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This list is organized  chronologically. 

NEW
ORTHODOX / IMPERIAL RUSSIA	[Before 1917]	jump
1917 REVOLUTION / CIVIL WAR	[1910-20s]	jump
STALIN'S USSR	[1930s]	jump
GREAT PATRIOTIC WAR / WWII	[1940s]	jump
POST-WWII USSR	[1950-60s]	jump
LATE USSR / PERESTROIKA	[1970-80s]	jump
POST-SOVIET RUSSIA	[1990s-]	jump
REGIONS OF RUSSIA		jump
GEOPOLITICS / NEWLY INDEPENDENT STATES		jump

  

                             

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NEW (2018)


My American neighbor: thoughts from and about U.S. citizens abroad (2008, 30 min.)
   As America undergoes rapid economic, cultural, and political changes, how is its global image evolving? In what ways do expatriate Americans shape foreign perceptions of the United States? And what is it like for homegrown U.S. citizens to live among those who understand little about them? This program presents interviews with Americans in Russia, France, Italy, Greece, and Egypt. Each shares his or her thoughts on patriotism, stereotypes, personal and political freedoms, and the challenge of seeing one's birthplace objectively. Indigenous residents of each country contribute impressions of the Americans in their midst while the film's Russian-born director reflects on leaving her homeland behind.

How do they do it in Russia? (2008, 46 min.)
   More than 20 million Russians lost their lives in the Great Patriotic War, as it is known by them, and for Russian school students this traumatic period in their country's past plays a key role in the study of history today. This film visits high schools in two Russian cities previously occupied by the Germans - or fascists as they are still described. In Novgorod and Pskov we discover that the Great Patriotic War is as real today as 60 years ago. Pupils visit local forests in search of the remains of hundreds of thousands of soldiers still unaccounted for, and hear from veterans of the epic campaign.


The Hermitage dwellers (2004, 72 min.)
   Focuses on the attendants, exhibition technicians and curators of the Hermitage Museum in St. Petersburg. Their personal stories are interwoven with images from Russian history.


The Arctic Circle: The Battle for the Pole (2009 40 min)
   Although it represents a crisis for planet Earth, the disappearance of Arctic sea ice is nothing less than a godsend for oil and gas companies. This program follows the research, drilling, and production activities of energy companies as they exploit newfound access to the floor of the Barents Sea. The film begins in Hammerfest, Norway - the northernmost town in the world and a booming hub of natural gas mining and trade. Next, viewers follow a massive mobile drilling rig as it prospects for gas-rich seabeds; a biostratigrapher charged with managing the Norwegian Petroleum Directorate's vast archive of drilling samples; and a top-brass gathering at the Russian company Gazprom as it prepares to explore the Shtokman gas field.


Art of Russia: Smashing the Mold (2009 50 min.)
   In many ways, including artistic ones, Russia appears forever on the brink of revolution. This program examines Russian visual art as it progressed-or regressed, depending on one's opinion-during the 20th century. Host Andrew Graham-Dixon roots out portraits of Stalin stashed in museum storerooms, notes the transformation of the Moscow Metro into a public art gallery, and visits a stunning creation of postwar Communist rule: the Space Monument. He also looks at examples of Russian art today, from sculptures in liquid oil and the insides of a giant erotic apple to heroic sculptures of Vladimir Putin and a re-creation of the Imperial royal family facing the firing squad. A BBC Production.

How I ended this summer (2010, 130 min., Alekseĭ Popogrebskii)
   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. When the truth is finally revealed, the consequences explode against a chilling backdrop of thick fog, sharp rocks, and the merciless Arctic Sea.


Post-Soviet Russia: Promises Deferred (1997 55 min.)
   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. The city is shown as being torn apart by violent tensions and antagonisms that exist between advocates of reform and neo-Communists.

The last hunters. Episode 5, Siberia (2013 53 min.)
   This film tells the story of a man that has to face his future: to become a hunter, probably one of the last hunters that live in Chukotka, Siberia. But, what would it happen if he decides not to go hunting? This question will be answered while we travel from northern lights and snow covered landscapes to the summer and the final hunt: the whale hunt.

Happy people: a year in the taiga (2013, 73 min., Vasyukov/Herzog)
   A stunning 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 isn't any 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. Originally produced as a motion picture in 2010.

Ilya and Emilia Kabakov: Enter Here (2013, 1 h 42 m.)
   Ilya and Emilia Kabakov: Enter Here portrays two of Russia's most celebrated international artists, now American citizens, as they come to terms with the new Russia. Two decades after he fled the Soviet Union, Ilya Kabakov overcomes his fears to create six art installations in venues throughout Moscow, where he was once forbidden to exhibit his art. Amidst the cacophony of a city and a country in dizzying transition, he comes face to face with the memories that have made him who he is. Through the eyes of artists who experienced Stalin's tyranny, through the rich underground art scene that arose during the Soviet Union's later stagnation, Enter Here explores the ways in which art can outwit oppression, illuminate what comes next, and transcend time - offering a beacon of light for repressed societies today.

Bringing Joshua Home - American Adoptions of Russian Children (2013, 25 min.)
   In late December, 2012, Russian President Vladimir Putin signed a bill banning all American adoptions of Russian children. Americans have adopted hundreds of children from Russia each year, providing hope and love to those languishing in Russia's overstressed orphanage system. Protests against this new law have erupted in both the United States and Russia. How this controversy will be resolved remains to be seen. What can be seen is the power of life-giving love exhibited by those who have successfully adopted in the past.. Bringing Joshua Home tells the personal story of one family who successfully adopted a Russian child. Arthur and Hanna Rasco share the challenges, joys, and drama of adopting their baby boy from Moscow and introducing him into their family. If you've ever wondered what it is like to adopt internationally, this film gives an inside, real-life look into the process from start to finish..

No Otter Zone (2013 17 min.)
   Sea Otters were once abundant from Russia’s Kamchatka Peninsula all the way to Baja California, Mexico. High demand for their fur coats led to intense hunting that reduced their numbers to near-extinction levels. The otter population is now coming back, thanks to the Endangered Species Act and the Marine Mammal Protection Act, which provided refuge for the few remaining individual otters. But their return brings the potential for drastic change and conflict to the modern-day economics and ecology of Southern California.. For more than a decade, sea otters were exiled from their historic home range in Southern California, out of fear by fishermen that their return would deplete the profitable shellfish industry. The entire southern coast of California – from Pt. Conception, north of Santa Barbara, to the Mexico border – was established as a No Otter Zone.. The film presents the history and conflict over the otters, and illustrates the critical choice that must be made: whether to continue to protect some fisheries with a no otter zone, or allow this historic predator to repopulate throughout its natural range. The battle continues today in court.. Featured in the Film Lilian Carswell, Southern Sea Otter Recovery Coordinator, US Fish & Wildlife Service Steve Rebuck, Commercial Abalone Divers of California Steve Shimek, Founder, The Otter Project Rick Rosenthal, Marine Biologist Michael Harrington, Executive Committee, California Abalone Association.



In search of happiness (2012 54 min.)
   Decades before the founding of Israel, Stalin created the first Jewish homeland. Birobidzhan was, admittedly, in a remote corner of Siberia, thousands of miles from civilization. But countless volunteers flocked there to build their own community.

City of Murder and Mayhem: Coping with Life in Moscow (2012, 50 min.)
   This film portrays life on the edge of death in Moscow. It follows the exploits of two men: Roman Trotsenko, a 28-year-old multimillionaire entrepreneur who lives every day knowing it could be his last because of the death count in the business world; and Commander Yevgeny Petrushin of the Special Forces Fast Reaction Team, a crack squad dedicated to fighting violent organized crime. Though these men never meet, their lives run in strange parallels amidst the sheer, bloody madness of Moscow. With hard-hitting footage and candid interviews, this powerful documentary offers unparalleled insight into the lives of these two very different men, risking their lives every day for very different reasons simply because of the work they do.

Orange chronicles (2012, 55 min Damian Kolodiy)
   The Orange Revolution was not a revolution in dictionary terms. It was a revolution of will and resolve that changed a nation forever. As Russia-backed candidate Yanukovych emerged as winner of the presidential elections of December 2004, reports of corruption, falsifications, and intimidation triggered a popular outcry. Millions took part in a protest that lasted over a month. In spite of the cold and risks involved, the Ukrainians stuck to their guns. This film tells the story of a people's peaceful fight for true independence.




Wasps and Witches: Women Pilots of World War II (2012 52 min)
   This fascinating documentary introduces the previously untold story of the forgotten fliers of the Second World War: women pilots from Britain, the United States, Russia, and Germany. These pilots risked everything for their countries and pioneered the way for others at a time when flying was the sole prerogative of men. Because of widespread skepticism, they had to prove their worth and their ability to do a "man's" job. With unique archival footage and present-day interviews with the pilots themselves, this inspiring film offers unique insight into the experiences of the thousands of courageous women who have been "written out" of the history books.

Trotsky (1988 120 min.)
   This documentary portrait of one of the key figures of the 20th century - Lenin's companion and Stalin's favorite target - uses nearly 1,500 hitherto unpublished photos and film clips to tell the story of Leon Trotsky's intellectual and political role in the birth of the Soviet Union; his leadership positions before, during, and after the Revolution; the death of Lenin and the exile of Trotsky; the Stalinization of the Soviet Union, the elimination of the opposition, and the trials of 1936; Trotsky's exile in Mexico; the Commission of Inquiry into Stalin's charges; and Trotsky's murder by an agent of the GPU.

Russian Revolution in Color. Part 2, Fear and Paranoia (2011 47 min.)
Shortly after the establishment of Bolshevik rule in Russia, brewing conflict threatened the party's leadership. This program depicts Lenin's response to those threats through ruthless campaigns against political rivals and foreign forces. Drawing on letters and personal accounts, the film also makes use of dramatic reconstructions and colorized archival footage, portraying the era as those at the vanguard of the revolution would have seen it. Viewers learn about the 1918 assassination attempt against Lenin and the anti-Bolshevik rebellions in Siberia, the Ukraine, Estonia, and the Crimea - as well as the Red Army's methods for crushing those uprisings and imposing a system that would split the world for the next 70 years.

Mendeleev's dream (2002 20 min.)
   What is the universe made of? It took humankind thousands of years just to formulate a way to ask the question-with the first rigorous study of matter's "ingredients" appearing in czarist Russia. This program tells the story of Dmitri Mendeleev, the chemist and inventor who devised the periodic table of the elements-vastly improving our understanding of the building blocks of the cosmos. Presented by British author Adam-Hart Davis, the film explores some of the groundwork laid by Mendeleev's predecessors, including Robert Boyle and Sir Humphry Davy, then describes how the Russian pioneer analyzed data and detected patterns that enabled him to group the known 63 elements into families based on their properties and their increasing atomic weight. Viewers also learn how Mendeleev made predictions about elements that had not yet been discovered, predictions that proved extremely accurate.

The Red Button (2011 52 min.)
   The Red Button is a 52-minute documentary film that tells the dramatic story of Stanislav Petrov, the Russian officer who, in 1983, saved the world from atomic war. During the early ‘80s, the Russian leader was Jurij Andropov, the most right-wing Soviet leader since Stalin. A known hardliner, Andropov was very wary of US activity. It was an intense period of time in the relationship between the United States and Russia. Tensions were running high between the two superpowers, and the atmosphere was suspicious because of recent incidents. On September 5th, a Korean jet liner with 269 passengers, many of whom were American, had been shot down over Soviet territory because the Russians believed it was a spy mission. The action led Reagan to label Russia an “evil empire.” Soon after, the KGB communicated to the western operatives to prepare for possible nuclear war. It is now thought that throughout 1983, the Kremlin assumed that the US and its allies were planning a nuclear strike on the Soviet Union. So it was in this tense environment that Stanislav Petrov worked deep inside Serpukhov-15, a secret bunker, monitoring early warning satellites.. The Red Button reviews Petrov’s role in the autumn equinox nuclear scare, discusses the repercussions of the event, and analyzes possible ways to prevent similar mistakes. By telling the story of this unsung hero's life, this documentary will bring important issues about international security to light. Although this film is international in its perspective, the subject matter is very close to American audiences. The subject matter confronts the most vital and important themes for current security issues – for America as well as the rest of the world..




A slave of love (1976 94 min., Nikita Mikhalkov)
   Hailed by the New York Times as "An unexpected masterpiece," A slave of love is a witty and haunting film about moviemaking from the acclaimed Russian director Nikita Mikhalkov (Burnt by the sun). Within the sun-drenched beauty of the Crimean summer, a Russian movie crew grapples with film shortages, Tsarist secret police scrutiny, and their own dysfunctional dynamic to churn out one more silent melodrama before the revolution in Moscow consumes the nation. While awaiting the arrival of her missing co-star husband, silent film diva Olga (a character inspired by tragic real-life screen siren Vera Kholodnaya), a star so luminous that dissidents risk arrest to see her latest film "Slave of love," becomes enmeshed in a romance with handsome young cameraman Pototsky. But what begins as a casual dalliance becomes an awakening as Olga's lover reveals his true allegiance. Ultimately, their romance leads Olga to an unforgettable high-speed date with destiny that unites movie heroism with historic martyrdom.



Battleship Potemkin (1925 69 min. Eisenstein)
Odessa - 1905. Enraged with the deplorable conditions on board the armored cruiser Potemkin, the ship's loyal crew contemplates the unthinkable - mutiny. Seizing control of the Potemkin and raising the red flag of revolution, the sailors' revolt becomes the rallying point for a Russian populace ground under the boot heels of the Czar's Cossacks. When ruthless White Russian cavalry arrives to crush the rebellion on the sandstone Odessa Steps, the most famous and most quoted film sequence in cinema history is born.

Legends of Russian ballet (2005 47 min.)
   The film is made as a concert which is composed of unique fragments of dances from the famous performances of the great ballet dancers of the XX century, who brought fame to the Bolshoi theatre. The film depicts stories about their creative activities. One could see Ann Pavlova in the dance "The Dying swan, Sulamifj Messerer and Asaf Messerer in the dances specially staged for them, Marina Semenova in the Swan lake, Olga Lepeshinskaya and Peter Gusev, Galina Ulanova in Romeo and Juliette" and Zhizelj, Vachtang Chabukiani and Natalia Dudinskaya in Bayadere , "Otello, and "Laurencia. Maja Plicetskaya in Laurencia, "Don Quixot, and "Karmen. Ekaterina Maksimova and Vladimir Vasiljev in Spartak as well as the performances staged specially for Igor Beljsky, Nina Ananishvili and Alex Fadeichev, Nadezhda Gracheva in Bayadere. All the above names are the pride and legends of Russian ballet.

Ballerina (2006 77 min.) Kanopy
   In the grand tradition of the Ballets Russes comes a portrait of five Russian ballerinas from the Mariinsky Theatre (also known as the Kirov). Behind any great ballerina lies the discipline and rigor that comes from decades of training and practice. Superstars like Nijinsky, Baryshnikov and Pavlova established the reputation of Russian dancers as the best in the world. The five dancers profiled in this revealing film are tough, insightful and exceptionally talented; onstage they reveal no hint of the sweat, pain and hard work of the rehearsal studio. From Swan Lake to Romeo and Juliet, from the backstage studio to performing on stages around the world, Ballerina captures the sublime beauty of ballet, in all its resplendent glory. Featuring Diana Vishneva, Svetlana Zakharova, Ulyana Lopatkina, Alina Somova and Evgenia Obraztsova.

The burning crucible (1923, 110 min., Ivan Mozzhukhin)
   Ivan Mosjoukine, who left a starring career in Russia for even greater glory in France, wrote and directed The burning crucible (Le Brasier ardent, 1923) in which he also plays eleven parts. Of this film Jean Renoir said I was ecstatic I decided to abandon my trade, ceramics, to try to make films.

Wolves unleashed (2014 89 min., Andrew Simpson)  Docuseek2   Alexander Street
   World-renowned animal trainer Andrew Simpson travels to Siberia in winter to make the biggest wolf film ever attempted, revealing the deep bond between human and wolf.

Ivan the Terrible. Part 1 ND 2 (1944 103min and 88 min., Sergei Eisenstein) Kanopy
   Navigating the deadly waters of Stalinist politics, Eisenstein was able to film two parts of his planned trilogy about the troubled sixteenth-century tsar who united Russia. Visually stunning and powerfully acted, Ivan the Terrible charts the rise to power and descent into terror of this veritable dictator. Though pleased with the first installment, Stalin detested the portrait in the second film, with its summary executions and secret police, and promptly banned it.


Photoamateur (2004 26 min.)
   Thomas Dorenwendt; Irina Gedrovich; Stephan Hille; Efim Reznikov; L Roshalʹ (Lev); Russia (Federation). Ministerstvo kul'tury.; Granat Film Studio.; Icarus Films.
Using popular songs of the day and excerpts from the diary kept by a German soldier, this film captures not only the events of WWII, but also the chronicle of a life in the army in words and pictures--Gerhard M., amateur photographer.

Kasimir Malevich: An Englishman in Moscow (10 min.) Flms on demand
   This film explores Kasimir Malevich's "An Englishman in Moscow," completed in 1914 and housed in the Stedelijk Museum in Amsterdam.

My joy (2010 128 min. Sergei Loznitsa)
   A truck driver takes a wrong turn and finds himself lost in a bleak Russian underworld, struggling to survive amidst increasingly violent reminders of the country's dark history. The first fiction film by acclaimed documentarian Sergei Loznitsa, My Joy is a mischievous, ultra-nihilistic parable of post-Communist Russia, shot by master cinematographer Oleg Muto.


Officers (Ofitsery) (1971 Vladimir Rogovoy) Kanopy
One of the most popular and favourite films in Russia, Officers (Ofitsery) follows at length the lives of two friends - Alexei Trofimov and Ivan Varrava. In the 1920s they served together at a frontier outpost, fighting with the basmachs. It was there that the young men first heard, and remembered for the rest of their lives, their commander's behest: "There is such a profession - defending one's Motherland". Then followed Spain, the Great Patriotic War, and peaceful time. The old friends reunite when they are already in the rank of generals.



Russia Is a Marginal Power: A Debate (2014 100 min.) Films on Demand
   During the crisis over Ukraine and Crimea, panelists debate whether Russia is a marginal power, what it means to be a great power, and whether Russia offers a morally legitimate alternative to the Western-backed order. They struggle over defining and measuring power. Is Russia a genuine world power, or a marginal power?

Is It Easy Being Young? (2011 David Roĭtberg) Kanopy
A remake of 1986 "Is It Easy Being Young?" by Latvian director Juris Podnieks, this film features an open talk of young people living under the Soviet regime - their conflicts with grown-ups, parents, teachers and the entire society, about drugs and what the life means. Mikhail Gorbachev once called the documentary "the first bird of Perestroika". The audience now has grown-up kids of their own. This new generation has different problems and different views of life. This film explores the problems people face, people who have witnessed dramatic changes in their society. By way of asking direct unbiased questions the authors talk on equal grounds with young people who have made their first independent steps in life, including a 19 year old professional soccer player convicted for unintentional murder at 14 and a young Nationalist Bolshevik (Communist) Party member and his political enemy, one of the pro-Putin "The Ours" young leaders. All characters are captured at the most important moments of their lives. The documentary contains independent video chronicle displaying the current political, social and moral situation in Russia. There is also ample and shocking youth statistic data sourced from UNICEF, the Russian Federal Youth Agency and the Russian Public Opinion Fund reports.

Engineer Prite's Project (1918 L. V Kuleshov) Kanopy
   1918 - Lev Kuleshov's directorial debut. This work is extremely important not only for Russian cinema; it became a landmark in the history of the world's cinematograph. For the first time a specific method of montage had been used in this film, which came to be known later as "Soviet montage". Despite the fact that Kuleshov's films had preceded many discoveries of Vertov and Eisenstein, his works are little known outside Russia. Among his students were Vsevolod Pudovkin and Boris Barnet. In the introduction to Kuleshov's book The Art of Cinema (1928), his former students wrote: "It was on his shoulders that we crossed into the open sea. We make films - Kuleshov made cinematography..."

The Childhood of Maxim Gorky (1938 Mark Donskoy) Kanopy
   The Childhood of Maxim Gorky, tells the story of Aleksei Peshkov a 12 year old boy, living in 19th Century Russia, who would later be known as Maxim Gorky, possibly Russia's most famous and celebrated novelist and dramatist. Made in 1938, the film is based on Gorky's autobiography `My Childhood', and is rich and powerful film which will capture your attention from the beginning. Naturally, being made in 1938, the film is in black and white, although the story is so colorful and vibrant, with characters so alive, you would be forgiven for thinking the film was made much later.

Sleeping souls (2013 51 min. Alexander Abaturov; Petit a petit (Firm); Icarus Films.; First Run/Icarus Films  Docuseek2
   A political hireling working for Putin's party, "United Russia," explains the cold inner mechanics of the system. The film portrays rural Russia, affected by government propaganda. Somehow, democratic life in this town appears to be a theatre.

Bringing home the bears: from Russia with love (Karen Berkman; Ron Markland 2002 47 min) Alexander Street
Follow the separate journeys of two captive polar bears, as they travel from their northern hemisphere homes to Sea World, on the Gold Coast of Australia. Drawing upon years of experience in the care and exhibition of marine mammals, Sea World took on their most ambitious project when they set out to create a living virtual reality for one of the natural world's most majestic and dangerous predators. By using movie special effects and the most up-to-date zoo technology, Sea World recreated the arctic summer at Polar Bear Shores, and set a new benchmark for the captive care of polar bears. The transfers were long and difficult, and not without setbacks. This film charts the highs and lows, meeting Kanook in Tucson, Ping Ping in Beijing, and staying with them as they get to know each other and their new home. For their new keepers it is an exciting challenge; for their long-time carers, a sad goodbye; for animal lovers around the world, a chance to meet these two very special polar bears face to face.

Russia: a Closer Look (2003 45 min)  Films on demand
   IA & E's miniseries Russia: Land of the Tsars illuminates the imperial past of the world's largest nation. Russia: A Closer Look examines the making of that miniseries through interviews with the filmmakers and select segments of footage.

Liberation: The User's Guide         ICARUS FILMS ♦ 2016 ♦ 80 MINUTES ♦    Docuseek2
    Julia, Ina, Olga and Katia are inmates held in a Siberian mental facility against their wishes.

Leninland         ICARUS FILMS ♦ 2015 ♦ 52 MINUTES ♦     Docuseek2
    The world's largest museum devoted to Lenin offers a 'true Soviet-era experience.' But can it survive in the new Russia?

The World According to Russia Today     ICARUS FILMS ♦ 2015 ♦ 40 MINUTES ♦    Docuseek2
    The channel Russia Today was launched in 2005 to bring the Russian perspective on world events to a global audience.

The Gas Weapon     ICARUS FILMS ♦ 2014 ♦ 52 MINUTES ♦      Docuseek2
    A clear and much-needed examination of the role natural gas and gas pipelines play in the geopolitics of Russia and Ukraine.

They Would All Be Queens     ICARUS FILMS ♦ 2013 ♦ 55 MINUTES ♦      Docuseek2
    The stories of several Soviet women who married Cuban men and moved to Cuba before the dissolution of the Soviet Union.

A Darkness Visible: Afghanistan     MEDIASTORM ♦ 2011 ♦ 27 MINUTES ♦      Docuseek2
    Based on 14 trips to Afghanistan between 1994 and 2010, A Darkness Visible: Afghanistan is the work of photojournalist Seamus Murphy. His work chronicles a people caught time and again in political turmoil, struggling to find their way.

Lotman's World     ICARUS FILMS ♦ 2009 ♦ 57 MINUTES ♦      Docuseek2
    The story of Yuri Lotman (1922-1993), little-known - except maybe in Estonia! - pioneer of semiotics. This title has one or more clips.

The Hermitage Dwellers     ICARUS FILMS ♦ 2006 ♦ 73 MINUTES ♦     Docuseek2
    This kaleidoscope of people and events in the great museum unfolds into a poignant account of Russia's painful 20th century transformed by the 'dwellers' intimate relationship with the art.

Cheated of Childhood       BULLFROG FILMS ♦ 2003 ♦ 23 MINUTES ♦      Docuseek2
    The International Labor Organization tries to rescue and rehabilitate the street children of St. Petersburg.

Reinventing Russia: Empire of the Tsars  DCD Rights Limited.  2015, 58:35    Films on Demand   
    Lucy Worsley travels to Russia to tell the extraordinary story of the dynasty that ruled the country for more than three centuries. It's an epic tale that includes giant figures such as Peter the Great and Catherine the Great, the devastating struggle against Napoleon in 1812, and the political murders of Nicholas II and his family in 1918 which brought the dynasty to a brutal end. In this first episode, Lucy will investigate the beginning of the Romanovs' three hundred year reign in Russia. In 1613, when Russia was leaderless, sixteen year old Mikhail Romanov was plucked from obscurity and offered the crown of Russia. Mikhail was granted absolute power and began the reign of the Romanovs as the most influential dynasty in modern European history. Lucy will also chart the story of Peter the Great, the ruthless and ambitious Tsar who was determined to modernize Russia at the end of the seventeenth century. Lucy will trace Peter's accession to the throne as a nine year old, when he witnessed a revolt led by royal guards and the slaughter of his uncles and close advisors. Sixteen years later, Peter would vengefully execute a thousand rebellious guards. Throughout his reign, Peter would demonstrate an unwavering commitment to establishing Russia as a naval power—Lucy will explore the lengths Peter would go to ensure this became a reality, including the creation of a new maritime capital, St Petersburg. Throughout this episode, Lucy will show how the Romanovs embraced and sponsored the arts on an astonishing scale—from building spectacular palaces to commissioning grand artworks that all still dazzle today. As well as studying this unique royal family, Lucy will also consider the impact the Romanovs had on the lives of ordinary Russians, who were often little better than slaves to the elite.

Gulags of Russia    SW Pictures, 2010, 23 mins   Academic Video Online
    We have rare pictures of North Koreans hard at work, not in the Democratic Peoples Republic of Korea, but in Russia's Far East, where the North Korean government has created a home away from home for 1,500 of its citizens. They live and work in camps modelled on North Korean villages, complete with their own secret police force, communist slogans and portraits of the North Korean leadership. The pictures show North Koreans deep in the forests, living in rudimentary conditions as they cut down trees to earn their government some $7 million per year. These logs initially exported to China, eventually find their way across the world to markets in the EU and USA where they are used for products such as furniture. They are reliable workers, a Russian logging official in the area tells us his Korean workers get only three days off per year. They work to quota or they face punishment. Not surprisingly, many have escaped, and human rights groups say they continue to do so, even after the Russian company working with the Koreans was bought up by British investors.

From Russia, For Love    directed by Julia Ivanova, Interfilm Productions, Journeyman Pictures, 2000, 53 mins   Kanopy   Academic Video Online
    What happens when two Western couples adopt Russian orphans? How will the children cope in their new homes and will they be able to reconcile feelings for their new families with loyalty towards the kin they have left behind? This moving documentary follows Kira and Lara through their first three years in...
 
Adapters (Oksana Maksimchuk 2013) via Alexander Street Press Academic Video Online
   For many years I dreamed of making a movie about my generation at the crossroads of two eras. In Brezhnev's time we went to school -- we had to tie a red pioneer tie around our necks and render the young pioneers' salute. My peers and I graduated from school in the ambiguous time of Perestroika. A few years later, as 20-year-olds bred on socialist ideals and having witnessed the collapse of the 'super-power', we were absolutely unprepared to plunge into a new epoch, up to this day undefined by historians. The characters of my film, who I know from childhood, are of the same age as me. 20 years ago three of them immigrated to Holland and France and the remaining three stayed in Moscow. They are all very different, with different fates, professions and lifestyles, and the only thing that unites them is a common Soviet childhood and the undeniable difficulties while adjusting to a new time. 20 years later is the perfect moment to conclude and analyze the past, as well as to think about present-day Russia and its future. We have been able to address all of it and to transfer our reflections in the interviews of our characters.

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ORTHODOX / IMPERIAL RUSSIA  (Before 1917)
 
Andrei Rublev (1969 185 min., Tarkovsky) Kanopy
   Immediately suppressed by the Soviets in 1966, Andrei Tarkovsky's epic masterpiece is a sweeping medieval tale of Russia's greatest icon painter. Too experimental, too frightening, too violent, and too politically complicated to be released officially, Andrei Rublev has existed only in shortened, censored versions until the Criterion Collection created this complete 205-minute director's cut special edition.

Faultlines: The Search for Political and Religious Links Series    Mercury Media International. 2003.  37:28    Films on Demand
    It is no irony that Victor Zorkaltsev, a Communist, is also the head of the religious committee of the Russian parliament, the Duma. It is also not an accident that the Russian government paid for an extraordinary replica of the Cathedral of Christ the Saviour that is maintained by local businessmen. And if more than 80 percent of Russians describe themselves as Orthodox Christians, why do only 5 percent go to church regularly? These are three of many examples in this potent program that concentrates on the resurgence of the Russian Orthodox Church and how its aspirations to spiritual and political power pose a threat to the fundamental freedoms of many Russians.

Napoleon. Part 3 (2014 52 min) Films on demand
   The year 2015 marks 200 years since the Battle of Waterloo. Using recently uncovered historical evidence and based upon almost a decade of research, this major, three-part series, sheds new light on Napoleon as an extraordinarily gifted military commander and a charismatic leader whose private life-contrary to popular belief 200 years later-was littered with disappointments and betrayals: not least in relation to Josephine. Part 3 examines Napoleon's gradual downfall, starting with his invasion of Spain and Portugal to enforce economic sanctions against Britain and continuing with the invasion of Russia, the Battle of Borodino, and the disastrous retreat from Moscow that decimated the Grande Armée. It also includes Napoleon's abdication, temporary reinstatement, and final defeat at the Battle of Waterloo-leading to his exile on St. Helena.

Trouble with Tolstoy (2011 60 min.)   Films on Demand
        Not just the author of War and Peace and Anna Karenina, two of the greatest novels ever written, Tolstoy was an enormously influential and prolific social, moral, and religious philosopher whose radical ideas still make him a highly controversial figure in Russia today. He espoused pacifism, an end to social hierarchy, vegetarianism, and rejected marriage. He also became a kind of fundamentalist christian and violently condemned the relationship between church and state. In 1901 he was ex-communicated from the church and attempts in 2000 to restore him were thwarted in the courtroom. In this film, Alan Yentob travels by train into the heart of Russia to hear what Russians talk about when they talk about Tolstoy. It's a journey that offers a glimpse of the contemporary Russian soul.


Russia's Last Tsar (1996 55 min.)
   In tsarist Russia, Nicholas II had absolute power over his vast realm, yet he was helpless in the face of his son Alexei's life-threatening hemophilia. Enter Rasputin, a self-styled holy man whose apparent ability to heal the young heir to the throne won him the devotion of Empress Alexandra, to the dismay of practically everyone else. This program presents the wrenching drama of the collapse of the centuries-old Romanov dynasty-a story of abdication, imprisonment, and assassination-against the backdrop of a nation under unendurable stress: military disasters, economic collapse, widespread unrest, and the rampant spread of Bolshevism. The program ends by revealing the location of the tsar's lost grave, a mystery for decades solved at last.

At the beginning of the glorious actions = V nachale slavnykh del (2014 Sergey Gerasimov) Kanopy (Firm)
   At the beginning of glorious days is the second part of a two-part film that started with The youth of Peter the Great. Both parts were released in the Soviet Union in 1980 and are based on a novel, Peter I, written by Aleksey Tolstoy. The film was directed by Russian director Sergey Gerasimov. The movie is considered to be a classic of Russian historical cinema. With no access to the sea, Russia suffers great losses in foreign trade. Peter tries to capture the Turkish fortress of Azov, but with no success: he can win only if he has a fleet. Peter's ukases provoke the Boyars' indignation. Europe looks in amazement: the Russian tsar begins to work at a Dutch shipyard learning the subtleties of shipbuilding. But his training is cut short. Peter has to return to Russia in order to brutally suppress the Streltsy rebellion organized by his sister Sophia.

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1917 REVOLUTION / Civil War (1910-1920s)

1914: A War of Images     AUTLOOK ♦ 2014 ♦ 45 MINUTES ♦      Docuseek2
    A look at World War I as the battlefield for the first propaganda war in history.

Lenin's revolution (2007 54 min.)
   How did a single wayward intellectual become the father of the Soviet Union? This program examines the unlikely alignment of forces that enabled Lenin to return from exile and to take power over a vast nation fully engaged in a world war. With the help of rarely seen archival clips, photographs, and artworks, the film guides viewers through developments that anticipated the October Revolution, the milestones of the revolution itself, and the roles played by Kerensky, Gorky, Trotsky, and other allies and enemies of the Bolshevik government. Attention is also given to the uneasy and eventually doomed alliance between Russia's avant-garde and Lenin's cultural initiatives.

 The end of St. Petersburg (1930 80 min.
   In 1927, Eisenstein and Pudovkin were both assigned to make films commemorating the 10th Anniversary of the 1917 Revolution. The results, October and The end of St. Petersburg, are two of the unforgettable masterpieces of epic filmmaking. Pudovkin's film, the more intensely dramatic and personal of the two, opens on a farm where a peasant must stay in the field and plow as his wife dies in childbirth. Trudging to the city to seek work, he is forced into scab labor. He tragically realizes the consequences of his mistake and violently attacks his employer. After jail, he is forced to join the army. World War I, in the best depiction yet of the horrors of battle, destroys all in its path as the bourgeois speculators grow rich. But the revolution frees St. Petersburg from the brutal yoke of the rich and there is born a new hope for the future. The New York Times remarked that "one feels sometimes as though this film were a remarkable newsreel of the Russian Revolution."

The Hunt for the true October: real Russian revolution (1999 25 min.)
   On the night of October 24, 1917, a police patrol stopped two men on the streets of St. Petersburg, but failing to recognize their quarry, the police let them pass. One of them-disguised as a tramp-was the future founder and leader of the Soviet Union: Vladimir Ilyich Lenin. In this program, Cambridge University's Orlando Figes, author of A People's Tragedy, and Vitaly Startsev, of St. Petersburg Herzen University, investigate the circumstances of the October Revolution, exploding the popular myths reinforced by Sergei Eisenstein's film October and exploring the what-ifs that could have led to democracy in Russia instead of dictatorship.
 
Chagall: a film (2003, 53 min.)
   This remarkable film retraces the life and work of the beloved artist Marc Chagall. Much of the narrative is told in his own words, drawn from his autobiography, Ma Vie (My Life) and there is unique film footage of Chagall being interviewed as he paints. An intimate picture of the mischievous painter and his peripatetic life emerges through interviews of the many personalities in the art world which Chagall inhabited : Apollinaire, Bonnard, Matisse, Picasso, Mayakovski and Malraux. Extensive use of rare historical film adds richness to this astounding biography of the man who was born in the shtetl of Vitebsk in tsarist Russia. When World War I broke out, he was forced to join the Russian Army and then asked to open an art school in Vitebsk by the Bolsheviks when they took power. He left for Paris in 1923 where he and his wife Bella lived in poverty. Finally, his illustrations for a special edition of Gogol s Dead Souls attracted wide admiration. As he put it, "I created my own reality -- neither Cubist nor Impressionist." Fleeing Paris in 1939 he spent the war years in New York, collaborating on art, theatre and ballet projects with other artists in exile, Duchamps, Calder, Tanguy, Stravinsky and Massine. Post-war, he created monumental works often inspired by the Bible: the magnificent ceiling of the Paris Opera, the murals for the Metropolitan Opera in New York, the stained glass windows for cathedrals in Metz and Reims and the Hadassah clinic in Jerusalem. In 1984 three large exhibitions in France celebrated the artist's 97th birthday, one at the National Museum Message Biblique Marc Chagall in Nice. His attempts to connect the Jewish traditions of his childhood to the artistic modernity of his time yielded a profoundly original oeuvre somewhat removed from the prevailing currents of art in the 20th century. As he said, "I chose painting because it seemed a window through which I could take flight to another world."


Wassily Kandinsky: invisible shapes (1994 33 min.)
   For Wassily Kandinsky, the father of abstract art, geometric form was the external expression of inner meaning. What sensibilities do art lovers need in order to decode the shapes behind the shapes in his colorful-and, in their day, controversial-paintings? This program introduces the subject of symbolism in abstract expressionism through a close examination of Kandinsky's Yellow-Red-Blue.

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STALIN'S USSR (1930s)

 

Stalin: red god (1999 62 min.)
   When atheistic Joseph Stalin assumed power, he put to use his training as a Russian Orthodox priest to redirect his people's devotional fervor and to cast himself as a secular god. Using eyewitness accounts, reenactments of key events in Stalin's life, and examples of Soviet film, art, music, and architecture, this provocative program demonstrates how Stalin ennobled communism and elevated it to the level of a state religion. Neo-Stalinists, nostalgic for their godlike leader, provide insights into how a terrifying dictatorship can ignite a devotion both deep and disturbing.

The Soviet Story (2008, 86 min.)
   This is a story of an Allied power, which helped the Nazis to fight Jews and which slaughtered its own people on an industrial scale. Assisted by the West, this power triumphed on May 9th, 1945. Its crimes were made taboo, and the complete story of Europe’s most murderous regime has never been told. Until now…. The Soviet Story is a documentary about Soviet Communism and Soviet–German collaboration before 1941. The film features interviews with western and Russian historians such as Norman Davies and Boris Sokolov, Russian writer Viktor Suvorov, Soviet dissident Vladimir Bukovsky, members of the European Parliament and the participants, as well as survivors of Soviet terror.. Using these interviews together with historical footage and documents the film argues that there were close philosophical, political and organizational connections between the Nazi and Soviet systems. It highlights the Great Purge as well as the Great Famine, Molotov–Ribbentrop Pact, Katyn massacre, Gestapo-NKVD collaboration, Soviet mass deportations and medical experiments in the GULAG. The documentary goes on to argue that the successor states to Nazi Germany and the USSR differ in the sense that postwar Germany condemns the actions of Nazi Germany while the opinion in contemporary Russia is summarized by the quote of Vladimir Putin: "One needs to acknowledge, that the collapse of the Soviet Union was the greatest geopolitical catastrophe of the century"..


Finding Babel (2015 David Novack)  Kanopy
   This film follows the grandson of famed Russian-Jewish author Isaac Babel as he searches for answers to better understand the enigmatic man he never met. Babel's writings, considered masterpieces of Russian literature, challenged the reality of life under rising Soviet totalitarianism, leading to his execution as part of Stalin's purges in 1940. Andrei Malaev-Babel journeys through locations deeply tied to the life and writings of his grandfather, where he confronts lingering traces of a turbulent history that echo in Babel's stories and in the climate and conflicts of today's Ukraine and Russia. With each stop, Andrei gets closer to the truth about his grandfather and the complex stories that he wrote with depth and hidden meaning. Mentored by Maxim Gorky, Babel was thrust upon the international stage with Red Cavalry, a bold war narrative, followed by Odessa Stories. His many short stories and stage plays examined Soviet society with a critical eye. Woven into the film are excerpts from Babel's writings read by actor Liev Schreiber, coupled with unique, ethereal animations that serve to illustrate Babel's works. Ultimately, through powerful interviews, including Babel's widow, and a painful examination of his formerly secret case file, Andrei learns more of the details of his grandfather's arrest, torture and execution. As the first American film crew allowed inside KGB archives, Andrei and the filmmakers gained unprecedented access to Babel's file. Chillingly, Andrei found his grandfather's last act of writing -- not a hoped for lost manuscript or personal letter -- but rather a shaky signature officially acknowledging his death sentence. The search for Babel shows that although the author was executed, his works still resonate powerfully with lessons for today.

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GREAT PATRIOTIC WAR / WWII  (1940s)

 

900 Days     ICARUS FILMS ♦ 2012 ♦ 77 MINUTES ♦     Docuseek2
    Unforgettable life stories told by survivors of the Siege of Leningrad, where more than 1 million people died during World War II.

Blockade     ICARUS FILMS ♦ 2006 ♦ 52 MINUTES ♦      Docuseek2
    Made entirely from footage discovered in Russian archives, and featuring a meticulously reconstructed soundtrack, this film vividly re-creates the 900 day siege of Leningrad during World War II.

The Siege of Leningrad (2014 51 min., Michael Kloft)  Alexander Street
   In 1941, Hitler ordered the German Army to invade Russia. The Nazis raced across Russia's heartland until they reached Leningrad -- the cradle of the Bolshevik Revolution. But the city did not fall quickly to Hitler's troops. Instead it resisted. The siege of Leningrad began on September 8, 1941 and ended on January 27, 1944. For 872 days the city was surrounded. Within, the inhabitants fell into despair, starvation and cannibalism. Well over a million people lost their lives during this period. It is a breathtaking story both of heroism and mankind's failings -- and one of the worst atrocities carried out by Germany during the Second World War. The unbreakable will and suffering of the people of modern day St. Petersburg remains, to this day, the stuff of legend. In Michael Kloft's astonishing new documentary, British historian Anna Reid uses eyewitness accounts and files of the NKVD (the Soviet secret police) to help bring to light what actually happened in Leningrad during the siege. Rarely seen film and photographic material, original diaries and documents from the time illustrate the tragedy.

Amateur Photographer     ICARUS FILMS ♦ 2007 ♦ 26 MINUTES ♦      Docuseek2
    The story of a German soldier and the photographs that he took, while serving on the Eastern Front during WWII.

 

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POST-WWII USSR  (1950-60s) / Cold War

How Russia Won the Space Race, Episode 1 and 2  BBC 2014 53 min , 49 min   Academic Video Online
    When, in July 1969, Neil Armstrong made one giant leap for mankind, America went down in popular history as the winner of the space race. But the real space pioneers of the 20th century were the Soviets. Between 1961 and 1966, they realized a number of spectacular historical achievements, including the first man and woman in space. Up to that point, they seemed unstoppable. Then a string of misfortunes struck. The deaths of two key figures, Sergei Korolev, the godfather of the programme, and hero and icon Yuri Gagarin, were followed by a series of mechanical setbacks. This allowed the Americans to streak ahead and ultimately claim victory. But it did not end there. The Russians recalibrated their space programme in the 1970's, achieving more success and coming in many ways to dominate modern space exploration. Covering all these events and more, this series uses unseen archive and compelling interviews to reveal the story of the space race from the other side of the iron curtain.  Part of the compelling BBC history series Cosmonauts which explores the Russian attempt to win the space race in the 1960's and 1970's.

The Fever Of '57: The Sputnik Movie    directed by David Hoffman, fl. 2012 (Pottstown, PA: MVD Entertainment Group, 2012), 1 hour 28 mins

    The Fever of '57 shows what happened after the launch of Sputnik and reveals how Cold War tensions quickly escalated between the Superpowers to a fever pitch.

Nureyev (2009, 48 min.)
   Nureyev is a dance drama exploring the life of the great Russian dancer, Rudolph Nureyev, who defected to the West in 1961. Integrating original choreography created for the screen and dramatic monologues, the film presents a multi-faceted portrait of one of the seminal performing arts figures of our time.

Disco and Atomic War     ICARUS FILMS ♦ 2010 ♦ 80 MINUTES ♦      Docuseek2
    The Soviet regime in Estonia went head to head with J.R. Ewing and the heroes of Western television...and lost.

Onward to the shining future: animation and the big Soviet lie (2006 , 152 min.)
   Soviet film studios worked hard to portray their government's system as idyllic and forward-looking. This program showcases animated films designed to promote that utopian vision. Soviet Toys, the earliest known example of Soviet animation, condemns Lenin's New Economic Policy; The Victorious Destination celebrates the achievements of Stalin's first five-year plan; Samoyed Boy praises the Soviet educational system and the casting-off of antiquated traditions; and Hot Stone, Music Box, and Songs of the Years of Fire rejoice over the passing of Czarist imperialism and the establishment of a new, benevolent society. Eleven films total, plus commentary from Russian State Film School professor Igor Kokarev, political cartoonist Boris Yefimov, and director/animator Fyodor Khitruk.

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LATE USSR / PERESTROIKA   (1970-80s)

 

The Rise and Fall of the Russian Oligarchs, Part 1.  directed by Alexander Gentelev (Paris, Ile-de-France: Point du Jour International, 2005), 49 mins   Academic Video Online
    Vladimir Putin's inauguration in 2001 was a ceremony fit for a king... a Czar. Putin looked like a man who knew he was about to rule the great empire of Russia! Today, he governs almost single-handedly, controlling the Parliament (Duma) and changing the constitution as he wishes. Although he has abolished most independent media and free speech in Russia, his most vicious war is against the men who brought him to power, hunting down the richest and most successful businessmen of Russia, putting them in jail and confiscating their corporations. The stakes of this war are huge, involving the core of Russia’s natural resources, namely oil, gold, aluminum, and media corporations all worth hundreds of billions of dollars. Putin’s war seeks to reclaim what he views as state property stolen by illegal means and manipulations. Boris Berezovsky, Putin’s archrival, resides in London, fighting an extradition order issued by the Russian state. Berezovsky, a multi-billionaire who just five years ago helped to crown Putin as Russia’s leader, now seeks to overthrow him. Berezovsky believes he is fighting the 'new Czar,' as many Russians refer to Putin, in the name of democracy and Free Enterprise. With unprecedented access we can chart for the first time the full landscape of this war. It is a story that we can now tell as a living drama narrated by its main protagonists. Since 1996 we have followed the equivalent of Russia’s Fords and Rockefellers, the 'Oligarchs', individuals who seized the historical moment of transition when Communism collapsed in Russia. Their reflections are startling and candid, as they describe their legal and illegal moves, as well as their naked quest for power and political influence.

Turn of the Century (2001, Vladimir Venediktov) Kanopy
   Moscow of 1993. Tanks in the streets. The troops are storming Parliament. Blood is flowing, innocent people die. These events are the starting point for understanding what is going on between two women in the film - Olga and her mother, Marina Nikolayevna; and in a broader sense, between two generations of Russian people who found themselves on the opposite sides at the turn of the century. Years passed. Olga left Russia. Marina Nikolayevna remained at home without any means of existence. Three suicide attempts were her answer to the hostile reality. Olga decides to save her mother. Her only hope is Professor Stankovsky's world-renown clinic. His experiments on "deleting negative memories" give hope to thousands of desperate people who have lost peace and sleep, who are constantly fighting their own past. But is it so simple to renounce your past and yourself, in order to be happy?

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POST-SOVIET RUSSIA

Television Around the World: Russia (2005 26 min.)
   Russian viewers of all ages are very fond of Zvezda, a channel dedicated to old-fashioned Soviet-era films and TV shows. With its ties to the military, Zvezda runs plenty of footage of tanks, but none of the dissolution of the U.S.S.R. By contrast, REN is an uncensored, independent channel that features controversial current affairs programs, and unlike the state-run stations, does not require the Kremlin's approval of its broadcast decisions. Speaking with journalists and media professionals, this film explores the broad scope of Russia's TV programming-which includes comedies, crime shows, and airings of the regular brawls that take place in its parliament-with a focus on the role of politics in its creation.

Omnibus Inside the Russia house (Sean Connery; Kim Evans 1999 52 min) Alexander Street
  Film crews are shown moving freely in post-glasnost Moscow to record scenes for the movie version of John Le Carre's novel The Russia house. Those working on the film, along with some Russian people, comment on Le Carre's work and how perestroika has affected Russia.

17 August (2012 54 min., Alexander Gutman)
On a remote island in Northern Russia Boris is serving a life sentence for triple murder. He is one of the first to do so in post-Soviet Russia after the death penalty was abolished in 1993. This unsettling documentary brings us inside, not only Boris' dark, cold, claustrophobic cell but also the hidden recesses of his mind. For us it's just a picture, but on the other side of the lens Boris' mind has to deal with the reality that the squalid space offers against the infinity of his 'life' sentence.

Russia: rebuilding a nation (2002, 25 min.)
   Although rich in oil, gas, lumber, and many other natural resources, Russia is experiencing difficulty building a free-market economy. From the heart of Moscow and nearby areas, this program investigates major challenges that Russian companies face following the breakup of the Soviet Union. Interviews with resource managers and business leaders-along with spectacular views of the Kremlin, Red Square, and historic churches-shed light on the growing pains of a seemingly young nation.

How Putin Came to Power     ICARUS FILMS ♦ 2007 ♦ 52 MINUTES ♦  Docuseek2
     A detailed investigation, with archives and exclusive interviews with the participants, into how Vladimir Putin rose from mayoral aide in St. Petersburg, to President of Russia, in only eight years.

East/West Sex and Politics (2008, 96 min.)
   How does one build a movement for minority rights - especially gay rights - in a country without a democratic tradition? Moscow activist Nikolai Alekseev's crusade is made all the more difficult by the forces arrayed against him, from narrow-focus neo-nationalists to Mayor Luzhkov and Prime Minister Putin; from vehement, violent homophobes to the Russian Orthodox Church. Even the publisher of Russia's lone gay magazine, KWIR, opposes Alekseev's Gay Pride campaign. "It makes our life much tougher," he explains, "and we don't see any profits out of this parade.". Jochen Hick's slyly constructed documentary gradually reveals the contradictory nature of queer life in Moscow in the late aughts. A thriving gay dance-club scene and a public park where lesbians kibitz and kiss indicate a small subculture that's generally tolerated. But gay bashings and firings without cause are sufficiently prevalent to keep most people in the closet to everyone outside their circle of friends. One consequence is that publicized, organized marches are less effective at drawing crowds of gays and lesbians than attracting haters of all stripes.. This sobering film introduces us to an intriguing cross-section of Moscow's queers, including veteran activist Evgeniya Debryanskaya and performance artist Ahasver. Ranging from flamboyant to shyly defiant, they evince tenderness, style, humor and, above all, a boatload of courage..

Campaign of Hate: Russia and Gay Propoganda    directed by Scott Stern, Breaking Glass Pictures, 2014 1 hour 19 mins   Academic Video Online
    Lucas returns to his native country with co-director Scott Stern to shine a light on the truth of LGBT men and women in Russia and their ever-increasing prosecution.

Cold Fear: Gay Life in Russia  BBC, 2014, 49:07    Films on Demand
    This brutally honest film exposes what it’s really like to be gay in Russia. It is thought only one per cent of gay people dare to live completely openly in Russia. This film gained unique access to the vigilante gangs that target gay men and women. In one disturbing scene anti-gay activists gather together on a Sunday and go on ‘safari’. Their prey: homosexuals. The abusers are proud of what they do and fear no reprisals from the state. Gay men and women in Russia say new legislation and intolerance in Russia has led to a ‘hunting season’ and they are the hunted. The film contains shocking scenes yet it treats all contributors with dignity and refuses to offer a simplistic solution to complex social tensions. This video contains subject matter which may not be appropriate for all audiences.

Comrade Kamprad: IKEA goes to Russia (2005, 46 min.)
   The Vikings never conquered Russia, but Swedish mega-retailer IKEA might just pull it off. In this case, victory depends on sweet-talking, arm-twisting, and impromptu brainstorming-skills that company founder Ingvar Kamprad has perfected over a long life in business. This program follows Kamprad and a handful of colleagues during their 10-day trip across Moscow and more remote regions, revealing the political and logistical challenges that must be overcome to solidify a domestic supply chain and make IKEA Russia profitable. The result is both an illuminating international business case study and a remarkable profile of one of the world's richest, oldest, and most charismatic entrepreneurs.

Naberezhnaya Tower, Moscow (2007, 27 min.)
   Moscow has become Europe's skyscraper capital, with the Naberezhnaya Tower holding the title of the continent's tallest building. It represents a new era for the city, one in which Moscow can finally compete with the other major financial centers of the world. Further skyscrapers, such as Norman Foster's 500 meter tall Russia Tower, are currently being built-pushing the parameters of both height and skyscraper design in Europe. These extraordinary towers represent the final realization of a modern high rise Moscow-one that was once dreamt of decades ago by the city's early 20th century undiscovered skyscraper visionary.

Art and Oligarchs ICARUS FILMS ♦ 2017 ♦ 52 min Dir. Tania Rakhmanova   Docuseek2
    Newly-minted Russian art collectors have many reasons for investing in fine art, some more sleazy than others.   A popular trend among Russian oligarchs is to purchase works of art. Why? It's a way to get into the Kremlin's good graces, to gild their image...and to cover up the origin of their fortunes, often acquired in the shadow of post-Soviet power.  Following a group of newly-minted collectors as they attempt to follow in the steps of well-known collectors of the early 20th-century, Tania Rakhmanov's powerful documentary ART AND OLIGARCHS depicts a Russia where art, easy money, and an authoritarian state co-exist. Keywords: art; oligarchs; Russia; money laundering; collecting; "Art and Oligarchs"; Icarus Films

Modern Russian Design (2014 52 min.) Films on Demand
   This film, in Russian with English subtitles, features designers discussing theories on what design is, and whether there is a distinctly Russian school of design. It explains how Vladimir Putin's government has turned to designers to create or reflect ideas about national identity. It invites viewers to consider the relation between design and the expression of ideas.
Streaming video file encoded with permission for digital streaming by Films Media Group on June 03, 2015.

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REGIONS OF RUSSIA

Ostrov  directed by Pavel Lungin Pavel Lungin Studio (New York, NY: Film Movement, 2006), 1 hour 50 mins   Academic Video Online
    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. The film is a parable, combining the realities of Russian everyday life with monastic ritual and routine.
 
Unknown Arctic     directed by Vic Pelletier, in Arctic Territories, 1 (Montréal, QC: CinéFête, 2009), 28 mins
    Like Canada and its stake on the Northwest Passage, Russia considers the Northeast Passage waters as interior, therefore theirs. Russia has also more means to assert its claim. It possesses a fleet of nuclear submarines and its ice-breakers exceed all that Canada or the United States hold in regard to ice-strengthened ships. There is no doubt that Russia’s presence in the Arctic is meant to be powerful and prepared to conquer.

Silent Souls      (2009 , 1 h 17 min., Aleksey Fedorchenko)
One of the most acclaimed films of 2011, Silent Souls (Ovsyanki) is a breathtakingly beautiful road-movie masterpiece. After the sudden death of his wife, tough guy Miron asks taciturn writer Aist to accompany him on a long journey to dispose of her remains according to the rituals of the Merya people--an ancient tribe from picturesque West-Central Russia. As the two friends traverse the evocatively 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. Brooding, poetic and provocative, Silent Souls is an exquisite work of post-Soviet cinema by director Aleksei Fedorchenko and renowned cinematographer Mikhail Krichman (Elena).

Russia on Four Wheels Series BBC 2014. 2 parts    Films on Demand
    Intrepid journalists Justin Rowlatt and Anita Rani set off across Russia on two massive road-trips across the world's biggest, and one of its most enigmatic, countries. A former superpower and more recently a struggling giant, Russia is looking to assert itself once again on the world stage. With millions of square miles of land, a wealth of natural resources, the largest automobile market in Europe, diverse borders and trading partners aplenty, Russia has the potential to become one of the richest and most dynamic nations on Earth. But 25 years after the fall of the Berlin Wall, how far has Russia left its Cold War past behind? And what direction will the country take? Starting from Sochi, home to the 2014 Winter Olympics, and driving thousands of miles in three weeks—in two very different cars—Justin and Anita aim to find out. A BBC Production.

Russia: Farewell to Russia—In 80 Trains Around the World  First Hand Films, 2012 25:56   Films on Demand
    With the collapse of the former Soviet Union, millions of Russians have left their beloved Mother Russia in search of an economically better life in America or Australia. Others have left due to the ethnic clashes that began in the post-Soviet era, or in search of their roots. This episode features Russian Jews, German Mennonites, and Volga Germans who have lived in Russia their whole lives and their families go back for generations. Even though they were repressed under the old system, they still believed in a new Russia. Slowly, they began to realize they could not make a life in their homeland and decided to leave. We meet them as they begin their new lives. Part of the series In 80 Trains Around the World. (26 minutes)

Nature - Siberian Tiger Quest (2012 53 min.)
   Ecologist Chris Morgan travels to far eastern Russia, in search of the Siberian tigers that hold rank in the frozen forests. The film features the work of Korean cameraman Sooyong Park, the first individual ever to film Siberian tigers in the wild. Park spent years in the forest tracking and filming the world’s biggest cat.. Park’s tracking technique was unconventional, but produced more than a thousand hours of wild tiger footage and captured the saga of a Siberian tiger dynasty. Morgan spends time with Park, learning firsthand just how hard it was for him to achieve his remarkable accomplishment..

RAI Film Festival 2017: land of Udehe Udehe Boa (2017, 27 min., Ivan Golovnev) Royal Anthropological Institute of Great Britain and Ireland. Alexander Street
   This film takes us into the world of Udehe – indigenous people of the Far East of Russia. According to the census of 2010, their population dropped to 1,490 souls.

Pilgrims and Tourists    BULLFROG FILMS ♦ 2014 ♦ 57 MINUTES ♦      Docuseek2
    In the Altai Republic of Russia and in Northern California, indigenous shamans resist massive government projects that threaten nature and culture.

Our Newspaper     ICARUS FILMS ♦ 2012 ♦ 58 MINUTES ♦      Docuseek2
    A couple starts their own newspaper in rural Russia... which lands them in danger.

Three Songs about Motherland     ICARUS FILMS ♦ 2010 ♦ 39 MINUTES ♦      Docuseek2
    A film about collisions between the past, present, and future in three Russian cities today.

T'an Bahktale! (Good Fortune To You!): Roma (Gypsies) In Russia (1996)
   Shot in central Russia in 1993, T'an Bahktale! documents how Russians, Romani performers, well-to-do merchant Roma, and poorer, metalworking Roma describe what it means to be a Gypsy. Before shooting, one of the directors did more than two years of fieldwork in Russia with Roma (1990-1993).

Looting the Pacific     BULLFROG FILMS ♦ 2013 ♦ 27 MINUTES ♦      Docuseek2
    An ICIJ investigation reveals the secrets of the global fishing industry's last frontier and the fate of the jack mackerel.
Russia: A Journey With Jonathan Dimbleby: Breaking the Ice   directed by Hugh Thomson BBC 2008, 1hour    Academic Video Online
    The film opens with Jonathan Dimbleby driving over the tundra inside the Arctic Circle. It is the short summer season – when the snow melts and the sun scarcely sets. Ahead of him lie 10,000 miles of hard traveling through a country that is not only the largest in the world but also, perhaps, the most awe-inspiring. It was the summer of 2006 when filming began. Vladimir Putin was hosting the G8 summit in St Petersburg; there was an air of optimism about relations between Russia and the West. After the long years of the Cold War through which Jonathan had lived, he was keen to make his first stop in the city of Murmansk, which stands as a reminder to the years when England and Russia were close allies in a war of survival against the Nazis. But soon he was on the move, away from the Russia we normally see or read about and into the strange and remote world of Karelia. He crosses a great lake in a replica 17th schooner, and we get a first taste of the extraordinary contrasts that Russia provides. In Karelia, we meet people who still believe in the good and evil spirits of the forest; but just a short train ride away (by Russian standards!) we come to the sophisticated elegance of St Petersburg, with its canals and palaces and extraordinary history. On the surface St Petersburg must count as one of the most beautiful cities in the world. Jonathan runs into the great conductor Valery Gergiev as he comes slightly breathless out of a concert at the Mariinsky Theatre. He meets some of the cool new rich of the city at a party overlooking one of the cities beautiful canals, who try to convince him that there is a massive difference between democracy and freedom. They know they don’t have much of the first, but they still reckon they are freer than in the West. He gets a different insight into this when Ilya Utekhin takes him to visit a communal flat. It was built in imperial Russia as a grand apartment for a rich merchant but after the revolution was occupied by as many as fifty impoverished families at once. Utekhin was brought up there in one small room. It wasn’t so bad, he says: we Russians live in two worlds – personal life, which is our thoughts, our aspirations, our friends and relationships; and everyday life – sleeping, eating, washing clothes. This was just everyday life and it didn’t matter. Jonathan then sets out to track the origins of this Russian nation, following the course of the very first Viking settlements along the River Volkhov until he comes to Velikii Novgorod. This was a great city when Moscow was no more than a trading post in the woods, and the cathedral is one of the very oldest in Russia, copied from the great churches of Constantinople when the Slavs converted to Christianity in the 10th Century. Journey’s end for this film is Moscow, and a couple of hours in the gloriously ornate Sandunovsky Baths. The banya is a quintessential institution in Russian society. Without clothes on, it is hard to tell the rich from the not-so-rich, the good from the not-so-good. Jonathan joins in and gets a good pummeling from the hefty masseur, while reflecting on the nature of Russian society he has so far encountered.
 
Russia: A Journey With Jonathan Dimbleby: Country Matters     directed by Hugh Thomson BBC 2008, 1hour    Academic Video Online
    If the action in today’s Russia is in the cities, the eternal spirit of Russia is in the countryside. At the opening of the film, Jonathan Dimbleby finds himself at a reception for a Madonna concert, attended by anyone who is anyone in Moscow, including top restaurateur, Arkady Novikov. But the next day he takes the train to a different world: the family estate of Leo Tolstoy, arguably the greatest of all Russian writers. Yasnaya Polyana is set in lush countryside south of Moscow. The manor house where he lived most of his life has been preserved pretty much as he left it – his favorite clothes still hang in the cupboard. Tolstoy believed you could find the soul of Russia in the simple peasant, and today his great-greatgrandson, Count Vladimir Tolstoy, is trying to revive the whole estate as a working farm. It is, of course, an idealized dream. Further South, you come to the reality of farming in Russia today where families struggle to survive after the ending of State subsidies. Voronezh is in the middle of Black Earth country, named after the rich soil that surrounds it. This part of Russia bore the brunt of Stalin’s brutal project to bring all farms under State control. Millions died in the famine that followed, and in the purges he later inflicted on the survivors. In the woods nearby, Jonathan comes across a moving memorial to some of the victims. The other formative influence on Tolstoy was his time as an army officer in the Caucasus. Pyatigorsk, on the northern edge of the mountains, was then a place where soldiers relaxed. It’s still a spa town today, and Jonathan decides to sample the warm sulphur springs. A woman welder from the far north takes rather a shine to him. Just above them are the great mountains of the Caucasus, the scene then and now of fierce fighting between Russian armies and the local tribesmen. Jonathan – himself a skilled horseman – gets a chance to ride one of the famous Kabardin horses whose bloodline is prized by breeders all over the world. Later he goes to a wedding where the ancient rituals of wife stealing and repentance are played out. You cannot get through the Caucacus without confronting the harsh reality of the Chechen war. Jonathan’s route takes him past Beslan where 331 people died, over half of them children. He visits the ruins of School Number One, preserved as a memorial to them. Further on he comes across another side of the story, a Chechen village whose entire population was deported to Central Asia in 1944 on Stalin’s orders. Many of the old men and women remember the night they were herded into cattle trucks on a freezing February night, many dying in transit before they arrived. Nearby is the river Terek, which in imperial days was the wild frontier, defended by Orthodox Cossacks against the infidels. There are still Cossacks here – Jonathan goes on a hunting expedition with them – but they are now a minority in Muslim Daghestan. He goes into the mountains where they still revere the great warriors who fought the Tsar’s armies for 30 years, guided by Magomedkhan Magomedkhanov, leader of one of the mountain tribes (and a graduate of Havard). Finally he reaches the Caspian Sea, under the massive walls of Derbent, an ancient city built by the Persians to defend themselves from the peoples of the North.
 
Russia: A Journey With Jonathan Dimbleby: Motherland See       directed by Hugh Thomson BBC 2008, 1hour    Academic Video Online
    The symbol of Russian patriotism is the River Volga which runs from above Moscow through the heart of Russia to the Caspian Sea. Several great battles have been fought along its length. Not far from the port of Astrakhan is a tiny village that was once the great capital of the Golden Horde. Jonathan Dimbleby arrives there in February when the biting wind chills you to the bone, and is astonished to find how little remains of the western capital of Genghiz Khan’s massive empire. His next stop is Volgograd, more famous under its old name of Stalingrad. It was the heroic defence of this city that turned the tide against the German armies in 1943, and the city still evokes the memory of those battles. He meets Svetlana Argatseva, a woman who thinks Stalin has been misunderstood. She is not alone. Russians tend to value strong leaders more than human rights, and as Jonathan makes his way up the Volga, he finds the Kremlin’s new more aggressive mood towards the West is going down well. In Samara, once a secret armaments city closed to all foreigners, it is Victory Day. Traditionally, families take offerings of food and drink to the graves of their departed loved ones in the city’s cemeteries. Jonathan joins them and finds that a stranger is welcome even at this most intimate family occasion. It is also the time when new recruits are called up for military service. Stories about the terrible bullying they regularly suffer make Vitaly’s last night as a civilian a tearful occasion for his grandmother. But he is a big confident lad and the party goes on till dawn. Another more sobering meeting is with journalist Sergei Kurt-Adjiev. He works for Novaya Gazeta, one of the few publications that has refused to take the Government line. Sergei is subject to constant harassment by the police. Shortly after we had interviewed him he was hauled in for questioning and had his computer confiscated. Why don’t you leave, asks Jonathan. His answer is chillingly simple: I have children here, grandchildren. I don’t want them to live in a country of which I cannot be proud. Someone has to stay and fight. On, past Kazan – the place where Ivan the Terrible finally smashed the rule of the Mongols – towards Perm. Just beyond Perm is the site of one of the last camps for political prisoners. Jonathan meets a former inmate, Sergei Kovalev. He shows him round the solitary confinement block and describes what it was like in the sub-zero winters. Jonathan finds someone has scrawled a date in the concrete – 1986 – Gorbachev’s time. His final stop is in the Ural Mountains, now a place popular with off-roaders and hunters. This is the boundary between Europe and Asia, between ancient Russia and the land empire they conquered stretching to the Pacific. Jonathan stands at the marker point and contemplates his next journey – across Siberia.
 
Russia: A Journey With Jonathan Dimbleby: National Treasures      directed by Hugh Thomson BBC 2008, 1hour    Academic Video Online
    Siberia is Russia’s treasure chest. When the first Cossacks ventured across the Urals in the 16th century, it was the lucrative fur trade they were after. But it wasn’t long before other riches were found. Jonathan starts this journey in an emerald mine and then makes his way down to the great city of Ekaterinburg, built to protect and exploit reserves of iron ore found in the mountains. Its heavy industry turned out tanks and armaments during Soviet days – and also spawned a great tradition of heavy metal music. Jonathan Dimbleby stops off at a nightclub to meet Vladimir Shakhrin, an icon of Ekaterinburg rock ‘n’ roll. Alcoholism is a huge problem in Russia, killing thousands every year, often because the only liquor they can afford is home-made poison sold on the estates in the sprawling suburbs of cities like Ekaterinburg. Jonathan goes on a raid with a crime-busting group founded by an ex-alcoholic. They nail one of the small fry – an old lady who sells a few dozen bottles of illicit booze hidden in her kitchen. But perhaps the reason why most outsiders have heard of Ekaterinburg is that this is the place where the last tsar and his family were murdered by the Bolsheviks. In woods near the city Jonathan comes across an archaeologist who has just unearthed what he thinks are the bones of two of the imperial children, thus solving the puzzle of what had become of them. The modern treasure on which Russia prospers is, of course, oil. Jonathan takes the train far North towards the Arctic Circle to Nizhnevartovsk, where BP is a co-owner of a huge oil field. Some of the workers roar round the town on big motorbikes, but the truth is most people just come for the wages. There’s not much to do up here besides drill for oil. The team then takes one of the great river boats on the next leg of their journey to the beautiful old city of Tomsk. In the absence of roads in the wilderness, river is often the only way to travel. This is underlined when they set out for the logging camps in the taiga north of Tomsk. In the summer months, as now, the frozen topsoil turns to deep mud and the only way to travel is in tank-like tracked carriers. Out in the forest he meets a climate change scientist who warns that vast quantities of methane gas are starting to seep out of the melting bogs – potentially lethal to the world’s atmosphere. Next stop, Akademgorodok. It is a purpose-built city for some of the brainiest people in Russia. Jonathan finds himself trying to master the controls of a computer game designed by scientists whose day job is to design the guidance systems for spacecraft. Then, in glorious contrast, he heads into the Altai mountains to find the reindeer herdsmen who sell antlers to be ground up as aphrodisiacs. After dinner in their tented kitchen, he says goodbye – only to find that the first snow of winter has fallen overnight, and he needs their help again to get home.
 
Russia: A Journey With Jonathan Dimbleby: Far From Moscow    directed by Hugh Thomson BBC 2008, 1hour    Academic Video Online
    It is a warmish winter’s day by Siberian standards (just 18º below) when Jonathan Dimbleby meets a Buryat shaman near the shores of Lake Baikal. Valentin Khagdaev takes him to a tree growing out of a rock in the wilderness. The shaman’s holy place is in sharp contrast to the busy streets of Irkutsk, the great trading city of eastern Siberia. Irkutsk has a problem: statistically, its AIDS epidemic is out of control. Jonathan follows one of the Red Cross teams who are struggling to manage a crisis by taking clean needles and condoms to high risk areas. The next day he takes a very special train on one of the most spectacular stretches of railway in the world. It’s the original route of the Trans Siberian railway which threads its precarious way along the shores of Lake Baikal. His next stop is Chita, where Mikhail Khodorkovsky, the oligarch who fell foul of Putin, is held. In the 19th Century, the tsars also consigned their enemies to prison here. The most famous were the aristocratic Decembrists, who led a courageous but futile rebellion against the tsar’s autocratic rule. Their memory continues to be celebrated by the handful of people in Chita who have the same rebellious streak. By now, Jonathan is traveling close to the Chinese border. The days when this was one of the most sensitive frontiers in the world have passed. The Chinese flood across to work and to sell the Russians the goods their own economy cannot produce. What the Chinese need in return are resources. Jonathan stops off at a gold mine in the middle of nowhere part-owned, surprisingly, by a City gent from London. With the price of gold rocketing, the mine now produces three quarters of a million dollars worth a day! But it’s just a fraction of what mining is doing for this once almost-derelict region. You sense a boom coming, particularly at Blagoveshchensk, the only Russian city within hailing distance of a brand-new Chinese one on the other side of the border. Five years ago, Heihe was little more than a few huts. Now it’s a vast glittering shopping centre accessed over the frozen River Amur by hovercraft. Next stop, Birobidzhan, arguably one of the strangest places in Russia – a Jewish homeland created by Stalin at the furthest end of his empire. Not many Jews have survived there, but the people – Jewish or not – are proud of their unusual heritage. Jonathan finds Hanukah, the Jewish Festival of Lights, being jointly celebrated by the rabbi and the mayor. In the crowd are old men who have survived hardship and persecution to dream of better things to come. And so to the Pacific Ocean and journey’s end: Vladivostok. Jonathan meets some students in a café. This far from Moscow, will they feel any different from the chic young people he met in St Petersburg some 10,000 miles ago? Not really. They want a strong Russia before they want a democratic one. As he looks out over the Pacific, Jonathan reflects on how charming and how different the Russians are from us.

Silent souls = Ovsyanki (2009, 77 min.)
   One of the most acclaimed films of 2011, Silent Souls (Ovsyanki) is a breathtakingly beautiful road-movie masterpiece. After the sudden death of his wife, tough guy Miron asks taciturn writer Aist to accompany him on a long journey to dispose of her remains according to the rituals of the Merya people--an ancient tribe from picturesque West-Central Russia. As the two friends traverse the evocatively 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. Brooding, poetic and provocative, Silent Souls is an exquisite work of post-Soviet cinema by director Aleksei Fedorchenko and renowned cinematographer Mikhail Krichman (Elena).

Greetings from Grozny: inside the Chechen conflict (2002 57 min.)
   Chechnya's war of independence has raged for years, but Americans rarely see the human face of the conflict. This Wide Angle report illuminates the ruined-yet still inhabited-cityscape of Grozny and its surrounding countryside, sifting through both Russian and Chechen perspectives on the ongoing clash. The program depicts Russian troops conducting "cleansing missions" through a rural Chechen village, visits a barely functioning university in the heart of the city, reveals life in a refugee tent city, and goes inside an active unit of Islamic Chechen fighters. Webs of special interest woven by the United States, Wahabist Muslims, and neighboring Georgia are also examined. In addition, anchor Daljit Dhaliwal talks with Deputy Assistant Secretary of State for European and Eurasian Affairs Ambassador Steven Pifer.

Crying sun: the impact of war in the mountains of Chechnya (2007, 24 min.)
   Chechnya has been deeply scarred by years of fighting between separatists and Russian federal forces. In the Chechen Mountains the conflict has forced families from their homes and is gradually destroying the unique culture of these communities. Thousands of people across Chechnya have disappeared, been imprisoned or tortured. CRYING SUN is the story of Zumsoy, a village torn apart by war. It gives a voice to the people who are struggling to preserve their identity amidst such violence and suffering. The film calls on local and federal authorities to investigate human rights abuses and help villagers return to their ancestral homes and rebuild their lives.

The 3 Rooms of Melancholia      ICARUS FILMS ♦ 2005 ♦ 104 MINUTES ♦      Docuseek2
    An award-winning, stunningly beautiful revelation of how the Chechen War has psychologically affected children in Russia and in Chechnya.     Reveals the psychological devastation the Chechen conflict has inflicted on children. Focuses on three rooms: a military academy near St. Petersburg; Crozny, Chechnya where families struggle to survive in barely habitable buildings; and, the nearby republic of Ingushetia where refugee camps are set up. Using minimal dialogue and evocative music, the film depicts the emotional state of children affected by war.

Beslan Massacre See in: Where Were You, 8 (Geelong, Victoria: World Wide Entertainment, 2011), 24 mins    Academic Video Online
    There are some global events of such impact that they stay with us forever. They are so important that we sit up and pay attention as they are happening: we sit glued to the television we pour over newspapers we frantically search out more information to understand. This series looks at some of the most...

Siberian Lady Macbeth (1962 93 min)
In what might be termed Russo-Shakespearean noir, a ruthless woman's adulterous affair with a drifter sets in motion a chain-reaction of murder and deception in a remote village in 19th Century Mtsensk.

Yankee in Kamchatka - Wilderness Adventure in Siberia (1991 56 min.)
   Kamchatka, Siberia - a remote land of stunning natural beauty. As Russia opens its doors, nature writer/adventurer Robert Perkins is the first American to enter this territory which has been kept strictly off-limits to all foreign travelers since World War II.

Our newspaper (2010 58 min. Eline Flipse)
   After Andrey Schkolni leaves his job at The Leninist, the state-supported-and state-censored-regional paper in Uljanovsk, Russia, he and his wife, Marina, decide to start their own newspaper. The couple take on local apahty, isolationism, criticism, and ridicule; they are determined to serve the local population, located over 550 miles from Moscow in a largely rural, often snowbound area.

Tankograd (2007 58 min., Boris B Bertram)
   Documentary film about Cheliyabinsk, Russia, site of a former Soviet nuclear weapons facility and one of the most radioactively-polluted places on earth. The story of Chelyabinsk is told from the point of view of the Chelyabinsk Contemporary Dance Theater's dancers and choreographer, and within the context of their production of Prityazhenie (called "Celestial bodies" in English).