The Human Face of Russia

Man with a Movie Camera

A cameraman wanders around with a camera slung over his shoulder, documenting urban life with dazzling inventiveness.

Chernobyl 30 Years On: Nuclear Heritage

Thirty years after the Chernobyl disaster, which occurred on the night of April 26, 1986, its causes and consequences are examined. In addition, a report on efforts to strengthen the structures covering the core of the nuclear plant in order to better protect the population and the environment is offered.

The KGB Connections: An Investigation into Soviet Operations in North America

This 1982 film explains the KGB infiltration of America. Who they are, what they are doing, and how well they have infiltrated North America.

The Living

Tells the story of the tragic events in Ukraine in 1932-33, the genocidal Great Famine or the Holodomor, and one Welshman's attempts to tell the world what was happening.

Leninland

At the peak of Perestroika, in 1987, in the village of Gorki, where Lenin spent his last years, after a long construction, the last and most grandiose museum of the Leader was opened. Soon after the opening, the ideology changed, and the flow of pilgrims gradually dried up. Despite this, the museum still works and the management is looking for ways to attract visitors. Faithful to the Lenin keepers of the museum as they can resist the onset of commercialization. The film tells about the modern life of this amazing museum-reserve and its employees.

Andrey Tarkovsky. A Cinema Prayer

An account of the life and work of Russian filmmaker Andrey Tarkovsky (1932-86) in his own words: his memories, his vision of art and his reflections on the fate of the artist and the meaning of human existence; through extremely rare audio recordings that allow a complete understanding of his inner life and the mysterious world existing behind his complex cinematic imagery.

The Russian German War

This is a rare look at one of the worst horror stories in the long infamous history of warfare. This series features captured German and Russian film footage, much of which has never been seen before. For decades the Cold War prevented us from looking closely at what really happened between the Russians and the Germans on the Eastern Front during World War II. More than a struggle between nations, it pitted maniacal tyrant against maniacal tyrant, evil ideology against evil ideology. The lives of tens of millions of human beings were consumed by its raging hatreds and appalling indignities. One in every ten Russians died. One in every four Poles died. Whole divisions of Italians, Romanians, Hungarians disappeared with barely a trace. An average of 17,800 people died on every single day and this, the war on the Russian German Front, lasted for 1,400 days. This series features captured German and Russian film footage, much of which has never been seen before.

Understanding The Georgian Republic

Charlie Marx and the Chocolate Factory

Charlie Marx and the Chocolate Factory started as an investigation of the link between politics and chocolate, at the Karl Marx Confectionary Factory in Kiev, Ukraine. Since access to the factory was denied, the project had to be re-considered, re-invented or re-enacted. Mostly made of archival footage and re-enacted performances based on the company's website, the film merges what was left of the initial idea with what has been collected and realized instead. It borrows from the genres of video art, 'Man on the street' interview, direct address, corporate film, essay, and music video, without legitimately belonging to any of them. The film unravels as a reflection on its own failure, and yet keeps on investigating what has always been at stake: the shift from public to private property (and from analog to digital technology), dialectics of permanence and change, language as a mirror of ideology, and post-Soviet oligarchy culture.

This Is Russia!

Documentary footage of late 1950s Russia covers such cities and towns as Moscow, Leningrad, Kiev, Yalta, the Black Sea, Kharkov, Sochi, Sukumi, Gori, Bukhara, Samarkand, Frunzo and Siberia.

Children of Chernobyl

Mothers and doctors speak out about the grim reality of life in the five years following the Chernobyl disaster. In children, doctors witnessed a massive increase of recurrent infections, baldness, as well as leukaemia and other cancers.

Traces: People of the Peacock

Filmmaker Binevsa Bêrîvan travels to Armenia to capture the daily life, customs, and history of the country's Yazidi Kurdish community.

Chernobyl: The Last Battle of the USSR

Three decades after the nuclear explosion, almost everything has been said about this ecological and sanitary disaster that made Pripiat a part of History. How did the greatest industrial disaster change the course of History, disrupt global geopolitics and, directly or indirectly, redistribute the balances and power relations of the twentieth century? The world will never be the same again. By retracing the incredible battle waged by the Soviet Union against radiation, this film proposes to retrace and enlighten an extraordinary story, while exploring the historical stakes in the medium and long-term…

The Arrow of Time

President Mikhail Gorbachev recounts the end of the Cold War and the reduction of nuclear arms.

How we built the Moscow metro

In the 1930’s, the workers of the underground, headed by brigades of writers, are in charge to write in real time "the history of the Moscow Metro". Based on their narratives, partially unpublished, the film recounts the first lines construction of the most beautifiul underground in the world, in the light of this "big literary Utopia", stoped by the purges of 1937-38.

Khrushchev Does America

The story of the unconditional, no-holds-barred tour of America by Soviet Premier Nikita Khrushchev, leader of World Communism and America's arch nemesis, during 13 sun-filled days in the fall of 1959.

Disco and Atomic War

A different history of the Cold War: how Estonians under Soviet tyranny began to feel the breeze of freedom when a group of anonymous dreamers successfully used improbable methods to capture the Finnish television signal, a window into Western popular culture, brave but harmless warriors who helped change the fate of an entire nation.

Soviet Hippies

The hippie movement that captivated hundreds of thousands of young people in the West had a profound impact on the other side of the Iron Curtain. Within the Soviet system, a colorful crowd of artists, musicians, freaks, vagabonds and other long-haired drop-outs created their own system, which connected those who believed in peace, love, and freedom for their bodies and souls. More than 40 years later, a group of eccentric hippies from Estonia take a road trip to Moscow where the hippies still gather annually on the 1st of June for celebration that is related to the tragic event in 1971, when thousands of Soviet hippies were arrested by the KGB. The journey through time and dimensions goes deep into the psychedelic underground world in which these people strived for freedom.

Little Potato

Wes Hurley's autobiographical tale of growing up gay in Soviet Union Russia, only to escape with his mother, a mail order bride, to Seattle to face a whole new oppression in his new Christian fundamentalist American dad.

Gulag

Documentary examining Stalin's Gulag. Between the October Revolution and Stalin's death in 1953, millions of people died in the camps. The film explores the Gulag legacy, hearing from victims and perpetrators of the system.