a ambitious Russian tsarina, Catherine the Great, who subjugated the south of today's Ukraine and thus became the brutal pioneer of events in the 20th century, where Millions of people have died, been murdered or deported as a result of wars, revolutions, pogroms and starvation.

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